'Poignant and compelling, an equine Bridget Jones.' Racing Post Being a stable lass is probably one of the hardest jobs in the country, and yet for Gemma Hogg it is the most rewarding. She works in the beautiful Yorkshire market town of Middleham and if her colleagues are occasionally challenging, then the horses are downright astonishing. Now, in Stable Lass, she takes us into the closed world of a top racing yard, from the elation of having several winners in one day to the almost indescribable grief of losing a horse. Like most stable lads and lasses, Gemma arrived in her yard as a teenager fresh out of racing college and had to cope with living away from home for the first time, as well as adapting to the brutal long hours, backbreaking work and often treacherous weather. She describes falling in love with Polo Venture, the first racehorse in her care, the pure exhilaration of riding him on Middleham Gallops for the first time and what happens when a horse takes against you, from the growling gelding Valiant Warrior to the potentially lethal Broadway Boy. She brings to life the characters around the yard, from straight-talking boss Micky Hammond to the jockeys starving themselves to make weight, the wealthy owners and the other stable lads and lasses who come from a range of different places and backgrounds. Stable Lass by Gemma Hogg is a unique look into the world of horse racing filled with heart-warming stories and amazing thoroughbreds - some loveable, some cantankerous, all impressive.

Miscellaneous matters are what keep us fascinated by what's going on around us while we indulge our own favourite interests. If one of those interests happens to be horseracing, then The Racing Post Horseracing Miscellany, full of marvellously magnificent moments - many magically memorable - from racing's several centuries of excellent equine existence, and an amazing, amusing, absorbing collection of little-known jockey japes, trainer and turf trivia, owner observations, punter punditry and bookie banter, is a book you will love. Every race meeting produces winners and also-rans, but every off-beat, intriguing story chronicled in this cornucopia of course and distance action will be an odds-on favourite with racegoers young and old. As the title suggests, you'll find literally thousands of little-known, unexpected yarns, tales and stories from the off to the finish line; the starting stalls to the winning post, the first to the last page. And you can bet it's an odds-on shot you'll know you have really backed a winner.

Celebrating a Century of the Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe charts the history of Europe's - and arguably the world's - greatest horse race. Established in 1920 and staged in Paris on the Bois de Boulogne, the Arc is a truly international contest attracting runners from England, Ireland, Japan, Italy, Germany and the USA. This illustrated race-by-race account traces the exploits of many all-time racing legends. From Ribot, Sea Bird, Allez France and Mill Reef, to Dancing Brave, Sea The Stars, Treve and Enable. It's also a who's who of the turf starring the Rothschild, Aga Khan, Wildenstein, Wertheimer and Head families, as well as Marcel Boussac, Vincent O'Brien, Lester Piggott and Yves Saint-Martin. The modern era features luminaries such as Andre Fabre, Coolmore, Godolphin, John Gosden, Frankie Dettori and Khalid Abdullah. You'll discover which champion hurdler won the title, which horse came back from stud to recapture his crown and which jockey ended up in prison as a result of his win.

This is the story of 'Cockney' Cliff Lines and his memories of 70 years spent in horseracing. Knowing nothing about racing or even how to ride, Cliff started as a 14-year-old apprentice to Noel Murless, and the book details his life, from riding a winner for the Queen, trying to make it as a jockey, through being a work rider/head lad to Michael Stoute, pre-training and eventually training himself. It covers the trials and tribulations he endured: apprentice accommodation, bullying, doping scandals, the stable lads' strike and his own health issues including a brain tumour. The stories of famous horses he worked with, such as JO TOBIN, SHERGAR and SONIC LADY, and those he nurtured in their early years, including PILSUDSKI and FUJIYAMA CREST, the last runner in Frankie Dettori's Magnificent Seven, are all covered, as are his travels with horses around the world by boat and plane from 1954 to the present day. And despite all the ups and downs, Cliff genuinely has no regrets about his lifetime in the Thoroughbred racing industry.

The rise and fall of one of America’s first Black sports celebrities   Isaac Murphy, born enslaved in 1861, still reigns as one of the greatest jockeys in American history. Black jockeys like Murphy were at the top of the most popular sport in America at the end of the nineteenth century. They were internationally famous, the first African American superstar athletes—and with wins in three Kentucky Derbies and countless other prestigious races, Murphy was the greatest of them all.   At the same time, he lived through the seismic events of Emancipation and Reconstruction and formative conflicts over freedom and equality in the United States. And inevitably he was drawn into those conflicts, with devastating consequences.   Katherine C. Mooney uncovers the history of Murphy’s troubled life, his death in 1896 at age thirty-five, and his afterlife. In recounting Murphy’s personal story, she also tells two of the great stories of change in nineteenth-century America: the debates over what a multiracial democracy might look like and the battles over who was to hold power in an economy that increasingly resembled the corporate, wealth-polarized world we know today.

Racing's love affair with Enable began on a thundery afternoon at Epsom in June 2017 and continued for the remainder of an unparalleled career. Her CV boasts 11 Group 1 wins across two continents and four countries as she was tested against all-comers of all ages at the likes of Ascot, Chantilly, Churchill Downs, the Curragh, Longchamp, Sandown and York. These performances all bore witness to her incredible attitude and will to win. It is a testament to her connections that she was able to race for five seasons and at the age of six to be still mixing it with the best. Trainer John Gosden, jockey Frankie Dettori, groom Imran Shahwani and the rest of the team at Clarehaven Stables are all deserving of high praise, but most of all it is to owner-breeder Prince Khalid Abdullah for giving us - the racing public - the chance to enjoy her for so long. This look back at an extraordinary career has been compiled using the back catalogue of the Racing Post with its award-winning writers and photographers to retell the story of one of the best - and most popular - racehorses of modern times.

This book surveys the practice of horse racing from antiquity to the modern period, and in this way offers a selective global history. Unlike previous histories of horse racing, which generally make claims about the exclusiveness of modern sport and therefore diminish the importance of premodern physical contests, the contributors to this book approach racing as a deep history of diachronically comparable practices, discourses, and perceptions centered around the competitive staging of equine speed. In order to compare horse racing cultures from completely different epochs and regions, the authors respond to a series of core issues which serve as structural comparative parameters. These key issues include the spatial and architectural framework of races; their organization; victory prizes; symbolic representations of victories and victors; and the social range and identities of the participants. The evidence of these competitions is interpreted in its distinct historical contexts and with regard to specific cultural conditions that shaped the respective relationship between owners, riders, and horses on the global racetracks of pre-modernity and modernity. The chapters in this book were originally published as a special issue of The International Journal of the History of Sport.

Edited by one of the Racing Post's long-standing subeditors, the ever-popular Racing Post Guide to the Jumps is one of the key tools for every racing enthusiast and punter to look ahead to the upcoming National Hunt season. It includes exclusive interviews with the top jumps trainers, both in the UK and Ireland, in which they discuss their teams and plans for their most exciting horses. It profiles 250 horses who are likely to be key players throughout the season and should be worth following. Plus it also unearths some likely unexposed 'dark horses' to follow that may be less well known. It also contains both Topspeed and Racing Post ratings. In full colour throughout, it is the one book that every jumps racing enthusiast should have.

In more than a century of American Thoroughbred racing, only thirteen horses have won the Triple Crown (the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes, all won in the same season). Veteran turf writer and racing historian Edward L. Bowen takes us through the rich history of one of the most formidable and exciting challenges in all of sport. Bowen covers the trainers, owners, and jockeys who etched their names into the annals of thoroughbred racing, and the "lucky thirteen" who captured all three jewels of the Triple Crown, racing's most prestigious prize.

Race Horse Men "recaptures the vivid sights, sensations, and illusions of nineteenth-century thoroughbred racing, America's first mass spectator sport. Inviting readers into the pageantry of the racetrack, Katherine C. Mooney conveys the sport's inherent drama while also revealing the significant intersections between horse racing and another quintessential institution of the antebellum South: slavery.

A popular pastime across American society, horse racing was most closely identified with an elite class of southern owners who bred horses and bet large sums of money on these spirited animals. The central characters in this story are not privileged whites, however, but the black jockeys, grooms, and horse trainers who sometimes called themselves race horse men and who made the racetrack run. Mooney describes a world of patriarchal privilege and social prestige where blacks as well as whites could achieve status and recognition and where favored slaves endured an unusual form of bondage. For wealthy white men, the racetrack illustrated their cherished visions of a harmonious, modern society based on human slavery.

After emancipation, a number of black horsemen went on to become sports celebrities, their success a potential threat to white supremacy and a source of pride for African Americans. The rise of Jim Crow in the early twentieth century drove many horsemen from their jobs, with devastating consequences for them and their families. Mooney illuminates the role these too-often-forgotten men played in Americans' continuing struggle to define the meaning of freedom.

The Encyclopedia of British Horse Racing offers an innovative approach to one of Britain's oldest sports. While it considers the traditional themes of gambling and breeding, and contains biographies of human personalities and equine stars, it also devotes significant space to neglected areas. Entries include:

• social, economic and political forces that have influenced racing
• controversial historical and current issues
• legal and illegal gambling, and racing finance
• the British impact on world horseracing
• history and heritage of horseracing
• links between horse racing and the arts, media and technology
• human and equine biographies
• venues associated with racing
• horseracing websites

The Encyclopedia of British Horse Racing provides a unique source of information and will be of great interest to sports historians as well as all those whose work or leisure brings them into the world of racing.

It is generally assumed that anthropologists do their research in remote and uncomfortable parts of the world--places with monsoons, mud huts, and malaria. In this volume, social anthropologist Kate Fox has taken on an altogether more enjoyable assignment, the study of the arcane world of British horseracing. For Fox, field research meant wandering around racetracks in a pink hat and high heels (standard tribal costume) rather than braving killer insects and primitive sanitation. Instead of an amorphous racing crowd, the author finds a complete subculture with its own distinctive customs, rituals, language and etiquette. Among the spectators, she identifies Horseys, Addicts, Anoraks, Pair-Bonders, Day-Outers, Suits, and Be-Seens--all united by remarkable friendliness and courtesy. Among the racing professionals, the tribal structure includes Warriors (jockeys), Shamans (trainers), Scribes (journalists), Elders (officials and stewards) and Sin-Eaters (bookies). Fox includes witty and incisive descriptions of the many strange ceremonies and rituals observed by racegoers--the Circuit Ritual, Ritual Conversations ("What do you fancy in the next?"), Celebration Rituals, the Catwalk Ritual, and Post-Mortem Rituals (naturally, a horse never loses a race because it's too slow)--and their special codes of behavior such as the Modesty Rule, the Collective Amnesia Rule, and the Code of Chivalry. The Racing Tribe is also a refreshingly candid account of anthropological fieldwork, including all the embarrassing mistakes, hiccups, short-cuts and guesswork that most social scientists keep very quiet about.

How do the class and gender inequalities found in horseracing affect the working practices of women within the industry? Drawing on the work of Bourdieu and his concepts of field, capital and habitus, this book shows the inequalities that are prevalent within the world of racing, both historically and currently, by illustrating the classed and gendered nature of racing and how it has developed since the eighteenth century when it was the sport of the aristocracy. Using research obtained through her year-long ethnographic study of a racing yard, Deborah Butler demonstrates that the racing field is an arena of power conflicts, and that men and women who work in racing acquire a contradictorily gendered racing habitus. This is achieved by learning certain elements in a formal setting but mainly informally, by 'doing', developing practical skills and participating in a (gendered) community of practice. For female stable staff this means adapting their behaviour and working practices in order to be accepted as 'one of the lads'. This book will appeal to both scholars and students of the sociology of sport, the sociology of work and gender studies.

Do you know what the oldest horse race in Britain is, where the term 'gee-gee' comes from, or who is credited with bringing racing to Ascot? Fact-packed but light-hearted in style, this reliable reference book and quirky guide reveals little-known facts, details of classic races, famous riders, racing records, amusing anecdotes and criminal goings-on. A compendium of the fascinating, strange and entertaining, The Little Book of Horse Racing can be dipped into time and time again to reveal something new about this ancient sport.

Just as football evolved with the introduction of the forward pass and basketball with the development of the jump shot, so too was handicapping forever changed by the use of speed figures--and it all started with Andrew Beyer's Picking Winners. This edition features a new foreword in which the author discusses the changes that have swept the sport since the book's original publication. Picking Winners remains a classic in the field of thoroughbred racing.

Robin Oakley brings alive the colourful world of those who ride and train jumping horses. With elegant production and gripping images The History of Jump Racing chronicles the social and economic changes which have brought the sport's ups and downs-like the development of sponsorships and syndicate ownership, the near loss of the Grand National, the growing domination of the Cheltenham Festival and the growth of all-weather racing to meet the bookies' demands for betting shop fodder. Pace and colour is provided by stories of the horses who have been taken to the heart of racing crowds, like the Irish-trained hurdler Istabraq and Best Mate, the three-times winner of the Cheltenham Gold Cup for England. Famous rivalries and memorable races are re-lived and key victories revisited in portraits of and interviews with the owners, jockeys and trainers who have dominated the sport. The emphasis will be largely on the past fifty years-from Arkle to Tony McCoy-but a significant introduction by Edward Gillespie encapsulates the past history of what was previously known as 'National Hunt Racing' and sets the stories in context.

'After all this time Frankie Dettori still ranks amongst the all-time greats of the sport' LESTER PIGGOTT 'An autobiography as gripping as any Dick Francis thriller' YORKSHIRE POST 'Endearingly honest... a fastpaced, funny autobiography' COUNTRY LIFE MAGAZINE Legendary jockey, Frankie Dettori, shares his remarkable life story in this astonishingly intimate autobiography. When Lanfranco 'Frankie' Dettori arrived on British shores in 1985, aged just 14, he couldn't speak a word of English. Having left school just a year earlier and following in the footsteps of his father, he was eager to become a stable boy and apprentice jockey, willing to do everything it took to make it. This was his first, but certainly not his last, leap of faith. Despite his slight size, Frankie's impact upon the British racing scene was immediate and significant. Brimming with confidence, charisma and personality, and with what was clearly a precocious talent, in 1990 he became the first teenager since Lester Piggot to win over 100 races in a single season. By 1996, Frankie was already established as a celebrity in the sport and an adopted national treasure, but it was his extraordinary achievement of winning all seven races in a single day at Ascot that cemented his reputation as the greatest rider of his generation. Nearly 25 years later, and having won the Longines World's Best Jockey for three consecutive years running, Frankie has demonstrated an unparalled level of longevity at the pinnacle of his sport. But his story is not simply one of uninterrupted success, but also of personal anguish, recovery and restoration - both in and out of the saddle. Now, Frankie compellingly reveals the lows to his highs; the plane crash that nearly killed him, the drugs ban that nearly made him quit the sport, and the acrimonious split from Godolphin that threatened his future. But Leap of Faith is also a story of love - for the sport he continues to dominate to this day, the great horses of his era (Stradivarius, Golden Horn, and of course Enable), and most importantly for his family, who have supported him every step of the way. Heartfelt and poignant, this is not simply a memoir, but a celebration of perseverance and defying the odds.

This practical book helps you interpret and connect the physical signals that horses display in response to their environment. These signals are evident in the everyday actions, gestures and attitudes that horses communicate to each other, but are often so subtle that they can go unnoticed by humans. This book aims to rectify that, offering horse lovers and equine professionals an opportunity to gain a unique insight into their 'horse's world'. Key features: includes detailed description of language signs of domestic horses, with a special emphasis on calming signals includes 275 pictures to visualize various language signs, calming signals, behaviour sequences and facial features presents communication ladders to show how a horse responds to incentives in his environment, and what signals he uses at certain moments contains tips on the use of the communication ladders and calming signals to improve the socialisation, training and wellbeing of your horse considers equine psychological stress from an environmental perspective, providing a valuable alternative to the current common clinical perspective. After reading this book you will be more astute in spotting calming signals, displacement activities, stress signals and distance-increasing signals, and better able to see which stimuli your horse can handle and which he cannot. This means you will know what to do to calm your horse before his stress rises to an unmanageable level. Language Signs and Calming Signals of Horses is both fascinating and important reading for any equine veterinary practitioner, student or nurse, as well as horse owners and trainers.

This study of a unique social world probes beneath the thrill and spectacle of horse racing into the lives of the "honest boys," the "gyps," the "manipulators," the "stoops," and the "Chalk eaters"--the constituents of race track society and the players of the racing game. With scientific precision and journalistic vigor, Scott describes the everyday activities--the objectives and strategies--of those whose lives are organized around track proceedings and who compete with chance and one another.

The players in the racing game range from track owners to stable boys, from law enforcers to lawbreakers, and from casual sportsmen to pathologically addicted gamblers. Considering the self-interests, the normative and operational codes, and the interactional relationships among the major types and subtypes of participants, the author defines the components of strategic movement within the framework of rules and resources to show how a player's relations to the "means of production" governs his behavior.

The fruitful application of sociological theory and method to an unusually interesting social context makes this particularly useful still for courses in social problems and the sociology of organizations and of leisure.

Although it has only been thirty years since the first female jockey rode onto the then male only turf of thoroughbred horse racing, they have since made their mark on the racetrack and in the winner's circle. Great Women in the Sport of Kings, the first book to consider the phenomenon of female jockeys, takes an indepth look at their lives. Through the oral histories of ten top female jockeys, the authors offer intimate portraits of how they overcame personal and professional obstacles to rise to the top of thoroughbred horse racing. In her Introduction, women's sports historian Mary Jo Festle explores the larger issues of women in sport, sexism in horse racing, the struggles female jockeys face, and the significance of their success. The jockey's include: Diane Nelson, Julie Krone, Paula Keim-Bruno, Jill Jellison, Gwen Jackson, Darci Rice, Rosemary Homiester, Jr., Donna Barton, Kristi Chapman, and Dodi Duys.

This volume studies the formative period of racing between 1790 and 1914. This was a time when, despite the opposition of a respectable minority, attendance at horse races, betting on horses, or reading about racing increasingly became central leisure activities of much of British society. The author challenges many of our preconceptions about racing. He shows the importance of racing and betting to many of the middle classes in Victorian Britain; the very early commercialisation of the sport; and the limited power of the Jockey Club before the late 1860s. He explores the value of racing to the working classes, the gentry and aristocracy, tracing the sport's development in an age of technological change and the growth of the popular press.

Once a year the public fix their gaze and risk pounds or pence on a race that better than any other reminds us of the grace and courage of the jumps racehorse. The racehorse could have no finer ambassador than Tiger Roll. There is not much of him but he makes every bit count, just as Red Rum did. He was an icon of the turf. So is Tiger Roll. He is this generation's Red Rum and now merits being ranked among the all-time greats of the sport. A horse who wins two Grand Nationals and four times at the Cheltenham Festival deserves nothing less. Horseracing's best writers tell the Tiger Roll tale, a story of overachievement, a story of exceeding expectations, a story of a little legend.

Experience the sheer thrill and joy of national hunt racing as an American novelist follows a select group of leading horses and their Irish trainers on their annual pilgrimage to the Cheltenham Festival, in this evocative book on the jumps and the Irish love of horse racing. The last thing Bill Barich expected when he left California for a holiday in London was to fall in love - and yet he did, with a charming Irish woman. This led to Dublin becoming his home from home. 'I had friends who thought I was being rash or just plain foolish,' he writes, 'but trust and conviction grow if real love is in the mix.' His leap-of-faith left him slightly unmoored, adrift in a new city; so to anchor himself he began visiting the local betting shops to play the horses. Barich came to share Ireland's passion for the National Hunt. He even felt a kinship for the chasers and hurdlers who 'hang for a half-second in a cloud of uncertainty' every time they jump. That passion revealed to him a great deal about Irish culture, immediate and unvarnished, beyond any touristy stereotypes. So Barich wanted to go deeper. He spent a season - the season of Best Mate's third Gold Cup bid - with the leading Irish trainers, jockeys and horses, charting their progress on the road to their annual tilt against the British at the Cheltenham Festival. Here such major players as Jessica Harrington, Michael Hourigan, Paul Carberry, and Barry Geraghty are captured as never before, with Barich following the caravan from the humble races at Thurles to the glories of the Hennessy at Leopardstown. Here, too, are the big horses - Florida Pearl, Beef Or Salmon, and the quirky Moscow Flyer, who never loses except when he beats himself. A Fine Place to Daydream is a beautifully written elegy to a vanishing way of life. It will reveal an Ireland that is largely hidden to visitors, and will be a timeless account of what promises to be a vintage racing season.