Banei is a breed of horse, draft (drought) horse, in Japan.
They aren't used much in agriculture anymore, but they do race them.
They race on flat tracks, with jockeys, in age classes, like thoroughbreds, but more interesting to me, albeit slower, pulling sledges.
photo from Boston dot com's,
The Big Picture
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In Japan horse meat is sold on the meat market where it is considered a gourmet food item and can sell for as much as 500 Francs per kilo. Another activity involving draught horses is sledge racing. The race course is 250 metres long and 5 lanes wide. It is not flat, the teams must negotiate two humps during the race. The sledges weigh 300 kilos empty, but for the races they are loaded to a total weight of between 700 kilos and 1 tonne. The events are well attended because a betting circle operates at the track. link
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Losers get eaten, I guess, unlike the dating world.
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Draft-horse racing, called Banei Keiba in Japanese, only exists in Obihiro City, Hokkaido, an island located in the north of Japan. Draft horses are twice as big as thoroughbreds and drag more than 1,000 pounds of sleighs along the 218-yard dirt course during a race. This unique horse racing started about a hundred years ago while the horses were primarily used for farming. Over years, producers developed the draft horses exclusively for races. Today, about 10,000 individuals are involved in the draft-horse racing industry. However, changes in people’s leisure time activities and decline in the population in the surrounding towns almost led draft-horse racing to close its history. However, the large oppositions from fans saved the draft-horse racing, although its future is still uncertain. All the photographs were taken in March 2007. link
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Today's Banei were developed from Percheron, Breton, and Belgian horses from Europe, because the traditional Jap horses were considerably smaller.
More pictures on
flickr.