Horse racing is a sport that requires a combination of speed and stamina. The most prestigious flat races, including the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe, Melbourne Cup and Dubai World Cup, are run over distances that test both. Pushed to the limits of their physical ability, horses are also subjected to cocktails of legal and illegal drugs intended to mask injuries and enhance performance. Many racehorses bleed from the lungs after a long run, a condition called exercise-induced pulmonary hemorrhage. This results in a significant amount of fluid loss that must be managed with the use of medications such as Lasix and Salix.
The highest-level thoroughbreds can reach their peak at different ages, depending on the distance of the race and its type. The rate of improvement to a horse’s highest speed figure peaks at the age of four and then declines sharply. The top three finishers in a race are often separated by less than a length.
A Beyer speed figure is a rating of how fast a horse runs in a race. First popularized in a 1975 book by Andrew Beyer, the figures are published in the Daily Racing Form and have become a key tool in handicapping. The higher the Beyer number, the faster the horse.
Before Clay Puett’s first electric starting gate made its debut at Lansdowne Park in 1939, horses lined up in a long, straight line or behind a rope that someone would raise or lower to start the race. Once all the runners were in the gate, a starter hit a button that opened the front gates at the same time and the race began.
A jockey is a person who mounts a horse and guides it through the course of a horse race, whether on a dirt track or on an all-weather surface such as a polytrack or sand. Jockeys have the responsibility to help their mounts achieve their best performance, and this includes steering them into a position to win or place in the race, which is referred to as being on the money.
When journalists covering elections focus primarily on who is winning or losing instead of policy issues—what’s known as horse race coverage—voters, candidates and the news industry itself suffer, a growing body of research suggests. A recent report from the Journalist’s Resource at Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy highlighted multiple studies that have explored this phenomenon.
The earliest horse races were simple affairs, a rider on one or more animals that ran along a dirt road to pick up a bag of grain dropped at the end of each lap. Over the centuries, the rules of horse racing have become increasingly complex, but a basic principle has remained unchanged: A horse race is a game where the odds are stacked in favor of the house.
The modern horse race started to take shape around the turn of the 20th century, with innovations such as computerized pari-mutuel betting and televised races. The latter change helped horse racing expand its audience and broaden its appeal, bringing in younger audiences as well as men and women who had never before seen a race live.