Until the 1950s, horse races were Argentina’s greatest sporting spectacle. This practice was initially reduced to British communication, but over the years it was gaining adherents among the inhabitants of the country.
Unlike what happened in other latitudes, horse races in our country attracted the interest of the popular sectors. It was no accident. As Roy Hora, the author of the book Historia del turf argentino, says: «The fact that Buenos Aires or Entre Ríos had twenty or thirty times more horses per capita than European societies, distributed more evenly throughout the whole scale Social, helps to explain why in this American corner it was not possible to turn the horse into a symbol of social distinction. »
The book analyzes the birth of turf in our country in relation to the creole equestrian culture that preceded it, its boom, after the foundation of the Jockey Club and the Hippodrome, and its decline, with the emergence of sports, such as box and football .
We reproduce here fragments of the first chapter of this book.
Source: Roy Hora, History of the Argentine Turf, Buenos Aires, Editorial Siglo XXI, 2014, pp. 37-64.
