Racing Today

Horse racing is a high-stakes hobby and “the sport of kings,” but the racetrack also has its seedy side. We can all imagine the stereotypes of bookies and desperate last-chance gamblers at the rails, praying for the jackpot of a long-shot win.

These images persist in imagination and in life, but in recent years popular books and movies have brought the passion and romance of racing to the attention of the general public. The media has caught on, and newspaper and television coverage has exploded. Today, both legendary winners like Seabiscuit and surprising new champions like Smarty Jones have become household names as more and more Americans catch on to the thrills and fascination of this spectator sport.

A little background about the races and an understanding of the lingo goes a long way in enjoying, and joining in on, the excitement.

Thoroughbreds: Breeding & Bloodlines

Most major races take place among thoroughbreds, which is a breed in and of itself, and not merely a descriptive term. (Quarter-horses and Arabians are also raced in the United States, but thoroughbreds are the media darlings). The breed originated in England. In the mid-seventeenth century, King Charles II began importing Arabians to breed with native English stock. The prodigy of this cross-mating resulted in the early roots of the breed; it quickly began to evolve and generations became successively stronger and faster. Today, the bloodlines of all thoroughbred horses trace back to one of three purebred Arabian stallions which entered the gene pool in the late seventeenth/early eighteenth century; these three stallions are now known as the “founding sires.”

Each race has a cash prize attached to it - a “purse” which can range from a few hundred to over a million dollars - with the proceeds going to the horses owner (the trainer and the jockey are employed by the owner and paid accordingly). But after the end of their racing careers, which typically begin at age two and span only five or six years at most, horses can continue to rake in the cash for their owners; winners breed winners, and winning stallions garner stud fees in the hundreds of thousand of dollars.