The most interesting guest lecture from our Delaware Agriculture class was Mr. Mark Davis’s. Mark visited our class on 11/1/16 and gave us and in-depth history of the horse racing industry as well as its prevalence today in the modern agriculture community. We learned that horse racing is one of the oldest sports in the world and that, today, the horse industry has a direct economic effect of about 39 billion dollars annually in the U.S. Also, we learned that there are two types of horses used in the horse racing industry as well as two types of racing. The first one is called thoroughbred, and that is the kind of horse that is raced with a rider on its back, called a jockey. The other kind of horse is Standardbred and these are horses used for harness racing. The biggest harness racing track in Delaware is located in Harrington at the state fair grounds. Mark Davis also explained to us the many working parts of the horse racing industry which is all regulated by the Department of Agriculture. Some of these parts include the horses, horse owners, jockeys, trainers, vets, suppliers, casinos/tracks, government representatives, commissions regulators, horse racing associations, and of course the betting public. Mark Davis’s lecture opened my eyes to huge industry of horse racing which I had previously known little about. I appreciate the time he took to inform us about this growing industry.
In this presentation, Mark Davis discussed the horse racing industry and all it encompasses. I thought this to be a very an amusing topic to learn and discuss about seeing as I had little to no knowledge of it beforehand. There were many interesting facts throughout the entire presentation, pertaining to the horse racing industry for Delaware as well as then nation. We learned that the pari-mutuel wagering system in which people bet money on a specific outcome and all of the wagered money is placed into a pool to be divided amongst the winners was developed by a French man name Pierre Oller in the late 19th Century. More interesting is that the horse racing industry today has a direct economic a effect on the U.S. of $39 billion annually! I also enjoyed learning the difference of harness racing which uses a pull system compared to that of thoroughbred racing which uses a rider system. It was astonishing to hear how much money is generated in our economy through horse racing.