The World’s Greatest Horse Racing Spectacle
For the past 343 years, since 1656, the beautiful Tuscan city of Siena, Italy has held a series of amazing and exciting horse races. Known as the Palio di Siena, the races are wild dashes with reckless abandon around the town’s main square, the Piazza del Campo.Dirt is laid over the medieval stone sidewalk to form a race track around the Piazza and thousands of spectators jam into every available space to watch the action. The atmosphere is electric as horses (barberos) and jockeys (barbarescos) navigate hairpin corners at full speed while the frenzied crowd goes nuts. Jockeys riding bareback circle the Piazza three times. As the barberos reach the finish line, spectators rush onto the track and the scene erupts into chaos.
Each barbero entered in the race represents a separate city district, called a contrada. Siena residents remain loyal to the contrada they were born into, even if they move to another contrada later in life. Contradas have distinct colors and are usually named after animals, similar to an American sports team. For example, the July 2009 Palio, as seen in the video above, was won by the Tartuca (turtle) contrada.
In marked contrast to horse racing elsewhere, there are no rules (or stewards) during the running of the Palio. Barbarescos can use whips as much to hit other jockeys as to spur on their own horses. If a barbaresco falls off his mount, the barbero can still win the race for the contrada. As you can see from the videos, the jockeys are fearless. It seems a guy like Calvin Borel would do great in these races.
I’ve been fascinated with the Palio for years and earlier this week finally got a chance to see the Piazza del Campo during a recent trip to Italy.
One day I hope to see a Palio in person. In the meantime, I’ll have to settle for the video clips. The one below is from the thrilling 16 August Palio won by the the Civetta (Owl) contrada.
Now, if they could only get Tom Durkin to call the races . . .
12 January 2010, 11:37 pm
LOL unreal.
Loved that standing start. I don’t see that being problematic.
At least the horses were not crashing into each other and running their races on aches and pains – and breaking down.
Good stuff.