Most people will probably think that horse racing has been something that has come into being recently, within the last few hundred years. However, racing horses is an ancient sport. In fact, the origins of horse racing go as far back as 4500 BC.
Today we enjoy horse racing, we bet on it, and it is a worldwide sport that people from every country on earth enjoy. But if we take a trip back in time to 4500 BC,
we can see it dates back to the nomadic tribesmen of Central Asia, who were the first to domesticate horses. Since they domesticated horses, horse racing has flourished as a sport of kings.
Horse racing is now one of the few forms of gambling that is legal across most corners of the globe, including the USA. It is a widely attended spectator sport in the US, and in fact in 1989, over 50 million people attended 8,000 days of racing and over $9 billion was wagered on these races. It is a very popular sport, not just in the United States but also in Canada, The United Kingdom, Ireland, the Middle East, South America, and Australia too.
The most popular forms of horse racing in the United States now are thoroughbred horses racing between ¾ mile and 1 ¼ miles over flat courses. Quarter horses are also a popular choice too, as well as harness horse racing.
Since thoroughbred horse racing is one of the most popular types of horse racing now, we have to look at its origins and when it began.
Since history was recorded, horse racing was an organized sport for all the major civilizations. Even the ancient Greek Olympics had events for both mounted and chariot horse racing. And the Roman Empire enjoyed horse racing too. Even in those days, people wanted to see who had the fastest horse.
The modern racing that we know originated in the 12th Century, when English Knights would return from the Crusades with swift and agile Arab horses. For the following 4 centuries, Arab stallions were imported more and more, being bred to English mares that could produce horses that possessed speed and endurance, a perfect mix. As this became more popular, nobles would privately bet on which they thought would be the fastest of these horses.
It became a professional sport during the reign of Queen Anne from 1702 to 1714. This was match racing, which evolved into multi-horse races where the spectators would wager. Racecourses started popping up all over England, and offering increasingly large purses to attract the best horses there were. As this became more popular, this made breeding and owning horses even more profitable, and the expansion of the sport created the need for a central governing body. This sprung up in 1750, and was known as the Jockey Club, which still regulates horse racing in England today.
The Jockey Club then wrote the rules of racing and sanctioned racecourses to conduct meetings. The standards defining the quality of races resulted in the designation of specific races as ultimate states, the born events such as the Epsom Derby, the 2,000 Guineas, the 1,000 Guineas, and so on.
The Jockey Club also wanted to regulate racehorse breeding; they would trace the pedigree of every racehorse in England. And from 1793 to today the Weatherby family (ancestors of James Weatherby who did the accounting back then) record the pedigree of every descendant of the racehorses from back then. By the time the early 1800s came around, the only horses allowed to race were those descended from the horses they had listed, and these we have known as thoroughbreds. Every thoroughbred horse now can be traced back to one of three stallions known as ‘foundation sires’.
Horse racing came to America when British sellers brought them, and the first racetrack was laid out in 1665 in Long Island. The sport was just a popular local sport for quite some time, but it was not until after the Civil War in 1868 that organized racing took off. This is also when the American Stud book started. For decades after this, during the industrial expansion, gambling on racehorses, and horse racing itself exploded, and by 1890 314 racetracks has popped up and were operating in the United States.
This became rapid in growth, but due to this and there being no Jockey Club, most of these tracks ended up being run by criminal elements, so in 1894 the biggest track and stable owners met in NYC and made the American Jockey Club, modelled on the English version, it started ruling the horse racing game and eliminated a majority of the corruption.
The biggest hiccup for the horse racing scene was in the 1990s when horse racing was almost wiped out in the USA due to an anti-gambling sentiment that led nearly every state to ban bookmaking and by 1908 only 8 tracks remained. However, that same year parimutuel betting on the Kentucky Derby was introduced, and the sport got turned back around and horse racing and betting was back on.
Betting on horses has been the main appeal of this sport since it began, we can definitely say that it would be no surprise to hear that Julius Caesar would have put wagers down on horses during chariot races in the Roman Empire. The horse racing scene in England was built on gambling and betting. We also know that without the betting structure of horse races, the sport nearly died out in America in the 1990s.
Wagering is the main source of appeal for this sport, and it always has been. In America, all betting today is done using a pari mutuel wagering system which relies on a fixed percentage of the total amount wagered for racing purses, track operating costs and taxes.
Betting on the horses keeps this sport alive.
