Roy Hora's marvellous book tells the story of Argentina through the history of horse-racing and its changing place within evolving social, economic and political process from the mid-nineteenth century to the present day. Drawing upon the author's immersion in the surviving primary sources – newspapers, club records, tangos, privately-held documents, government reports, photographs, memoirs, statistical compilations, and so on – the book provides an intimate insight into the world of horse-racing, which was at once a microcosm of Argentine society (and of interest as such) and a social space of, at times, enormous cultural and economic significance.

The book begins with the story of the singer Carlos Gardel sneaking out of a La Pampa hotel while on tour in November 1918, and rushing 600 km back to the city of Buenos Aires. More precisely, Gardel and his companion José Razzano headed to the hippodrome at Palermo, alongside over 50,000 spectators, in order to witness the so-called ‘race of the century’ between Grey Fox and Botafogo (p. 9). Throughout the book, Hora demonstrates with precision and ample contemporary evidence how important horse-racing became to passionate fans like Gardel (who later wrote the celebrated tango Por una cabeza – (‘By a Nose’) in homage to the excitement of the racecourse, as well as to the rapidly-urbanising Argentine society and its globalising economy. Hora observes that (p. 24) ‘the fact that horse-races brought together patricians and plebeians in a common passion generated much discomfort amongst critics of the status quo’ (all translations here are my own). Critics of horse-racing came most often from the left, who saw the passions of turf, and the betting culture that enveloped it, as distractions from political mobilisation.

The turf of the book's title is a creolisation of the English word, and its survival is a legacy of the important role played by British owners in the establishment of the sport in Buenos Aires, to the initial bemusement and later delight of a determinedly equestrian society. But, as later occurred with football, the British origins of the Foreign Amateur Racing Society in Buenos Aires in 1849 were cast off though never forgotten (p. 45) – Argentine racehorse owners throughout the golden years of the 1890s to 1930s consistently sought the prestige of winning races in Europe, and of bringing back thoroughbreds to their stud farms where they could be dedicated to ‘improving’ the national stock, or ‘race’ (p. 76, p. 155).

The race between Botafogo and Grey Fox, in 1918, was heralded by contemporary newspapers as ‘the country's most important race’, and Hora dedicates many fascinating pages to the build-up to and fall-out from the race. As the author acidly notes (p. 131), ‘those who affirm that football was the first sport able to excite the whole country only demonstrate their laziness at not having asked what came before it’. Newspapers reported in great detail and spectators flocked to the course; national flags appeared to consecrate the victor. The gambling industry was the motor behind the remarkable public attention given to turf, and Hora shows how the ability to read the sport, and profit from it through betting, meant that the hippodrome became a unique space for popular sociability in which elite and working-class fans could and did mix and come to respect one another's knowledge (p. 147).

By mid-way through the book I did weary a little of the sometimes blinkered approach to the subject, eschewing comparison to or connections with other sports (we know, for example, that in neighbouring Brazil and Chile, the first hippodromes were also used for cycling and football, but learn nothing here of any shared use in Argentina). But perhaps anticipating this critique, the second half of the book advances some comparisons between the slow decline of horse-racing and the growing popularity of football and boxing. The popularity of el turf argentino has diminished over the years, as Hora shows with a combination of the fan's regret and the historian's sense of its inevitability, given significant political and social changes. Peronism's ambiguous relationship with this sport shifted between appropriating it and marginalising it. The reasons for the ‘end of the empire of the horse’ (p. 201) are shown to be complicated, and they reach beyond the national boundaries which shape this study. The increasing snobbery of the middle classes towards turf and those who practised and enjoyed it is one reason explored by Hora. But this book demonstrates how the sporting and political cultures of Argentina have been marked by the considerable legacy of the popularity of horse-racing at the turn of the century. It left the memory of great sporting heroes such as Leguisamo – ‘probably the first public figure to be beatified [as San Leguisamo, in 1931] in an important newspaper’ (p. 198) – as well as iconic sporting infrastructure. As Hora shows with skill and admirable dedication to detail, horse-racing also left Argentine culture with a residual sense that the nation might be better understood through its representation on the sports field. This book is a clear demonstration that this is indeed the case.