Piglets take off to the races at Lane County Fair

At the sound of a starting signal, a traveling troupe of piglets from All-Alaskan Racing Pigs zip over a miniature track and leap over hurdles, competing in a 100-meter dash.

It’s Wednesday evening, the first day of the Lane County Fair, and about 30 spectators are watching an early race, rooting for their personal favorites.

The winning pig finishes in about 30 seconds. The racers head back to their air-conditioned trailer in preparation for the next heat.

Pig racing has established itself as a staple in fairs throughout the country, and the Lane County Fair is the most recent stop for Bart Noll’s All-Alaskan Racing Pigs.

Noll, the owner and founder of the business, started as a fair organizer in Alaska. His plans changed, however, when he and his wife suddenly both lost their jobs working the fair in the midst of a recession.  

Noll took the loss as an opportunity and headed to graduate school, earning an MBA. Afterward, inspired by the success of a separate pig-racing business during his time as a fair manager, he founded his own swine operation. But he didn’t plan on sticking with it for the long run.

“So the first one we did was supposed to be just a one-off. We thought it might be the only time we ever do it,” Noll said. “After two years, I was making as much money in the business as my classmates who were getting job offers, so we kept going.”

“Kept going” may be a bit of an understatement: This year marks almost 40 years for the family business, now based locally in Eugene.

Taylor Noll, Bart Noll’s son, has joined his dad on the road since he was 10, traveling from fair to fair across the country to put on a show.

“The coming of age thing in our family was going out on the road with my dad and doing a fair at 10 years old,” Taylor Noll said. “I remember looking forward to that, waiting for the year, getting out and working with your dad.”

The pigs themselves are a rare breed called Gloucestershire Old Spot pigs. They have an intelligence and docile personality suits them well for a career on the racetrack. Once endangered, they’ve now transitioned to only a threatened status thanks to modern breeding efforts. 

Yet it’s easy to forget their rarity as the litter of 10 crowded over each other in their living trailer, bickering, jostling and squeezing past one another as they rested up before their next big race. The piglets call the spacious and well-kept trailer, equipped with all their needs, home for a few months out of the year, at least before they outgrow the enclosure. 

Only eight of them can race at a given time. All of them are from the same family, and Taylor Noll said they practice a healthy sibling rivalry, competing for racing spots.

“We have a soundtrack for the show, and when they hear ‘We Will Rock You’ they start getting hyped up in that trailer. They know it’s time to race,” Taylor Noll said. “So it’s not usually someone that doesn’t want to race. It’s someone that’s left out and they’re not happy about it.”

As a traveling business, the Nolls work at about 40 to 45 events in a given year, touring states throughout the West. It’s a long haul, but Bart Noll says the grind has been worth it.

“Someday I’m going to sit down and estimate how many people we’ve made laugh. It’s a really big number,” he said. “There have been good days and bad days, but the good days way, way outweigh anything bad that’s happened.”

The racing pigs hit the track four times a day throughout the fair.