What is a Horse Race?
Horse races are an exciting, fast-paced sport that attracts many spectators and spectator groups. These events are usually held at large outdoor stadiums and feature professional jockeys on horses with specialized riding equipment. They also include a large number of spectators in the grandstands and on the racetrack, cheering for their favorite horses and hoping they will win the race.
The horses are usually trained to sprint for long distances, often over a mile. They are forced to run at speeds that cause them to sustain serious injuries. Their lungs are often damaged by the exertion, and they can even hemorrhage from their lungs. This leads to the use of drugs in the form of painkillers, stimulants and anti-inflammatories. The horses are also housed in isolation and confinement, which can lead to stereotypical behaviour, such as crib-biting and weaving (a repetitive behaviour where the horse sucks in air, shifts its weight back and forth, and sways on its forelegs).
A horse race is generally a contest of two or more horses. The first horse to cross the finish line is declared the winner. The stewards may look at a photograph of the finish to decide the result if it is unclear who crossed the line first. The winner of a race is determined by the weight carried by each horse and other factors, including age, track record, sex, and racing rules.
There are various categories of horse races, with the most prestigious races offering the largest purses. In some races, the weights that horses carry are fixed, but in others, the amount of weight a horse carries can be influenced by its position relative to the inside barrier, age, sex, and other factors.
When journalists focus primarily on who’s winning or losing instead of policy issues — what’s called horse race coverage — voters, candidates and the news industry itself suffer, a growing body of research suggests. Several scholars have reviewed this phenomenon for the Journalist’s Resource, a project of Harvard University’s Shorenstein Center on Media, Politics and Public Policy. Their findings are consistent with other studies of how people react to political reporting. Here’s a sampling of their work, and some ways to keep your horse race coverage from getting off track.