Horse Racing

Affectionately referred to as "the sport of Kings" because of its rich links with the aristocracy, horse racing is exciting to watch and extremely popular with bettors. At one extreme, races can have as few as two runners. At the other, they can have thirty or more runners. This fact, as well as the obvious one that horses are animals, makes predicting the eventual winner extremely challenging, but incredibly satisfying when you get it right.

There are many different types of horse race, depending on the country where the race is held, but there are essentially two main "codes":

• National hunt races are those which require the runners to jump over obstacles such as birch fences and water ditches. These races are generally over a mile in length (some are over three miles) and serve to test the jumping ability of runners, as well as their stamina.
• Flat races are those which require no jumping. These are generally shorter in length, and the shortest races are 5 furlong sprints (for reference, eight furlongs equal one mile). Here the speed of runners is usually more important than stamina.

A race of either type can be a handicap or a non-handicap. A handicap race involves better horses carrying extra weight so that all runners have, in theory at least, an equal chance of winning. Non-handicap races do not involve horses carrying any additional weight, and because of this they are widely viewed as being easier to predict.

Most other race terms relate to the type of runners accommodated. For example, Maiden races refer to races where none of the competing runners have previously won a race. Nursery races are handicap races for Juveniles. And so on.

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