With its huge strides and hypnotic smoothness, horse racing has always seemed to be a natural fit for TV. The first racing coverage appeared in the late 19th century, and it grew along with the sport itself. As the popularity of major sports leagues waned in the wake of the pandemic, TVG, an all-racing channel included in many cable packages, found a new audience. First-time gamblers were offered three hundred dollars for a risk-free bet. They quickly learned a new glossary of terms: cup stacking, cherry-pit spitting, and sloppy, or “tout.”
The earliest written description of a horse race is in Homer’s Iliad, which dates to the 9th or 8th century bc. The sport had been a popular one in ancient Greece, where chariot and bareback (mounted) races were held for a prize of a hogshead of wine. Organized flat racing in North America began with British occupation of New Amsterdam (now New York City) in 1664, when Colonel Richard Nicolls laid out a 2-mile track and started awarding silver cups for the best runners. Eligibility rules were developed to ensure that the best horses competed. These included age, sex, and birthplace, as well as previous performance. A “pedigree,” or a family tree, was also required, which ensured that the horses were purebred.
As a horse approaches the starting gate for a race, bettors check its coat color in the walking ring to see if it is bright, or “bright and glossy.” A bright coat indicates that the horse is ready to run. A dull or muddy coat, on the other hand, could signal that it is not feeling well. As a horse is walked to the start, its rider will usually use his whip in order to encourage it to speed up. A horse that resists the whip will slow down.
Once the race begins, bettors watch as horses race for the finish line. They cheer for their favorite horses, and scream at those that falter or stumble in the final stretch. It is not uncommon for horses to break down during a race, which is why it is so heartening when one survives to cross the finish line.
When news outlets frame elections as a horse race, instead of focusing on policy issues and their potential impact, voters, candidates, and the news industry suffer, research suggests. The horse race journalism dynamic is most common in close elections and in the weeks leading up to an election, when newsrooms have a greater incentive to publish quick polling data. Some scholars are now investigating the effect of a different type of horse race reporting: probabilistic forecasting, in which newsrooms present polling results as percentage chances that a candidate will win. This collection of articles updates previous work on this topic with new findings about third-party political candidates and the use of probability to analyze pre-election polling. It was updated Oct. 23, 2023.