Anyone new to the world of horses and/or horseracing may have wondered what the horses’ blinkers are all about. The main reason for them is to restrict the horse’s vision to the path ahead of him and limit his peripheral vision in order to keep him focussed on what is in front of him and nothing else. Anyone who has ever ridden a horse without blinkers is very likely to appreciate the fact that horses are very easily distracted – especially when there are tasty morsels to be picked up along the way! This is particularly relevant in horseracing when any distractions whilst going at such high speeds could be catastrophic.

The method was apparently invented by a preacher who made a bet with a friend that he could get his horse to go up the stairs of his house! The horse did this no problem but when it came to making him descend the stairs the horse had other ideas. For some reason the preacher realised that if he covered his eyes he would be less afraid and would be able to be led back down – and it worked!

Blinkers are flaps usually made of leather or a leather substitute and are usually attached to the cheekpieces of the bridle. It has been moved on to a different level for some racehorses where the blinkers form part of a bigger facemask which is put on over the horses head somewhat like a balaclava. They tend to reduce the horses vision from 18 to 30.

It has been discovered that is you place cups as opposed to flaps around the horse’s eyes, the blinkers will have the opposite effect – instead of calming the animal down the horse becomes fearful of what it can’t see and claustrophobic, which makes it run faster in the early part of a race. This is used by racehorse trainers on horses who aren’t running as fast as they think they could do, which has led some to believe that a horse wearing blinkers isn’t worth placing a bet on.

While blinkers may work in that the horse will start off at quite a pace, the opposite side of the coin is that a horse who starts quickly will lack energy later on in the race – which in a race is more than likely going to be when it really counts. Nick Mordin of the Racing Post has carried out analysis of horses wearing blinkers and has discovered that while blinkers have more impact the first time they are applied to a horse, there is in fact a residual effect which persists as long as a horse continues to wear the blinkers. Blinkers are not a sign as some would have it that the horse is unreliable (blinkers are sometimes referred to as a rogue’s badge), they are in fact a lot more complicated than we would first deem possible, and do seem to make a huge transformation for some horses. Only the trainer and jockey can determine which type of blinker to utilise; for there are many choices e.g.: visors and shadow rolls; as knowledge and experience of the horse is obligatory before racing with them.