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What is Horse Racing?
Louis van Dam • June 10th, 2025 4:46 pm • 5 min read
The Winner by 3 quarters of a length - Cluden Creek
Horse racing in New Zealand consists of two forms:
- Thoroughbred Racing where the horse is ridden by a jockey
- Harness or standardbred racing where the horse is driven from a cart called a sulky.
Harness racing is sometimes referred to as trotting in New Zealand, although there are actually two types of standardbred races based on the type of gait or running style:
- trotting where the horse moves its two diagonally opposite legs forward at the same time, and
- pacing where the two legs on the same side of the horse move forward at the same time.
The majority of standardbred races in New Zealand are pacing.
Notable Thoroughbred racehorses from New Zealand include:
- Phar Lap, the greatest Australian racehorse
- Sunline, the best race mare in New Zealand
- Nightmarch, the first horse to win the Melbourne Cup and Cox Plate in the same year
- Rising Fast, the only winner of the Spring Grand Slam
- Tulloch, the greatest Australian stayer
- Carbine, the winner of 30 principal races
- Desert Gold, the winner of 36 races during WW1
- Il Tempo, the greatest New Zealand stayer
- Grey Way, who defeated every champion in New Zealand and broke an Australasian record
- Horlicks, winner of the Japan Cup in world record time
- Balmerino, a champion international racehorse
The most famous New Zealand Standardbred is the pacer Cardigan Bay. Stanley Dancer drove Cardigan Bay to $1 million in winnings in 1968, the first harness horse to surpass that milestone in American history.[1] Dancer and Cardigan Bay appeared together on The Ed Sullivan Show.
