When did horse racing first take place?

Horse racing is a truly ancient sport, which has been in existence, in one form or another, since horses were domesticated approximately 6,000 years ago. As such, its beginnings are lost in antiquity, although the Jockey Club cites Central Asia, c.4500 BCE, as a likely starting point.

Guinness World Records (GWR) makes reference to horsemanship in the Hittite Empire in Anatolia, or Asia Minor, from c.1400 BCE onwards and horse racing at the ancient Olympic Games in Greece from c.700BCE onwards, as does, in the latter case, Encyclopaedia Britannica. GWR also lists the earliest horse race recorded in Britain as a contest among Arabian horses imported by the Roman emperor by Lucius Septimius Severus at Netherby, in Cumbria, North West England in c.210CE.

Indeed, Arabian horses brought back from the Crusades, c.1096CE to c.1291CE, would prove fundamental to the establishment of organised horse racing in Britain and elsewhere in Europe. The earliest horse races were straightforward contests of speed and/or stamina between two horses, run to settle a wager between their owners.

The ‘Merry Monarch’, King Charles II, who was restored to the throne in 1660CE, also earned the epithet ‘Father of the English Turf’, by virtue of having founded what is now the Nemarket Town Plate, for which prize money was awarded, in 1665. A little over a century later, the first three British Classic races, the St. Leger (1776), the Oaks (1779) and the Derby (1780), were founded and so began the modern era of horse racing.