Australia
In Australia, the most famous racehorse was Phar Lap, who
raced from 1928 to 1932. Phar Lap carried to win the 1930 Melbourne Cup.
Australian steeplechaser Crisp is remembered for his battle with Irish champion
Red Rum in the 1973 Grand National. In 2003–2005 the mare Makybe Diva became the only racehorse to ever win the
Melbourne Cup three times, let alone in consecutive years. In harness racing,
Cane Smoke had 120 wins, including 34 in a single season, Paleface Adios became
a household name during the 1970s, while Cardigan Bay, a pacing horse from New
Zealand, enjoyed great success at the highest levels of American harness racing
in the 1960s. More recently, Blacks A Fake has won four Inter Dominion
Championships, making him the only horse to complete this feat in Australasia's
premier harness race.
Competitive endurance riding commenced in Australia in 1966,
when the Tom Quilty Gold Cup was first held in the Hawkesbury district, near
Sydney, New South Wales. The Quilty Cup is considered the National endurance
ride and there are now over 100 endurance events contested across Australia,
ranging in distances from 80 km to 400 km. The world's longest endurance ride
is the Shahzada 400 km Memorial Test which is conducted over five days
travelling 80 kilometres a day at St Albans on the Hawkesbury River, New South
Wales. In all endurance events there are rigorous vet checks, conducted before,
during and after the competition, in which the horses' welfare is of the utmost
concern.
New Zealand
Racing is a long-established sport in New Zealand,
stretching back to colonial times.
Horse racing is a significant part of the New Zealand
economy which in 2004 generated 1.3% of the GDP. The indirect impact of
expenditures on racing was estimated to have generated more than $1.4 billion
in economic activity in 2004 and created 18,300 full-time equivalent jobs. More
than 40,000 people were involved in some capacity in the New Zealand racing
industry in 2004. In 2004, more than one million people attended race meetings
in New Zealand. There are 69 Thoroughbred and 51 harness clubs licensed in New
Zealand. Racecourses are situated in 59 locations throughout New Zealand.
The bloodstock industry is important to New Zealand, with
the export sale of horses – mainly to Australia and Asia – generating more than
$120 million a year. During the 2008–09 racing season 19 New Zealand bred
horses won 22 Group One races around the world.
Notable racehorses from New Zealand include Cardigan Bay,
Carbine, Nightmarch, Sunline, Desert Gold and Rising Fast. Phar Lap and Tulloch
were both bred in New Zealand but did not race there. The most famous of these
is probably Cardigan Bay. Stanley Dancer drove the New Zealand bred horse,
Cardigan Bay to win $1 million in stakes in 1968, the first harness horse to surpass
that milestone in American history.
Africa
Mauritius
On 25 June 1812, the Champ de Mars Racecourse was
inaugurated by The Mauritius Turf Club which was founded earlier in the same
year by Colonel Edward A. Draper. The Champ de Mars is situated on a
prestigious avenue in Port Louis, the capital city and is the oldest racecourse
in the southern hemisphere. The Mauritius Turf Club is the third oldest active
turf club in the world.
Undeniably, racing is one of the most popular sports in
Mauritius now attracting regular crowds of 20,000 people or more to the only
racecourse of the island.
A high level of professionalism has been attained in the
organisation of races over the last decades preserving the unique electrifying
ambiance prevailing on race days at the Champ de Mars.
Champ de Mars has four classic events a year such as:
Duchess of York Cup, Barbé Cup, Maiden Cup and the Duke of York Cup.
Most of the horses are imported from South Africa but some
are also acquired from Australia, the United Kingdom and France.
South Africa
Horse racing is a popular sport in South Africa that can be
traced back to 1797. The first recorded race club meeting took place five years
later in 1802. The national horse racing body is known as the National
Horseracing Authority and was founded in 1882. The premier event, which
attracts 50,000 people to Durban, is the Durban July Handicap, which has been
run since 1897 at Greyville Racecourse. It is the largest and most prestigious
event on the continent, with betting running into the hundreds of millions of
Rands. Several July winners have gone on to win major international races, such
as Colorado King, London News, and Ipi Tombe. However, the other notable major
races are the Summer Cup, held at Turffontein Racecourse in Johannesburg, and
The J & B Met, which is held at Kenilworth race track in Cape Town.
Asia
China
Horse racing in one form or another has been a part of
Chinese culture for millennia. Horse racing was a popular pastime for the
aristocracy at least by the Zhou Dynasty - 4th century B.C. General Tian Ji's
strategem for a horse race remains perhaps the best known story about horse
racing in that period. In the 18th and 19th centuries, horse racing and
equestrian sports in China was dominated by Mongol influences.
Thoroughbred horse racing came to China with British
settlements in the middle 1800s and most notably centered around the treaty
ports, including the two major race courses in Shanghai, the Shanghai
Racecourse and the International Recreation Grounds, and the racecourses of
Tianjin. The Kiang-wan racecourse was destroyed in the lead-up to the Second
Sino-Japanese War and the Shanghai Race Club closed in 1954. The former
Shanghai Racecourse is now People's Square and People's Park and the former
club building was the Shanghai Art Museum.
Horse racing was banned in the Republic of China from 1945,
and the People's Republic of China maintained the ban after 1949, although
allowances were made for ethnic minority peoples for whom horse sports are a
cultural tradition. Speed horse racing
was an event in the National Games of the People's Republic of China,
mainly introduced to cater for minority peoples, such as the Mongols. The race
course was initially 5 km, but from 2005
was extended to 12 km. The longer race led to deaths and injuries to participating
horses in both 2005 and the 11th National Games in 2009. Also, with the entry
into the sport of Han majority provinces such as Hubei, which are better funded
and used Western, rather than traditional, breeding and training techniques,
meant that the original purpose of the event to foster traditional horse racing
for groups like the Mongols was at risk of being usurped. At the 2009 National
Games, Hubei won both the gold and silver medals, with Inner Mongolia winning
bronze. As a result of these factors, the event was abolished for the 12th
National Games in 2013.
Club horse racing reappeared on a small scale in the 1990s.
In 2008, the China Speed Horse Race Open in Wuhan was organized as the
qualification round for the speed horse race event at the National Games the
next year, but was also seen by commentators as a step towards legalizing both
horse racing and gambling on the races. the Beijing Jockey Club was shut down
in 2008. The racecourse in Inner Mongolia has not been active after 2012. However,
more equestrian facilities are being built elsewhere in China. It was also
announced in 2011 that international breeding operation, Darley would send two
stallions to China to support the emerging industry.
Pakistan
Horse races are held in Pakistan at four different clubs. In
Lahore at Lahore Race Club, Rawalpindi at Chakri, in Karachi at Karachi Race
Club and in Gujrat at.
Philippines
Horseracing in the Philippines began in 1867. The history of
Philippine horseracing has three divisions according to the breeds of horses
used. They are the Philippine-pony era, the Arabian-horse era, and the
Thoroughbred-era.
Singapore
Horse racing was introduced to Singapore by the British
during the colonial era and remained one of the legal forms of gambling after
independence. It remains a highly popular form of entertainment with the local
Singaporean community to this day. Races are typically held on Friday evenings
and Sundays at the Singapore Turf Club in Kranji. Horse racing has also left
its mark in the naming of roads in Singapore such as Race Course Road in Little
India, where horse racing was first held in Singapore, and Turf Club Road in
Bukit Timah where Singapore Turf Club used to be situated before moving to its
current location in 1999.
South Korea
Horse racing in South Korea dates back to May 1898, when a
foreign language institute run by the government included a donkey race in its
athletic rally. However, it wasn't until the in 1920s that modern horse racing
involving betting developed. The nation's first authorised club, the Chosun
Racing Club, was established in 1922 and a year later, the pari-mutuel betting
system was officially adopted for the first time.
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