Making sense of the world’s most dangerous horse race
Il Palio is chaotic and corrupt—and full of community spirit
![Horses and jockeys prepare for the Il Palio horse race](https://www.economist.com/cdn-cgi/image/width=1424,quality=80,format=auto/content-assets/images/20240817_BLP508.jpg)
Il Palio has hardly changed since 1633. Then, as now, jockeys riding bareback gallop horses at breakneck speed around the main square of Siena, a city in Tuscany in central Italy. Countless visitors have described the event, and the extraordinary passion it inspires—not always glowingly. Henry James, a 19th-century American novelist, dismissed it as a “loud gaudy romp”. A British high-society magazine wondered breathlessly in 2019 if it was “the world’s chicest horse race” after a few celebrity sightings. A statistical review by local doctors found that it may also be the world’s most dangerous. Jockeys fall in 96% of races; horses often succumb to worse fates.
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