What % of people attend horse races because they fantasise about the horses?
I did the maths. The results shocked me.
You’re at the races!
Punters are betting, eating, drinking. Screaming their tits off when they lose, screaming them back on when they win. A horse might even break their leg and get shot in the face. It’s a lovely day out.
Hiding amongst the screaming crowds, I can’t help but wonder:
Is there one person who stands still, entranced and unfussed? For them, the course isn’t just a track with fences - it’s a strip club with poles, and everyone’s favourite majestic creature is the main attraction.
My question is not if this happens, but how often.
So, like any respectable writer, I made it my mission to discover how many people in the UK attend horse racing events due to their lust for horses (and pepper the results with terrible puns)…
Giddy-Up (for statistical analysis)
Let’s start with the data on Zoophilia. That’s an attraction to animals, not to be confused with the film Zootopia (be careful which one you watch with the fam).
Before I reveal the stat, have a guess - what percentage of people fantasise about animals?
[Pause for dramatic effect/thinking time]
.
.
.
Ready?
According to a 2003 study in the Journal of Sex Research:
5.3% of men and 2.8% of women reported sexual fantasies about animals
Yeah, it’s high. Let’s not kink shame - sexualised imagery of leopards, snakes and other animals is embedded in pop culture. People are products of their environments. And these are just thoughts. If anything, kudos to those survey participants for their brutal honesty. No judgement here.
However, the journal also reveals:
1.5% of men and 0.5% of women reported engaging in sexual activities with animals.
Okay, where is the line on kink shaming? As that is disgusting. Come on people (literally - it's less weird).
To be ultra-conservative, we’ll assume 0.5% of the UK population fantasise about animals, that’s 335,000 people. That’s easily enough for a small town and an exploitative Channel 4 documentary that we’ll still watch.
Back in 2002, Hani Miletski asked zoophiles what animals they specifically fancied. This was for a scientific journal, not a laugh, but it’s good to know I’m not the only one curious about this sorta thing.
The results?
77% of them were into horses.
So 257,950 in the UK are partial to a cheeky bit of hoof. One might even be your neighbour.
Getting Off to the Races?
Now, not all of these individuals attend horse races. Limiting factors include social stigma, accessibility and alternative avenues like dressage (their equivalent of Magic Mike).
Anyway, each horse-shagger to their own, let’s assume 0.5% attend races.
That’s 1,290, call it 1300 people who trot off to the races each year.
Betting on a Horse (lover)
The British Horseracing Authority reports that the UK hosts 1,500 races annually, with 5.5 million total attendances.
So the average attendance per race is 3,667.
Now let’s say each of our 1,300 horse-fancying attendees goes to five races a year (a speculative but reasonable assumption for such enthusiasts):
That’s 6,500 HHH (horny-human-to-horse) attendances annually.
Divided over 1,500 races…
That’s an average of 4.33 per race.
But Hold Your Horses…
We all want to know (we’re 100% in this together) the probability of at least one attending any race.
This can be done using a Poisson distribution (used for modelling rare events):
This gives is the final result of… 98.7%.
A near certainty.
(even with our ultra-conservative assumptions).
To be clear:
If you attend a horse race in the UK, there’s a 98.7% chance that at least one person is there because they fancy the horses.
Final Thoughts (and some advice)
If you’re gambling at the races, please remember: do not insult the horses. While the betting odds favour the bookies, the only odds in your favour are that you’d be slagging off someone’s secret love.
Curiosity has well and truly killed the cat, or in this case - shagged the horse.
P.S. A Question For You:
Before I revealed that stat, what % would you have said?
Comment below…
I myself did attempt to establish an answer to this once at a racing event, by way of an impromptu and informal snapshot survey. I was working as a waitress in a cocktail bar.