Tag Archive: The Jockey Club

Horse racing is an expensive business. With the breeders, owners, and trainers all after a slice of the gambling pot, it's no surprise that the horses end up as the loser. In order to maximise the owner's profits, many race horses will be doped up to their ears. This not only makes them run faster, but also can masked the pain from other injuries. Furthermore, thanks to the pressures that come from betting big money, doping is also used to make horses run slower and thus throw a race

We can see examples of racing horses going back into ancient history. We know that both the Greeks and the Romans had a love of horse racing and were in all probability, placing wagers on the outcomes of races. The knights returning from the first crusades bought Arab stallions back with them, and they formed the basis for all of today's racehorses. In fact, every UK bred horse, in order to be legable to race, has to prove it's pedigree back to one of just three stallions.

Horse racing history dates back to the times when man first domesticated animals. We do know that back as far as 4,000BC man was using horses. The Ancient Romans and Greeks would race them, often in amphitheatres, in the most spectacular fashion. The formal ways of horse racing we know today are really down to the rules set back in the 18th century by the Jockey Club of Great Britain. Just over 100 years later the Americans formed their own horse racing organisation, the American Jockey Club.