What Is a Horse Race?
A horse race is a sport in which horses compete against each other in a contest of speed and stamina. It is one of the oldest sports and has evolved from a primitive contest between two animals into a spectacle involving massive fields, sophisticated electronic monitoring equipment, and immense sums of money. But while horse races are not the same as political polls, journalists should exercise caution in using them. Media scholars have been criticizing “horse race journalism” for decades, in which news outlets tend to frame elections as a competitive game between two candidates chasing each other, to the detriment of third-party and primary contenders. They argue that a better model is the horse race, which offers a valuable lesson: underdogs can, and often do, win.
In horse racing, the winner is determined by a series of rules, including the number of starters, the distance of the race, and the starting price of each horse. In addition, horses are graded according to their performance in previous races. The higher the horse’s rating, the more likely it is to win. The racers who place the highest number of bets also receive a greater share of the total pool.
Although the sport has evolved into an enormous, multibillion-dollar enterprise, its basic concept remains unchanged. The horse that crosses the finish line first is declared the winner. Horse races are held all over the world and feature different types of competitions, but they typically include three components:
While some people are attracted to the idea of a game of skill and chance, many others find it abhorrent to see horses hurting themselves in front of spectators. Injuries are a major problem in the industry, with one study reporting that one racehorse suffers a breakdown every 22 races. Moreover, racehorses are often forced to start training and competing at an age when their skeletal systems have not fully matured, leaving them unprepared for the rigors of racing on hard tracks at high speeds.
For animal rights activists, the cruelty involved in horse racing is an additional reason to call for reform and even outright bans on the practice. For example, according to PETA, many young horses are trained under abusive conditions and then sent off for slaughter. As a result, they develop behavioral problems and exhibit compulsive behaviors, such as biting, kicking, and self-mutilation. To raise awareness of these issues, groups like Horseracing Wrongs organize anti-horse-racing demonstrations most weekends at Laurel and Pimlico in Maryland. In addition, you can find information about horse racing on PETA’s website, which features groundbreaking investigations into egregious practices in the industry, including overbreeding, drug use, and the transport of American-bred horses to foreign slaughterhouses.