Synchronized Horse Racing

eL eSs Vee

(I almost considered posting these in Wildlife, but trained horses are hardly wild (unless you count the one I saw buck the jockey off his back), so I posted them here, because of my reason for processing these images.)

I went to Santa Anita Racetrack early Saturday morning. While chimping my pictures I found these three successive images and decided to process
them first. What is most surprising is that this happened on two separate occasions, with different sets of horses. Look carefully at the horses legs!


1:


2:


3:


Or is there a new Olympic sport: "Synchronized Horse Racing"?

rickbern

That's cool
Sometimes it's absolutely amazing what you see when you kick back and look at what you just shot!

Do you pan the camera to match the speed of the horses? I've never done too much action stuff, that looks tough! What kind of shutter speed do you use to get these?

Rick

adbsgicom

Nicely done! I wonder if the horses generally do that.

Dogdots

This is really cool -- lucky you to be able to catch it with your camera

eL eSs Vee

rickbern wrote:

Do you pan the camera to match the speed of the horses? I've never done too much action stuff, that looks tough! What kind of shutter speed do you use to get these?

Rick

Yes, pan for the horses and use a slow shutter. In the case of these three, they were shot at 1/100th of a second. Shoot with a slower shutter speed for more blur, faster for less.

eL eSs Vee

Thank you, Andrew and Mary Kim.

Mary Kim. It's racing season, so getting up very early is the only drawback to getting these shots. I got there at a little before 6:00 in the morning.

Jack'll do

That really is quite amazing. Well captured.

Dogdots

eL eSs Vee wrote:

Thank you, Andrew and Mary Kim.

Mary Kim. It's racing season, so getting up very early is the only drawback to getting these shots. I got there at a little before 6:00 in the morning.

6:00 AM is early to be dressed and at your destination, but you do get a good jump on the day along with some good photos. We have horse racing here .. nothing big, but never headed out there. Maybe I'll try it next year.

rwells

Lee,

These are obviously military horses. They march in step, trot in step, run in step


Cool series

eL eSs Vee

rwells wrote:

Lee,

These are obviously military horses. They march in step, trot in step, run in step


Cool series

Hopefully, not a goose step.

Thank you, everyone, for your very kind words.

Joie

Those ARE cool pictures of the thoroughbreds' legs.

Did you get any actual race pictures? These look like they were taken at morning workouts because the riders aren't wearing jockey attire.

squiddy

I think they are training race horses.... lol.

Usually when training a race horse they race them 1 on 1 with another horse for competition. Sometimes they exercise them like this also so that they have no way of telling which horse is the racer and which is the buddy horse.... that way nobody knows which one will beat them in an upcoming race. If a new horse is that good, they don't want anyone to know until the day of.

There are also other reasons as to purchasing horses, etc but i don't know the details on how it works.

eL eSs Vee

Thank you, Joie and Squiddy. Yes, these horses were training and warming up for the days races. But I didn't stay for those.

Holland Hacker

adbsgicom wrote:

Nicely done! I wonder if the horses generally do that.

Yes they do actually. Almost every day at thoroughbred race tracks when horses are stabled there some will be out on the track working out in the early morning hours. It is really quite interesting to watch with all of the hustle and bustle.

Trainers will "work" their horses in company, with other horses for various reasons. Sometimes it is used to getting them to run with other horses, sometimes to give a better horse a target to run at one will get a head start, and other times it will be to teach a horse the desire to pass other horses. I know the last one seems funny but by nature horses are "pack" animals and sometimes need to be taught to pass other horses and keep ruunning.