re: Do you think horses know they’re racing against each other?

I’ll have another is one of my favorite horses. This is a horse that just had it at the end of a race. Both his derby and Preakness wins were awesome to see him walk down bodemeister at the end. I wish he wouldn’t have been injured before the Belmont.

LINK

I think general consensus is that horses don’t know they’re racing until the race starts and they inherently want to run in front.

Which means, when they’re in the starting gate they don’t know they’re about to race because other horses aren’t running yet.

Then why the duck (thanks iPhone) do they get so excited pre-race?