Steeplechasing is a high-speed sport that combines racing and jumping over hurdles and ditches. Learn its dirty secrets!
Break A Leg
All kinds of racehorses are pushed to run before most horses are usually even trained to be ridden, resulting in many injuries because these horses’ bones haven’t fully grown. Broken cannon bones are very common in the world of steeplechasing because the impact that a horse’s forelegs feel when they hit the ground after a jump is often so high that their bones snap.
Roadkill
In a steeplechase or hurdle race, racehorses run between three and five miles at top speed while jumping over ten to twenty meter or yard-high obstacles. Since the horses are going so fast when they jump, many often fall on the other side. Nowadays, only 40 horses can race on the track at once, but in previous years there has been as many as 66 on the track. Because there are so many horses, that the ones that fall are ran over and landed on by many others who don’t see them on the other side of the fence.
On a normal day, one out of nineteen horses (one per race) will fall on the track. Most of these will either be killed right there or sent to a hospital, but it is very rare that any horse that falls in a steeplechase race will ever race again.
On a normal day, one out of nineteen horses (one per race) will fall on the track. Most of these will either be killed right there or sent to a hospital, but it is very rare that any horse that falls in a steeplechase race will ever race again.
In 172 years of running in the Grand National, 58 horses have died during a race.
Danger Ahead
Steeplechasing is not just dangerous for horses. Riders are often jolted out of the saddle by rocky landings only to be run over by more horses. To be a jockey in a steeplechase race takes a lot of courage. To encourage horses to run faster, make tighter turns, and listen to instructions, steeplechase jockeys have been known to use knife-edged bits.
The Grand National
Steeplechasing is a very popular sport in both England and Australia, but not so much as in the United States. The most famous steeplechase race is the Grand National. It is over four miles long with 30 jumps on the course. These jumps are very high and world-famous. Some of the more known ones include Becher’s Brook, a five foot tall fence followed by a steep drop, and Canal Turn, the famous 90 degree sharp turn before a fence. There used to be a ditch in front of the fence too, before a mêlée in the 1928 race. A mêlée is when a large number of horses fall at once. In 1928, 42 horses in the race fell in front of the Canal Turn. That year, only 2 horses out of the original 44 actually finished the race. This proves that, to win The Grand National, you don’t only need to be fast, you also need to be careful.
This information is taken from the Summer 2013 issue's article Behind the Scenes: Steeplechasing.