A horse race is a contest of speed and strength between a thoroughbred horse and the human jockey who rides it. The sport of horse racing dates back millennia and has played an important role in ancient cultures around the world, including Greece, Rome, Babylon, Egypt, Syria, and Arabia. Today, horse races continue to be held in a number of countries around the world.
As the horses broke clear of the starting gate, they moved forward in a rhythm that was both fluid and hypnotic. Their coats gleamed in the pinkish light, slick with sweat and muscled excitement. The crowd, a mix of wealthy patrons and working-class bettors, was enthralled by the spectacle. The horses and riders were a study in contrasts: the big chestnut colt War of Will took the lead hugging the inside of the track, with his stablemate McKinzie a fraction behind him; the small-framed Mongolian Groom was just off that pace, with a slender bay named Vino Rosso close by.
The horses ran hard, their nostrils flaring as they accelerated out of the starting gate and into the long bending stretch. They puffed out epic clouds of vapor that rose into the cool blue sky. One by one, they drew closer to the finish line, which sat at the end of a long final straight portion of the track called the home stretch.
As they approached the stretch, the jockeys leaned forward and slipped their hands over the ears of their mounts. This signaled to the horse that it was time to run. If a horse did not respond to the call, it was given a “six-pence,” a verbal command that meant to pick up its pace and run with the other runners.
In the earliest days of organized racing, the prevailing system was to match two or at most three horses in head-to-head competition, with the winner taking all the bets. The earliest record of this practice is An Historical List of All Horse-Matches Run (1729), published in England by John Cheny. The term dark horse originated in this era to describe a racehorse that was unknown to the organizers and odds makers of the time.
A dark horse was not necessarily a weak or unfit racehorse, but he or she had not been conditioned to the demands of modern racing. It also had to have an unusual pedigree, which could be determined by studying the horse’s family tree and its performance in previous races. In the context of politics, the term has been used to describe candidates who do not fit neatly into Republican or Democratic categories. Newsrooms often employ a variety of methods to predict the chances that a candidate will win, including statistical analyses and polling. These methods can give novel or outsider candidates a chance to compete with mainstream candidates, even if the odds are slim.