9 of My Favorite Horse Racing Movies

Last updated: October 17, 2026

By: Miles HenryFact Checked

Maybe it’s a rainy Saturday with no racing on the card, or you’ve got family coming over who don’t understand why you love the track, and you want a movie that’ll show them. Plenty of horse movies have a race in them somewhere, but only a handful capture the feel of the backstretch, the betting windows, and the stretch run. These are the horse racing movies I’d recommend.

Here’s a quick comparison, followed by what I like about each film and where I think it falls short.

The Best Horse Racing Movies at a Glance

Phar Lap (1983)

Phar Lap is my pick for the best horse racing movie ever made. The 1983 Australian film, directed by Simon Wincer and written by David Williamson, tells the story of the New Zealand-bred gelding who became one of Australia’s greatest racehorses in the early 1930s, seen through the eyes of his strapper, Tommy Woodcock, played by Tom Burlinson.

Phar Lap wasn’t much to look at when he arrived, and his owner didn’t want to pay to train him, so trainer Harry Telford took him on for a share of the winnings. He lost his early starts, then started winning and didn’t stop, taking the Melbourne Cup and the Cox Plate and carrying huge weights. He was shot at before one race, won the Agua Caliente Handicap in Mexico, and then died suddenly in California in 1932. Decades later, scientists testing hair from his mane found he’d swallowed a massive dose of arsenic in the hours before he died. The movie captures the bond between a horse and the person who looks after him as well as any film I’ve seen.

Seabiscuit (2003)

Seabiscuit runs a close second. Gary Ross’s 2003 film, based on Laura Hillenbrand’s book Seabiscuit: An American Legend, was nominated for seven Academy Awards, including Best Picture. It’s the story of three men and a horse during the Depression: owner Charles Howard (Jeff Bridges), still grieving his son; trainer Tom Smith (Chris Cooper), a quiet horseman nobody else would hire; and jockey Red Pollard (Tobey Maguire), a fighter down on his luck.

Together, they turn a small, cranky horse into a champion the whole country pulled for. When Pollard gets hurt before the famous match race with War Admiral, Hall of Fame jockey Gary Stevens steps in as George Woolf, and his riding scenes are a big reason the racing looks so real.

The real story of Seabiscuit the racehorse is every bit as good as the movie.

Secretariat (2010)

Disney’s Secretariat, directed by Randall Wallace, is a good movie, though not a great one. Diane Lane plays owner Penny Chenery, fighting to save her family’s farm in a sport run by men, and John Malkovich is a lot of fun as trainer Lucien Laurin. Nelsan Ellis is a standout as groom Eddie Sweat. Several horses played Secretariat, led by Trolley Boy, a great-great-grandson of the champion.

It’s a feel-good, family-friendly film, and it ends with Secretariat’s record-breaking Belmont. But racing fans will catch the holes. The movie leaves out Riva Ridge, the Meadow Stable colt who won the 1972 Kentucky Derby and Belmont and helped keep the farm afloat, and it leaves viewers thinking Sham won the Wood Memorial, when Angle Light was the winner.

I once met the man who played the jockey on Sham in Secretariat. He’d been a professional jockey for years and was training horses at the Fair Grounds when I met him.

50 to 1 (2014)

50 to 1 tells the story of Mine That Bird, the little gelding from New Mexico who won the 2009 Kentucky Derby at 50-to-1. Skeet Ulrich plays trainer Chip Woolley, and Calvin Borel plays himself, riding that famous rail trip the same way he did on the real day.

It’s a smaller movie than Seabiscuit or Secretariat, and that’s part of why I like it. You get the cowboy side of the game: the long hauls, the small barns, the guys who show up with more grit than money. Mine That Bird wasn’t supposed to be there, and neither was most of the crew around him. The film doesn’t overdo the underdog angle. It just lets the oddness of the whole thing sit there. If you’ve ever been around a small stable that somehow hits a big race, you’ll recognize the feeling.

Ride Like a Girl (2019)

Ride Like a Girl follows Michelle Payne from a big racing family all the way to the 2015 Melbourne Cup, where she became the first woman to ride the winner, on Prince of Penzance. Teresa Palmer plays her, and the movie doesn’t sugarcoat how hard the jockey life is, especially for a woman fighting for mounts in a sport that still runs mostly on old habits.

What I like about it is the honesty. You see the weight battles, the injuries, the early mornings, and the constant need to prove you belong. It’s still an uplifting sports movie, but those setbacks show the real grind most jockeys live with. If you’ve spent time around the jocks’ room or watched a rider come back from a bad fall, this one will feel familiar.

Dreamer (2005)

Dreamer is the one I’d hand to anyone with kids. The 2005 film stars Kurt Russell as a horseman and Dakota Fanning as his daughter, who nurse a filly with a broken leg back to the racetrack, with Kris Kristofferson and Elisabeth Shue rounding out the cast. It’s loosely inspired by Mariah’s Storm, who broke a cannon bone in 1993, came back to win graded stakes, and went on to be the dam of Giant’s Causeway.

The Killing (1956)

Stanley Kubrick’s The Killing isn’t a feel-good racing movie. It’s a gritty black-and-white film noir about a small-time crew, led by Sterling Hayden, planning to rob a racetrack during a big race. Kubrick jumps back and forth in time, and there’s no real hero, just people who are a little good and a lot bad. The track itself is practically a character in the film, and the ending stays with you.

Let It Ride (1989)

Let It Ride is a comedy about one long, lucky day at the track. Richard Dreyfuss plays Jay Trotter, a cab driver who’s promised his wife, played by Teri Garr, that he’ll quit gambling, right before his buddy hands him a tip on a fixed race. Based on Jay Cronley’s novel Good Vibes, it isn’t serious, but if you’ve spent any time around a racetrack, you’ll recognize every character at the windows.

Hidalgo (2004)

Hidalgo isn’t a track race at all. Viggo Mortensen plays Frank Hopkins, a cowboy from Buffalo Bill’s Wild West Show who takes his mustang, Hidalgo, to Arabia for a 3,000-mile endurance race against the best Arabian horses and riders, with Omar Sharif as the sheikh who issues the challenge. It’s a fun adventure, but don’t take the “based on a true story” line too seriously. Historians found no evidence that Hopkins’s long-distance races, or the Ocean of Fire race itself, ever happened.

If you want more than racing, there are plenty of great horse movies for kids and adults, and the history of horses in the movies goes back to the earliest Westerns.

Miles Henry

About Miles Henry

Racehorse Owner & Author | 30+ Years in Thoroughbred Racing

Miles Henry (legal name: William Bradley) is a professional horseman based in Folsom, Louisiana. He holds Louisiana Racing License #67012 and has spent over three decades managing Thoroughbreds at premier tracks including Fair Grounds, Delta Downs, and Evangeline Downs.
Expertise & Hands-On Experience: Beyond the track, Miles has decades of experience in specialized equine care, covering everything from hoof health and nutrition to training protocols for Quarter Horses, Friesians, and Paints. Every guide on Horse Racing Sense is rooted in this “boots-on-the-ground” perspective.
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