We Betrayed the Horses: What Art Tells Us About Racing, Betting, and the Bond Between Man and Animal

Horse racing is often described as “the sport of kings”—a centuries-old blend of aristocratic spectacle, gambling tradition, and athletic excellence. To bettors, it’s a game of odds, bloodlines, and strategy. To fans, it’s a spectacle of speed and beauty. But to Greek artist Janis Rafa, horse racing is also a site of betrayal, where human ambition and entertainment come at the expense of the animal itself.

Her exhibition We Betrayed the Horses that Horse.bet visited recently, recently staged at the National Museum of Contemporary Art in Athens (EMΣT), transforms familiar tools of equestrianism into unsettling reminders of control and commodification. Saddles, whips, bridles, and boots hang in darkened rooms like relics of a ritual; neon words flash with eroticized violence—“your heels spurring my ribs, your glories killing my needs”—and walls drip with racing ribbons, once proud emblems of triumph, now read as hollow tokens of conquest.

The horse is missing from these rooms. And that absence is the point.

The Performed Horse

In Rafa’s vision, the horse becomes what she calls a “performed horse”—an animal reshaped by human needs into an instrument of glory and pleasure. The real horse, with instincts, desires, and wildness, is suppressed. What remains is a construct: a body trained to run, to obey, to perform.

For bettors, this resonates uncomfortably with the way we study the form sheet. Horses are reduced to statistics: speed figures, winning margins, bloodlines, jockey pairings. We calculate, wager, and cheer, often without pausing to consider the individuality or inner life of the animal. Rafa’s work asks: at what cost do we transform living beings into data points for human gain?

Glory and the Gamble

The connection between horse racing and gambling is ancient. From Roman circuses to the English turf clubs of the 18th century, wagers have always been integral to the sport. But Rafa’s exhibition highlights the darker side of this glory.

The ribbons on her walls are dazzling in number and color, each marking a victory. But together they form a suffocating mosaic, a reminder that every triumph was achieved through discipline, submission, and risk—not just for riders and trainers, but for the horses themselves.

For bettors, those ribbons mirror the highs and lows of the betting slip: one person’s triumph, another’s loss. The exhibition turns them from proud trophies into haunting symbols of a bargain struck between man and animal, where entertainment and profit outweigh dignity.

Racing’s Realities

Of course, horse racing is not only about cruelty—it is also about deep bonds of care, training, and athletic partnership. Trainers and jockeys often speak of their horses as family, and welfare standards have improved dramatically in many countries. Regulatory bodies have introduced stricter veterinary checks, whip rules, and retirement programs.

Yet scandals persist. High-profile doping cases, breakdowns at tracks like Santa Anita, and debates over the ethics of whip use keep resurfacing, reminding us that the sport’s glamour cannot fully obscure its risks. Bettors are not blind to these issues: the odds we play are tied to animals whose fates are shaped by the very industry we support.

Rafa’s work does not condemn racing outright, but it does force us to confront these contradictions.

Betting With Eyes Open

So what does this mean for the modern bettor? Perhaps it’s less about guilt than awareness. Just as punters study weather, jockey form, and track conditions, we might also acknowledge the larger context: that horse racing is both sport and spectacle, care and control, beauty and betrayal.

Rafa’s exhibition becomes a kind of mirror. When we watch the Derby or place a bet at Belmont Park, are we celebrating the majesty of the horse, or complicit in turning it into a performed body for our entertainment? The answer may be both.

And yet, that complexity is what makes the sport endure. Betting on horses is not like betting on numbers in a casino—it is bound to real animals, real risks, and real triumphs. To wager is to participate in a centuries-old human-animal drama that is as much about ethics and emotion as it is about odds and payouts.

A Requiem and a Reminder

Janis Rafa’s We Betrayed the Horses is, in her own words, a requiem—a mourning song for the ways humans have subdued, commodified, and misunderstood horses. But it is also a reminder: that racing is not just about numbers and bets, but about a profound, complicated relationship between species.

For horse bettors, that reminder can sharpen our appreciation. Each wager is not only a calculation of odds, but a participation in this long, uneasy history of triumph and sacrifice. The ribbons on the wall may look different after seeing Rafa’s work, but perhaps the bet feels deeper too.

✅ Takeaway for bettors: Horse racing is thrilling because it exists at the crossroads of beauty and risk, triumph and loss. Rafa’s exhibition doesn’t tell us to stop betting—it tells us to bet with eyes open, to see the full picture, and to remember that every victory is shared, however unequally, between human ambition and equine sacrifice.