Seeing is believing. I know it’s already been a couple of years since that very last race at Hollywood Park was ever run. Yet it only hit me now when I saw that one video. The one which included a replay of that very last race ever to be run at HP (only trackers, SoCal people, would know what HP is). Now I get it.
HP is more than just a race track to me. Most the memories from it are mainly good. Even the trauma ones (my friend’s runs to Centinela hospital) are in a way good. Every single one of them showed me and taught me something new about life. For example when my dear friend’s fall of a horse resulted in him needing reconstructive knee surgery. It showed me, for the first time, what a day in my mama’s life looks like – every single work day of hers. It gave me a new insight and massive appreciation for what she does. And has done, year after year after year. It gave me better understanding of what it really means to be there for someone who needs your help just then.
Though most of the memories are about what my life was like then and how much I’ve learnt and experienced since. How much that has actually happened since even though I think it wasn’t that long ago – yes, it really was. The horses, the universities, the long hours, the studies, the drives, the travels. But what’s so fantastic is that there was so much fun along the way. So much learning and experience. The yoga, the scuba diving, and all the amazing experiences outside the track – which came with the fact that I was at the tracks in Los Angeles.
Some people are since gone and I am grateful for them all, for getting to experience it all and being there. Little me from Sveden. Working with the best in the world on a daily basis. Learning that it is possible. It takes determination, it assumes you move well out of the comfort zone, and it requires growth, but it also teaches that it is possible.
All the people I got to know, legends from all over the world within the sport. All the incredible fantastic talented horses and getting to work with them on a daily basis – and one of the best loveliest cat too 😉
The video also gave me yet another new insight. As the race track I grew up around is getting ready to be torn down too, it is in Los Angeles I have learnt and I have grown. It is here in LA that I have been set free to be me and to fly. I spent many many more hours on horse back in LA than in than I ever did Sweden, and it is here I have learnt so much and had so much fun being me.
THANK YOU, THANK YOU, THANK YOU, Hollywood Park as well as Santa Anita Park for everything you gave me. SA for being the whole reason I so wanted to go to Los Angeles and SoCal. Since I was very small I wanted to see the Santa Anita Park race track. Everything else that happened after I arrived, has simply been a bonus. Much gratitude to those two race tracks as I’m humbled by it all and became a better person in the process. Hollywood Park, and even more so Santa Anita Park, will always be part of me, but I’m done with racing. Though both those notorious and historical race tracks are the reason LA is my home, a place where I feel free, it would have been hard to be me without those tracks.
It is more with gratitude than sadness I move on to the next part of the journey. Thank You for everything. It has been an amazing chapter and my life is still beautiful much thanks to it. Looking forward to the next exciting adventure!
1938-2013. 75 years. Here’s the video which broke through to me:
Sending you to another website altogether 😉
Here’s the bottomline. Ultimately we all came from different places and at different times. There were people before me who left already by the time I arrived. There were people who came about the same time as me, but we all parted at different times. There were people who came while I had already been there for a while and yet more people who came after I left. We all have memories from Hollywood Park, but just as we all have different lives, so are each and every one of our memories of the same place. The place means more to some than to others, but we all received that grace of Hollywood Park with it’s fresh ocean air and absolutely perfect sunrises.
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