Four groundbreaking racing innovations, and the amazing stories behind them

The first horsebox image: G. Tattersall, Pictorial Gallery of English Race Horses (1850)

Few sports are so rich in tradition as Thoroughbred racing. And yet racing has not been devoid of technical innovations. This article looks back through history to explore some of the inventions that have changed the Sport of Kings and the often-colourful stories behind their genesis.

Horseboxes - and His Lordship’s bid to deceive the bookies

Among the first of these breakthroughs was the horsebox. Up until 1836, horses were made to journey to meetings on foot, typically entailing day after day of trekking across the country. Not only would these journeys have wearied the horses, but it also meant that it was public knowledge when and where they were travelling. It was the latter fact that the man hailed as responsible for the development of the horsebox, Lord George Bentinck, cannily appreciated.

Bentinck was then one of the most influential and colourful figures of the British Turf. The story goes that, unable to get the odds he desired on his horse, Elis, for the 1836 St Leger, Bentinck made no apparent steps to have him walked the 200-or-so-mile journey from Goodwood, where he was stabled, to Doncaster. Accordingly, bookmakers assumed Elis would not be racing and his odds lengthened.

It was then that Bentinck made his move. Five days before the St Leger, Bentinck placed a bet on Elis at odds of 12-1, which were much longer than would otherwise have been the case, and covertly conveyed him to Doncaster in a custom-made, horse-drawn carriage. Arriving unhurried and in prime condition, Ellis galloped to victory and Bentinck’s horsebox henceforth entered racing practice.

Less well known in the tale is the role played by Elis’s trainer, John Doe.

It was, in fact, Doe who is believed to have first presented the idea of a horse-drawn trailer to his employer, inspired by an episode that happened two decades previously.

In the 1810s, Doe was working for a Worcestershire cattle farmer, and occasional man of the Turf, who delivered his bulls to auction on a horse-drawn float. Upon Doe’s suggestion, the floor of the float was removed and substituted with one with springs underneath and its interior was padded to transform it into a conveyance to take the farmer’s colt, Sovereign, to Newmarket in 1816.

Sovereign didn’t win the race, but the novel mode of sending him to the meeting planted a seed which, 20 years later, germinated in Bentinck’s favour.

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