Horse racing in ancient Greece

Among the more exciting and expensive sports featured in the ancient Greek games was horse racing. At the Panhellenic games, these events could bring great honor to the families that entered them. Usually, the races were limited to those who could afford to raise, transport, and outfit the horses (so, mainly the nobility). While the owners did not ride the horses or drive the chariots themselves, they nevertheless received the recognition and awards for winning.

The races would take place in a hippodrome, a racetrack for horses. Measuring four stadia, or 800 yards long, the one at Olympia was located near the running course or stadion, originally a unit of measurement 200 yards but also used to describe the course. The hippodrome featured a large, flat field with a column at either end for marking the turns. At Olympia, the site had a natural hill for viewing on the north side and artificial hills on the south and west. The spectators stood on the hills and viewed the race below, which could include a large number of horses and riders.

Carving of Greek chariot racing from Athens

There were a variety of horse races with four chariots, which were the most prestigious and expensive, those with two horse chariots, and those with single horses. While all of the types of horse racing required a great deal of time and money, the four-horse chariots required the most money and time to train. As the first horse racing event, the four-horse chariots were introduced in 680. These chariots would run twelve laps, or rounds.

The two middle horses were attached to the yoke, and the outer two horses were attached to the inner horses by a rope. Since the chariots always made their turns to the left, the outer right horse had to run further and therefore had to be the strongest and fastest. The inner two horses had to respond to the driver’s commands, so it needed the most training.

The two-horse chariot race had a more interesting evolution. Originally, there was the chariot race for two mules, starting in 500 at Olympia. This race did not seem to catch on as well as the four-horse type of race, and its prestige ebbed over time. Some viewed the races as beneath the dignity of the racers, and the event with mules was canceled in 444. The two-horse chariot race, with eight laps, began only in 408.

Single-horse racing with a rider began in 648 at Olympia. Since the ancients did not have saddles or stirrups, the rider had to have good balance and grip to keep from falling off. A peculiar form of the racing was the kalpe, from 496-444, where the rider jumped off the horse, a mare, and ran beside it for the last lap. The length of these races was about one mile.

At Olympia, the hippodrome was located between the stadion and the Alpheios River Valley. The structure was fairly simple. The riders would race from one end to the other, and at the end of the track, a column acted as a turning point where the riders turned around. Later hippodromes became more elaborate, with an interior spine (called a spina in the Roman period) so the turns were more gradual.

In the ancient Greek hippodrome, the spectators would have been on a nearby hill or slope. In later times, stands were built for the spectators. At Olympia and other sites, an elaborate mechanism existed to ensure that no chariot had an advantage over the rest. A rope was strung between the two starting edges with a Dolphinshaped weight in the middle of the rope to form a V, with the outside chariots at the back of the V and the inside chariots at the intersection of the V facing the racetrack.

When the signal for the race to begin occurred, the Dolphin was dropped and the ropes released. Since the ropes at the outside of the V closest to the walls fell first, these chariots would start first. Since this gave them an advantage, they were farthest from the starting line. By the time the ropes fell at the Dolphin where the lines of the V intersected, the chariots would all be in a single line at the same point. Although the outside chariots would have had the benefit of going at a faster rate than the inside chariots, this advantage was reduced since the inside chariots were in the best position for making the turns.

The starting positions for all of the chariots were determined by lot so no one had any advantage. Pillars marked the turning points, which were the most dangerous part of the race since racers would attempt to get as close to the pillars as possible to make a tight turn. If a wheel struck a pillar during a turn, it could upend the chariot, throwing the driver to the ground and scattering the horses. The Hippodrome at Mount Lydaion was about 350 yards long and 150 yards wide , smaller than the one at Olympia. A racecourse of about 200 yards long was enclosed within it; other sites included Memea also in the Peloponnese in ancient Argolis which held the Nemean Games beginning about 573 and finally Olympia.

Some of the hippodromes in Greece were at Delos, a religious site to Apollo; Delphi, which was not only a great religious center but the site of the Pythian Panhellenic Games; and Isthmia, on the Isthmus of Corinth, where the Isthmian Games were held. Also, Aristotle mentioned that Lykaion in Arcadia in the Peloponnese had games, and this locale contains the only surviving ancient hippodrome.