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The first decades of the twentieth century were part of Uruguay's modernization period. During this time, the government started to promote physical culture and the installation of public spaces for sporting practices. However, this dissemination process and subsequent control of sporting practices did not happen at the same pace nationwide. This paper analyses the relations between the development of physical culture and the modernization in a specific context in the countryside, Paysandú. It focuses on horseracing and football, demonstrating how these practices constituted vital elements in the city's social life. It also demonstrates how their bureaucratization processes exemplify the local impact of nationwide events. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores horse races in and around the Ottoman capital city, their occasions, locations or participants before the nineteenth century. The competitions we know to have been organized during the sixteenth and seventeenth century imperial festivals were long-distance endurance races run outside the city walls. Courses corresponding to approximately two, three, four or six hours of racing were set out for specially trained horses, and prizes of cash or fine textiles were awarded to winners. In the course of the early 1700 s, cross-country horse racing evolved into more of a private partying ritual for the sultan and his immediate entourage, coming to be routinely observed at the end of the religious festivities, though the layout then excluded attendance by large crowds. The spatial organization of horse racing evolved from temporary installations to a permanent architecture. All the machinery and pageantry of horse racing, from paddocks through parade rings to the theatrics of the race day, a new stage came to be constructed at the Kağıdhane valley, at the far end of the Golden Horn. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Chariot races were the earliest, most popular, and longest-lived of all forms of 'spectacles' in the Roman world. This essay surveys the spatial and architectural framework of the Circus Maximus, the primary chariot racing venue at Rome, and circuses around the empire; the organization of the races, including the role of the factions; the symbolic representations of victories and athletic victors, as well as the charioteers' actual prizes; and the horses that were bred for racing. Throughout I also briefly discuss the sport's spectators and fans, for whom the sport was a socially binding religion. The essay focuses on the first through the fourth centuries A.D., with the bulk of the evidence (literary, epigraphic, artistic, and archaeological) drawn from the first two centuries. In keeping with current directions in the study of ancient sport and spectacle, the approach adopted here places less emphasis on the legal and technical aspects of the chariot races ('event-oriented sport history') and more on these competitions as 'part of a broader social canvas' (the 'social history of sport and spectacle'). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The hippodrome, where Byzantine chariot races took place, was central to the relationship between the emperor and his people. They all watched races and cheered for their favorite racing teams, with both people and emperors sometimes notorious for their rabid fandom. Some of the direct dialogue between emperor and people in the hippodrome also revolved around racing – for example, which racing team might be 'gifted' a particular skilled charioteer. In addition to conversation about the sport, the people expected the emperor to hear their complaints and requests and even exercised their collective power in the hippodrome to try to topple an emperor on occasion. The emperor showed up, despite the potential danger of the peoples' anger, because this dialogue with the spectators was an important part of the legitimization of his power. To refuse to attend the races would have been to cut himself off from the people, which would have been considered unacceptable and caused him even more serious problems. Among many examples of this phenomenon, the dialogue between Emperor Anastasius and the people in the hippodrome in 512 stands out (John Malalas, Chronographia 16.19). [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This essay sketches the general outlines of an argument that locates the rise of horse racing as a national sport in England in the context of national political change. In brief, the argument might be summarized as saying that horse racing was as much the sport of kingmakers as of kings, a recreation of martyrs as well as monarchs; and that some of its early participants were associated with breeding rebellion, as well as racehorses. The earliest public mention of a 'Jockey Club' appears to be a newspaper notice in the summer of 1729, and I have argued elsewhere that this club can be seen acting as a quasi-official body as early as 1717, though not necessarily under that name. Here, I want to extend that argument further in suggesting that the Club whose meeting was publicly announced in 1729 coalesced over the course of the preceding half-century. The argument I sketch here identifies how a very specific emergence of a particular organization of the sport served a very specific ideological purpose during a time of considerable tension over the relationship of church and state. The conflict between Protestants and Catholics, and the anxieties about succession and rebellion that these conflicts engendered, were more than just the backdrop to the rise of the sport; and the particular sport that emerged helped celebrate and popularize a Protestant succession settlement that ultimately excluded dozens of Stuart claimants to the throne in favor of the house of Hanover. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Native American horse racing has received little scholarly attention. Focussing on the Great Plains and the Southwest reveals that, far from being a diversion, it was a major focus for male competition for status and prestige. Since these concerns were at least as strong externally as internally, horse racing (and racehorse acquisition) formed part of a continuum of agonistic activities that also encompassed warfare. Moreover, the significance of races for the standing of individuals, men's societies, and tribal groups led to widespread use of protective medicines for enhancing equine performance and combating interference from opponents. Gambling formed part of this set of practices that collectively warrant describing Native American horse racing as a form of what Johan Huizinga termed 'sacred play'. For these reasons it encountered strong opposition from Euro-American authorities during the reservation era. Conversely, the persistence of Native American horse racing traditions via rodeo and Indian Relay racing attests to the enduring importance of the values they express. Opportunities exist for extending this preliminary assessment into a broader comparative study of Indigenous horse racing traditions across the post-1492 world. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

By investigating the global history of horse racing from antiquity to the modern period, it is likewise possible to overcome the traditional pitfalls in the periodization of sport history. Instead of claiming an exclusiveness of modern sport and downgrading premodern physical contests as pure phenomena of alterity, this special issue discusses racing in the horse age as a deep history of diachronically comparable practices, discourses, and perceptions centered around the competitive staging of equine speed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay suggests a two-fold approach to the role of horse-racing during the period of the Spanish transatlantic expansion. First, I will discuss the dominant values and practices in late medieval Spanish equestrianism in order to understand the conquistadors' framework of perceiving and evaluating their own equestrianism. On the Iberian Peninsula, the prevalent public demonstration of equestrian prowess, agility, and speed did not take the form of competitive racing but of collective spectacular performances. One of the most prominent examples are the 'juegos de cañas'. The Iberian cultural setting is important to understand how specific forms of equestrianism were introduced into the 'New World' and how they were transformed. In a second step, I will argue for a conceptual framework based on conquest and competition that integrates Spanish equestrianism, public spectacle, and conquistadorial motives. The Spanish equestrian games offer a special case in point: I would like to suggest that a dissecting look at the dominant elements and functional unities which constitute horse races (such as audience, area, or competition) but also other forms of competitive equestrianism could help broaden our understanding of horse racing culture in general. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

For the first time since antiquity, the Italian and German urban horse races for the prize of a precious piece of cloth called palio or scharlach could be studied as a fully-developed competitive 'sport culture' in all its dimensions, from planning and organization to the competitive performance itself through to the discursive perception and symbolic communication of victories and defeats. On both sides of the Alps, this communal tradition of horse racing experienced its heyday in the later fifteenth and early sixteenth centuries. Notwithstanding this contemporaneity and a bunch of organizational similarities, the Northern and Southern racing phenonema did not form a specific field of transalpine entanglement, but rather unconnected parallel worlds. In this essay, I will present some key comparative aspects of the transalpine field of urban horse racing: organizational structures, spatial arrangements, social range of the participants, the central role of equine agency for the success or failure of racing performances, and different media representations of victories. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The essay is about ancient Greek horse and chariot races. The architecture of Greek hippodromes was very rudimentary, but—at least at Olympia—the organizers put much effort in constructing a starting mechanism which was meant to guarantee all starters equal chances for winning. Concerning the prizes, symbolic prizes were common as well as valuable prizes. In ancient Greece, it was the owner of the horses who counted as the participant. The jockeys' and charioteers' strength and skill obviously had a strong impact on the outcome of the race, but they are very rarely mentioned in the ancient texts. Equestrian victors had two means of representation at their disposal: the erection of agonistic victor monuments or the commission of epinikia. It is equally true for both forms of representation that the way the victor was showcased was not up to the artistic license of the poets, but was controlled by the victors. Victory poetry was poetry on commission for which the victors reached deeply into their pockets. The poems dealt with important political implications. This is why epinikia and victory monuments constitute amazing pieces of evidence for the ancient historian, since they allow him to reconstruct the protagonist's view. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores the transnational flows of ideas about racing, thoroughbred horse-breeding, and racing's literary structures between Britain and mainland Europe between circa 1770 and the 1880s. It draws out the ideas and ideologies associated with horse racing and breeding; the cross-border movements of cultural mediators (such as owners, breeders, jockeys, and trainers); and the relevant media produced. It reveals the initial resistance to British models, especially amongst equestrian and state stud officials, and the relatively meagre support for horse-racing in much of continental Europe up to the 1850s. But British models were promulgated by some aristocrats and the emerging bourgeois elites, especially in France, Germany, Prussia, and Austria-Hungary. Some English trainers and jockeys moved to Europe to gain employment. European racing societies soon emerged, while national stud books, racing calendars, and racing magazines transmitted information about British racing. As British-style racing spread, Europeans adopted many British practices. But European culture was different, so racing culture was adapted, modified and resisted, whether in the European popularity for Sunday races, the limited interest in betting or differences in funding, while the wish to compete encouraged growing success for European horses in British races from the 1850s. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Sports history is still a very recent field in Uruguay, with most scholarship focussing on the constitution of physical education and on the history of football, concentrating mostly on teams located in Montevideo. Using the city of Paysandú, one of the largest in the countryside, helps expand sports history in Uruguay from a regional perspective. Paysandú is located on the shores of the Uruguay River at the border of Argentina. At the end of the nineteenth century, it was an important economic route due to its harbour. Tracking the development of physical culture in Paysandú in the first decade of the twentieth century demonstrates how sporting practices constituted part of the everyday life of this city. Newspapers from the time reveal the four most frequent practices: horseracing, rowing, skating, and football. These sports appeared as a form of communication with other Uruguayan and Argentinian cities, as a practice of social distinction and a festive element. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a report from an October 20-22, 2016 conference in Münster, Germany on sporting and other forms of competition in premodern urban European cultures. Topics of presentations delivered include the 16th-century history of the scarlet horse races in Neuburg, Germany, the pugne or battagliole ritual combat practices of Italy, and 15th-century sculpture competitions in Venice and Ferrarra, Italy.

The old Leicester racecourse, which in 1866 was renamed Victoria Park, was a location in which opposing views of the proper use of public space played out. The reformers who took power in Leicester in 1836 aimed to advance liberal governance by abolishing the races and creating a place for rational recreation. For the aristocratic supporters of the races, led by the Rutland and Howe interests, the racecourse was a place for the display of symbolic power, and for exercising the military force of the county yeomanry. In an open political confrontation in 1850, the county interest, supported by people of all classes in the town, won. In the following decades, the Liberal council was reluctantly drawn into direct management of the racecourse and in doing so was reliant on the symbolic authority of the institutions of the county. This article is further demonstration of the popularity of race meetings with all classes in nineteenth-century society, and evidence of the contested nature of the project of liberal governance. It argues that aristocratic interest in urban race meetings as opportunities for the exercise of political and social influence extended well beyond the reforms of the 1830s and points to the need for broader consideration of the role of landed society in the shaping of urban popular culture. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Redditch was a champion thoroughbred who won many major jumps races in Australia before his death in 1935. In Australia, jumps racing (primarily steeplechasing and hurdling) is now confined to Victoria and South Australia, and is far less popular than it was in the 1930s. The latter part of the paper compares reaction to the death of Redditch with contemporary jumps racing debates. The paper explores what has changed since 1935 and what can be learned from the death of Redditch in relation to contemporary jumps racing. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article offers the author's accounts and sentiments about her mother, her love for horses, and growing old. Particular focus is given to the significance of the folk song "The Old Gray Mare," which her mother used to sing to her. She talks about the Iroquois Steeplechase horse race in Nashville, Tennessee, the black jockeys who ran horses before the Civil War, and the habits of women.

Using the career of a leading modern rider as a focal point, this article examines the changes and continuities in the labour market for professional jockeys over the past century and a half. It looks at the rigours of the job via travel load, risk of injury and, above all, weight watching; at the rewards both monetary and psychic; at human capital formation; at drug and alcohol issues; and at power relations and disciplinary procedures. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

This paper offers a microstudy, deconstructing the meaning and significance of a famous carriage (or chaise) match at Newmarket in 1750 and a contemporary painting of the event. It uses these as a startingpoint to explore its relationship to debates about the early modern period and modernity. It analyzes the details of the carriage match, exploring its visual andprint representations and its cultural context. It further argues that, for many sports at this time, the development of more formal regulations was driven by gambling and that gamblings centrality needs to be recognized better. It then analyzes the event's relationship to modernity issues such as scientific rationality, quantification, record keeping, and emerging bureaucratization. Finally, the essay shows how, rather than being mere servants or grooms, at least some of those involved were able to achieve high levels of wealth and status. This suggests that mid-eighteenth-century England had already moved towardfurther modernity in sports such as racing than has been assumed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

In the first four decades of the twentieth century, horse racing was one of America's most popular spectator sports. Members of America's elite took to breeding and racing horses as one of their preferred pastimes. Coinciding with an increase in immigration and the rediscovery of Mendelian genetics, the idea that careful breeding of thoroughbreds would result in improved horses resonated with Americans worried about racial degeneration. Scientists committed to racial ideologies looked to thoroughbreds--whose owners and breeders maintained extensive pedigree records--to understand the science of genetic inheritance. Harry H. Laughlin, superintendent of research at the Eugenics Record Office at Cold Spring Harbor, Long Island, pored over breeding charts and race results to develop a mathematical model of inheritance that he called the ''inheritance coefficient.'' He believed his careful study of horses would yield findings that he and his fellow eugenicists could apply to humans. Thoroughbred breeders followed trends in genetics while contributing to the production of scientific knowledge. Pedigree charts available to bettors at race tracks helped normalize concepts of biological inheritance for race track attendees of all classes. Horse racing's popularity in the United States contributed to the diffusion of the concept of biological race that originated as an ideological project of the ruling class. This paper analyzes the role of thoroughbred breeding and racing in the formation and popularization of racial ideology by situating breeding farms as sites of knowledge production and racecourses as places that exhibited performances of racial science for large audiences. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article discusses the horseracing scenarios of the 1860s and later in which millionaires Noah Armstrong, Samuel E. Larabie, and Marcus Daly from Montana who raised Thoroughbred racehorses. Topics include breeding Thoroughbreds at Doncaster Ranch in Jefferson Valley, Montana, race between of Illinois-bred Thoroughbred colt Spokane, owned by Armstrong's son Charles, and Kentucky based Proctor Knott, and ranch owners Samuel Larabie and Augustus Eastin's partnership and champions.

From the 1880s to the 1930s, horse racing was Argentina’s most popular spectator sport. It was in the racecourse, not in the football pitch, that professional sport first emerged. A popular activity in a horse-abundant country such as Argentina, horse racing had strong plebeian roots. In the late nineteenth century, however, the wealthy developed a keen interest in the sport and invested time, energy, and money in order to promote and patronise English-style races. This article analyses some aspects of the transformation of horse racing from a popular into an elitist and professionalised sport. It suggests that the enforcement of new rules that forced professional jockeys to wear standarised clothes, behave “properly”, and shave their faces were designed to lower their social status and challenge their sporting standing. The paper explores the meaning of these disciplinary measures and the aggrieved jockeys’ response, which gave rise to the 1893 “strike of the moustache”. Finally, it shows that the late nineteenth century racecourse was an arena of social struggle between elite and popular conceptions of the sport, in which larger questions of authority, classification, and hierarchy were at stake. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

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The disqualification of Dancer's Image at the 1968 Kentucky Derby for the presence of a prohibited substance reveals much about the human–animal relationship. The horse was, on the one hand, depicted in anthropomorphic terms as an honourable competitor unjustly stripped of a victory. At the same time, Dancer's Image was treated as simply a piece of physical property. In short, human conceptions of domesticated animals are dichotomous in nature. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Abstract. This article describes two new databases related to the racing industry. Using census data extracted from the North Atlantic Population Project and recently collected license data on jockeys of all races, the authors examine the labor market for thoroughbred horse jockeys, focusing on the period from 1880 to 1930. The decline in the number of African American jockeys is documented and discussed. The authors also estimate total labor force figures and compare experience levels and career lengths for both black and white jockeys. An unexpected finding is the higher level of labor force participation among black jockeys in the twentieth century, relative to earlier sources. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

Horse racing was an elite American sport that dated to the colonial era. It was the nation's most important antebellum spectator sport, but concerns about its aristocratic connotations and ties to gambling, and also the impact of the Depression of 1837, hindered the sport in the North. Thoroughbred racing revived in the North following the Civil War, propelled by elite jockey clubs that operated the most prestigious racetracks. Their success led to the rise of profit-oriented proprietary racetracks. Gambling boomed at the tracks, but also off the tracks through illegal bookmakers, backed by syndicate crime organisations engaged in illegal entrepreneurship. Subsequent moral opposition led by evangelical Protestants and social reformers got state governments to close nearly all the American tracks in the early 1900s. Racing made a huge comeback in the 1920s, as state governments legalised on-track betting which provided a popular new source for state revenues. By the 1950s, more people attended horse races than any other sport. However, the sport has struggled in the past 30 years due to competition from other sports and entertainments, and alternative gambling opportunities. [ABSTRACT FROM PUBLISHER]

How did sport, a social phenomenon that emerged in the West with the transformation to modernity, arrive in Brazil, a peripheral country in the global system? What forms did modern sport take in Brazil? How did its development articulate with the formation of Brazil as a nation? Conversely, how did the political, economic, and cultural dynamics within Brazil manifest in sport? In answering these questions here I look at the case of Rio de Janeiro, the capital of Brazil in the nineteenth century and the first city in Brazil to experience modernity and modern sport. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The article presents a cultural analysis of the death, burial, and public remembrances of several English sportsmen in Victorian England between 1864 and 1888. Particular focus is given to how the funeral processes for individuals including prize fighter Tom Sayers, sculler James Renforth, and jockey Fred Archer helped to shape social attitudes towards athletes, heroes in sports, and sporting culture. Other topics include funeral rites for athletes and the development and popularity of sports such as boxing, horse racing, and rowing in Victorian England.

Familiar with physical activity through combat preparation, the military were instrumental in implementing first gymnastics, then sport, within the colony's military, school and civil structures. The early propagation of sport in Madagascar resulted from the promotion of physical training by General Gallieni himself. An excellent rider, the Governor had a passion for animal husbandry and wanted the local populations to take to it. Competitions, tournament races and betting were organised to entertain the European and Malagasy population, raise money and foster horsing. The colonial elite met in very exclusive circles which jealously maintained the fences between communities. The Sport-Club, created in 1897, was Madagascar's first civil sporting society. It was the exemplary locus of society life for Antananarivo's European elite, offering quality facilities. The members of the sports clubs were also at the origin of the organisation and animation of great popular events such as the 'Malagasy Children's Day', the essential function of which rested on the assimilation of the local populations into the 'motherland'. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

The Racing Calendar, the 'bible' of the British turf, is one of the longest continuous series of sporting records in the world. Yet it is unlikely to receive the widespread recognition it deserves as a sporting text because it reflects a relatively minor sport in twenty-first century terms. This article will briefly outline its history, analyse its contents and attempt to evaluate its worth to historians of sport. Its reliability as a source will be scrutinised in the light of current debate, and the information it can supply with regard to gender and racing abroad will be assessed. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]

This study explores racing's global interconnectedness through an analysis of the ways in which English racing was represented, exploited and engaged by the American horseracing and thoroughbred breeding groups from c.1730 to 1900. It examines the American importation of British bloodstock; the formation of jockey clubs and rules and regulations of racing on the English model; the emigration to America of English jockeys and grooms; visits of English racing men; and media coverage of English racing. Finally it briefly examines the ways whereby American racing began in its turn to impinge upon England as American-bred horses began to compete on the English turf from the 1850s onward. [ABSTRACT FROM AUTHOR]