Types of Horse Breeds
Understanding the horse breeds is a tough nut to crack for beginners, but I’ll try to be as succinct as I can. At the races, a horse has either to sprint, trot, or endure long distance rides. Thus, it either needs to have a quick pace (acceleration), frighteningly high obedience, a combination of pace and stamina, or simply the need to endure as much as it can. Different breeds of horses have different qualities and talents, each of which are detailed below.
Thoroughbred: A perfect breed for flat racing, the thoroughbred boasts of three primary ancestors – the Darley Arabian, the Godolphin Arabian, and the Byerly Turk. Their respective owners brought them to England a few centuries ago to mate them with foreign breeds. And the resultant foals were astoundingly quick-paced after a bit of training.
Thoroughbreds are usually measured in terms of the human hand. Their height generally ranges from 15 to 18 hands. They are not meant for endurance rides, but they revel over flat racing surfaces. The use of technological breeding is forbidden in this class. Thus, artificial insemination and embryo transfer are out of the question.
Arabian Horse: This breed is a counterpart of the Thoroughbred. As the name suggests, the Arabians, or most commonly known as the Bedouins of the Middle East, bred these horses to withstand long distances over an uneven terrain. Primarily used for transport back in the day, they weren’t introduced in the sporting world till the early 18th century.
Such stamina-infused mares had excess of Type 1 muscle fibers, critical for traveling long distances without a care in the world. As you may have guessed, the Arabian Horse is extensively used for endurance races these days.
Quarter Horse: This breed originated relatively late in the era. The American breeds which emanated from Spanish ones were mated with British horses early in the 19th century. Initially, their foals were used for regular farming, but their eventual growth gave rise to their racing abilities.
It was not until the 1940s that the Quarter horses were officially recognized as race colts in the scheme of things. They are mainly used on straight tracks, so that the jockey has barely to manage the horses.
