This is a book about the unexpected, the off-beat, the quirky - five hundred of the strangest stories in horseracing's history. If you go racing or watch racing for any length of time, you soon realise that it is suffused with an aura on unreality and other worldliness. Odd moments abound, the surreal is almost commonplace.In "500 Strangest Racing Stories" read about how a jockey lost a race when he insisted on riding in a top hat, what happened when a trainer fitted his short-sighted runner with spectacles, and why a racehorse was sent to jail.