OXFORD — “I got a winner,” said Bill Harvey of Windham, as the horse he bet on clopped by at the Oxford Fair racetrack.

Harvey was one of several residents of Maine Veterans’ Home in Paris who came to the track for post time Thursday afternoon.

Veterans’ Home Activities Director Peter Kilgore said the facility’s bus brought some veterans to the fair in the morning and others in the afternoon.

“I’m not done yet,” said Lee McGall of Livermore Falls, who fixed airplanes at a Marine base in North Carolina during World War II.

McGall, who already had won $6 betting, appeared to be one of the few veterans to have experience on the track. She went with Lucky Strike in the third race, screaming as the sulky neared the finish line, “he’s not going to make it.” The horse came in second.

Army veteran Armand Gagnon of Van Buren, who served in the military police in Italy during World War II, said he didn’t know much about horse racing, but he was willing to place a bet.

“I just bet $6 and all I know is a horse has a tail to shoo the flies,” Gagnon said proudly.

Buddy Burke, racetrack director for the past year and a resident of Paris, said some 400 to 500 people have been coming to the harness races each day for an average 10 races a day.

Sulky drivers have to round the ½ mile track twice and usually eight, sometimes nine horses will run a race, Burke said. “They go on to Farmington, Cumberland and Fryeburg,” he said of the drivers’ race schedules.

Dina Burrows and her husband, Gerald, of Cumberland, said they come to the races each year and follow the circuit.

They bet on races by looking at the history of the drivers and horses. “I go by the bloodline,” said Dina Burrows as her husband watched for his horse to place.

When asked if he had won much on his bets, Gerald smiled and said, “Not very much.”

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Horse RD Kak came in a winner during one of 10 races at the Oxford Fair racetrack Thursday in Oxford.

Residents from the Maine Veterans’ Home in Paris were at the Oxford Fair to place their bets on horses Thursday afternoon in Oxford. From left, are Bill Harvey, Lee McGall, Armand Gagnon and Sue Wolfe. Activities Director Peter Kilgore stands behind the group.

Gerald and Dina Burrows of Cumberland placed their bets Thursday afternoon at the Oxford Fair racetrack in Oxford and watched for their horses.

Horses race around the turn at the Oxford Fair racetrack in Oxford on Thursday afternoon.