What was the oldest horse to be raced?

Question

I recently heard of a TB horse "Assault" being raced til he was 7 years old and retired. He was put down at the age of 28 in 1971. Are there other horses that raced til they were older? How old were they when they were retired from racing?

Answer 1

Nowadays, you rarely see 10 year old horses on the track.  There are a few who stick around that long... John Henry, The Tin Man, Evening Attire.  However, even in the claiming and allowance ranks, you generally see horses get retired by the time they're 6 or 7.  Top racehorses rarely race more than 3 years... major horses retire as 3 year olds... very few horses who won major 3 year old races go on to race as a 4 year old... Curlin is doing that now, but you generally don't see it happen.  The reason: if you've won a major race, your stud fees are huge... you can make more money by breeding than racing, and you risk a lot by keeping your horse in training and racing... if it gets injured, you may not be able to breed him after all.  The major stakes winners that have continued racing into their later years (Lava Man, John Henry, Tin Man, Evening Attire) continue racing because they're geldings... that means they can't reproduce and collect stud fees.

In the past, horses raced longer than they do today.  Assault and Citation both stuck around and continued racing... so did Seabiscuit.  But according to this information pamphlet available through the ntra (http://www.ntra.com/images/learn-to-play... ), the oldest racehorse to win a race was 18 years old!  There were actually three 18 year olds to win a race... Revenge in 1790, Marksman in 1826, and Jorrocks in 1851.  Revenge won in Shrewsbury, England.  Marksman won in Ashford, England.  And Jorrocks won in Bathurst, Australia.  Those three horses are tied in the Guinness Book of World Records for oldest racehorse to win a race!

Answer 2

The one "class" horse which comes to mind is John Henry.

Raced till he was 10.. Was a gilding.... Had to race...lol

Answer 3

I heard last summer that a horse 12 to 14 ran a race,but I don't know his name. There have been lots of 6 or 7 year old horses racing this year. "Evening Attire" is still racing and he is 10 years old!! He won his last race by 8 1/4 lengths. I would love to see more horses race at an older age.  

Answer 4

they usually stop racing horse at the age of 5 or 6 years old ... they don't race that long.