Horses and soccer players. Working for the sport

The aim of this article is to show that racehorses are high-level athletes. To do so, we use monitoring data on a panel of eighty-two thoroughbred horses and a bibliographical study of footballers, drawing comparisons between the career of a racehorse and that of a footballer. We base our analysis on four axes: training, practice, competition, and career change. Our results show the similarities between these two worlds, such as the financialization and globalization of their competitions. But they also highlight important differences, notably linked to our domestication of horses (genetic selection and the possibility of death as a way out of work) and to the importance of the "value of blood" in social representations and class relations. This analysis of sports-based work allows us to consider horses' living conditions from an angle other than "Animal welfare" and to raise the issue of the professionalization of horses that compete.