One by one, the horses trot up the ramp and onto the track, pulling single-seat chariots behind them. Their drivers, dressed in garish green and bright pink silks, hop into position. Together, they begin to build up speed as they head into the setting sun. The clip-clop of their hooves hitting the track rises to a cacophony. “And they’re off,” the announcer says. The gates swing forward777-cocl777, and the race begins.

The first eruption came as a shock. But today, lava regularly snaking across the landscape is the new normal. “This was so strange at the beginning,” said Rebekka Hlin Runarsdottir, a geologist and technician at the University of Iceland. “And now, we’re just living in this reality.”

Back in the day, when horse racing was the only legal form of gambling in New York State, 20,000 or more people would jam the stands at Yonkers Raceway, cheering wildly as the standardbreds ran their mile-long harness race. But on this day, despite the beautiful July weather, just a few dozen spectators hang around, slumped into faded orange seats along a chain-link fence. Even with online betting,66jogo the racetrack takes in less than one-fortieth of what it would have at the sport’s peak. So the horses take their two laps, head back down the runway and exit the track to something near silence.

It’s a lonely time to be a racing fan. For those who own the horses, though, things aren’t so bad. Payouts for winners — the purses — are tremendous, bringing in investors with “both fists full of money,” said Joe Faraldo, the president of the Standardbred Owners Association of New York. Yonkers has purses that are among the largest of any racetrack of its kind, and it still has millions of dollars left over.

If that doesn’t seem to add up, blame a strange and very lucrative arrangement crafted by interests in the horse racing industry (which includes harness racing and its higher-profile sister sport, thoroughbred racing). Back in 2001, when New York State agreed to hand out new licenses to operate slot machines, the racing crowd won an agreement that a chunk of the proceeds would go to them.

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At the Yonkers track, the adjacent casino was doing enough business to generate around $600 million during the last fiscal year. About $60 million of it went to pay out those purses, fund the local breeders and dole out a few million for Faraldo’s group. Multiply that by every year and every racetrack, and it’s billions and billions of dollars.

ImageThe Empire City Casino, next to Yonkers Raceway.Credit...Justin Kaneps for The New York TimesImageJoe Faraldo, the president of the Standardbred Owners Association of New York.Credit...Justin Kaneps for The New York Times

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