I believed as English Equine Races are popular worldwide I believed my short article on the earliest English horse races would be of interest to steed enthusiasts and readers from all over world. The origins of contemporary racing depends on the 12th century, when English knights returned from the Crusades with speedy Arab equines.
Over the next 400 years, an enhancing number of Arab stallions were imported and bred to English mares to produce equines that integrated speed and endurance. Matching the fastest of these animals in two-horse races for a personal wager became a popular diversion of the nobility.
Horse racing started to end up being a professional sport throughout the reign (1702-14) of Queen Anne, when match racing gave method to races including several steeds on which the spectators wagered. Racecourses emerged all over England, offering progressively huge handbags to bring in the finest equines. These handbags in turn made reproducing and possessing steeds for racing rewarding.
With the quick expansion of the sport came the requirement for a central governing authority. In 1750 racing’s elite fulfilled at Newmarket to form the English Jockey Club, which to this day exercises complete control over English racing.
The English Jockey Club composed complete rules of racing and sanctioned racecourses to conduct meetings under those rules. Standards defining the quality of races soon resulted in the designation of particular races as the ultimate tests of excellence. Given that 1814, 5 races for three-year-old horses have actually been designated as “classics.” 3 races, ready for 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. 2 races, open to fillies just, are the 1,000 Guineas and the Epsom Oaks.
The Jockey Club also took steps to regulate the breeding of racehorses. James Weatherby, whose household worked as accountants to the members of the Jockey Club, was designated the job of tracing the pedigree, or total household history, of every steed racing in England. In 1791 the results of his study were published as the Intro to the General Stud Book. From 1793 to the present, members of the Weatherby family have actually carefully 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 might be called “Thoroughbreds” and permitted to race were those descended from horses provided 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 3 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.
The British settlers brought equines and steed racing with them to the New World, with the very first racetrack set out on Long Island as early as 1665. Although the sport became a popular regional pastime, the development of organized racing did not show up till after the Civil War. (The American Stud Book was begun in 1868.) For the next a number of decades, with the quick increase of an industrial economy, betting on racehorses, and for that reason steed racing itself, grew explosively; by 1890, 314 tracks were operating across the nation.
In 1894 the America’s most popular track and steady owners met in New york city to form an American Jockey Club, modeled on the English Jockey Club, which quickly ruled racing with an iron hand.
The Australian Quarter Horse Stud Book is published by AQHA, the Australian Quarter Horse Association.