How can you tell if a horse has raced?

[Daisy11]

a ex race horse would defently have a excitable attitude to ridden work inless it be re trained
this is why most people retrain ex race horses
and as its been said if its raced it would of been registered with weatherbys its worth a check

 

[Befney3]

My TB has raced & I have his passport & have been in contact with his previous owner so I have managed to find his results-he was a very average 2/3yr old then raced once as a 9yr old & would of been last if it wasn't for a non-finisher behind him.
If I didn't know he'd been in training I wouldn't really think he had. He's very laid back, works in a nice outline & is no more stressy than any other TB I've met. I haven't galloped him yet but apparently he will quite happily stop at the end of the field & calmly walk home.

I don't think you'll ever know for certain without hard evidence, ie: a passport, name or proof of results.

 

[Scarlett]

thats a bit of a sweeping generalisation....

I have 2 off the track TB's, got them both straight from training, neither of them has ever been excitable, one takes a hold when galloping but is no worse than my old Cob and the other wouldnt know what excitment was if it bit him on the bum, infact he is on high energy feed to give him some 'excitability'... got both as 3 year olds and they have been easier to bring on that any other youngster I have worked with....

There is no concrete way to know if a horse has raced or not other than knowing its name and checking racing records. Some horses are obvioulsy exracers, but others may have raced for years but adapt quickly to a non racing life and loose their racehorse characteristics...

Might be worth scanning for a microchip....
-

 

[emma_lg]

I don't think you can tell really...do you have his proper name and date of birth..Wetherby's may be able to tell something from that.
I had my tb ex-racer mare's passport and when I phoned Wetherby's to get her race form and full breeding history I don't think they actually asked for much info to start with. The guy I spoke too remembered her father straightaway and even commented on the races my mare had been put in too - very helpful...he even asked if my mare was as quirky as her father..which she is apparently!!!
My lady didn't 'act' like you would expect anyway when ridden...people expected her to race if we went out on a hack - she didn't. Someone once said to me she had a racehorse canter - whatever that meant. Mind you she bolted with me once (in the 10 years she was being ridden)...and I realised what it meant to sit on a racehorse in full flight!!! When I asked for faster work she wasn't always that up for it really...she didn't particularly see the point in going faster anymore..but you could feel the gears going up and the striding changing!!!
Some people have mentioned her hatred of rugs is a racehorse 'thing' but then I have known other ex-racers that don't mind rugs.
There are behaviours that you could put down to racing but also you could level them at any other horse tbh.

 

[Bounty]

You can tell which are ex-racers when we have polocrosse training at the Northern Racing College.. the ramps come down on the lorries, and the usually chilled occupants go ape at the sight of the white rails and starting gates

. They are sually the ones that revert to having no brakes/steering for the rest of the weekend

 

[atot]

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Arn't you close to Epsom???? take it for a whizz round the track
.

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Go on the track your supposed too, and then when the racehorses zoom by have a race with him - then you'd find out.

 

[Parkranger]

yep, been to Epsom a few times.......he can certainly put his back down and I have to say that I don't think I've ever been that fast on a horse before or since!

 

[Parkranger]

[ QUOTE ]
Take it out for a hack with others, put him out in front & see what happens when one of the others comes up along side? Does he let them past or does he quicken?

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Very good!

funny thing is, if a horse overtakes him on his blind side I forget he's blind on that side and think 'wow, he's actually letting a horse pass him in canter/gallop' then, they come into view as they pass ..... and he's off!