[Al Masters]

It's been proven they know. There was a 60's documentary called Mr. Ed. Check it out.

Heres part of that documentry...Mr ED at spring training with the dodgers.

[crustyme]

yes, cause they see their slow friends get shipped off to glue factories.

[bettilimbroke999]

They are trained to know, when you treat your horse like a 2 dollar crackwhore and drag it around by its bit and bitchslap it when nobodys lookin after a loss and then you give it fresh oats and pat it on the head smiling and suck its horse dong when it wins of course it will start to recognize you want it to race, I mean its not fukin rocket science its horses running

[allin1]

They are trained to know, when you treat your horse like a 2 dollar crackwhore and drag it around by its bit and bitchslap it when nobodys lookin after a loss and then you give it fresh oats and pat it on the head smiling and suck its horse dong when it wins of course it will start to recognize you want it to race, I mean its not fukin rocket science its horses running

brilliant

[Southern NJ]

I feel a horse can not understand the concept of "racing as a sport" its all training, to say a horse knows that its "racing" cant be proven,it cant be proven that the horse actually understands what its doing,it may know it needs to be the firsrt horse to the end or to avoid being the last one or left behind, but i believe its all a survival/instinct thing, they are just trained.
just my opinion

[Dark Horse]

Friend of mine is American Indian, and a horse whisperer kind of guy. I knew so little of horses that my only thought was 'man, this is higher than it looks' when I got up on the horse. I didn't know how to ride a horse. My friend told me to just tell the horse what to do, with my thoughts. You can imagine my surprise when the horse exactly followed my thought instructions. Forward, faster, slower, left, stop, right. Didn't matter. He got every single thought, without any pause. I know for a fact that only very few people are that sensitive to thought. I'm not suggesting that every horse is trained in this way. But the capacity is there.

Mario Gutierrez, who rode I'll Have Another very intuitively to nothing but victories, said that he was absolutely certain that the horse knew exactly where the wire was. Former horse trainer str tells us that horses know when they win. It has nothing to do with opinions or beliefs. It's about experience. People are good at drowning out the voices of experience; much better than horses.

[brettels]

They certainly do know!

They are smarter than you think http://fmwriters.com/Visionback/Issu...mehorsecom.htm

[TonyP]

yes they do, and some even like to get their picture taken in the winners circle.