Thoroughbred Racing
By
the time humans began to keep written records, horse
racing was an organized sport in all major
civilizations from Central Asia to the
Mediterranean. Both chariot and mounted horse racing
were events in the ancient Greek Olympics by 638 BC,
and the sport became a public obsession in the Roman
Empire.
The
origins of modern racing lie in the 12th century,
when English knights returned from the Crusades with
swift Arab horses. Over the next 400 years, an
increasing number of Arab stallions were imported
and bred to English mares to produce horses that
combined speed and endurance. Matching the fastest
of these animals in two-horse races for a private
wager became a popular diversion of the nobility.
Horse
racing began to become a professional sport during
the reign (1702-14) of Queen Anne, when match racing
gave way to races involving several horses on which
the spectators wagered. Racecourses sprang up all
over England, offering increasingly large purses to
attract the best horses. These purses in turn made
breeding and owning horses for racing profitable.
With the rapid expansion of the sport came the need
for a central governing authority. In 1750 racing's
elite met at Newmarket to form the Jockey Club,
which to this day exercises complete control over
English racing.
The
Jockey Club wrote complete rules of racing and
sanctioned racecourses to conduct meetings under
those rules. Standards defining the quality of races
soon led to the designation of certain races as the
ultimate tests of excellence. Since 1814, five races
for three-year-old horses have been designated as
"classics." Three races, open to male horses (colts)
and female horses (fillies), make up the English
Triple Crown: the 2,000 Guineas, the Epsom Derby
(see DERBY, THE), and the St. Leger Stakes. Two
races, open to fillies only, are the 1,000 Guineas
and the Epsom Oaks.
The
Jockey Club also took steps to regulate the breeding
of racehorses. James Weatherby, whose family served
as accountants to the members of the Jockey Club,
was assigned the task of tracing the pedigree, or
complete family history, of every horse racing in
England. In 1791 the results of his research were
published as the Introduction to the General Stud
Book. From 1793 to the present, members of the
Weatherby family have meticulously recorded the
pedigree of every foal born to those racehorses in
subsequent volumes of the General Stud Book. By the
early 1800s the only horses that could be called
"Thoroughbreds" and allowed to race were those
descended from horses listed in the General Stud
Book. Thoroughbreds are so inbred that the pedigree
of every single animal can be traced back
father-to-father to one of three stallions, called
the "foundation sires." These stallions were the
Byerley Turk, foaled c.1679; the Darley Arabian,
foaled c.1700; and the Godolphin Arabian, foaled
c.1724.
