Making sense of the world’s most dangerous horse race
Il Palio is chaotic and corrupt—and full of community spirit
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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