You could fill a book with all the things I don’t know about racehorses (and they probably have; I imagine it’s called something like ’Basic Racehorse Facts For Newly-Landed Aliens, The Simplified Edition’).

But I reckon that even people more horse-savvy than me will be surprised to learn that thoroughbreds all share the same birthday.

Yup – Barbara Wrathall, a horse expert at Discount Equestrian, said, “every thoroughbred racehorse, including those in the Royal Stud breeding programme, is officially considered to be born on 1 January”.

Here’s why.

Why do thoroughbred racehorses all share a birthday?

Obviously, not all of the horses actually enter the world on the first day of whatever year they were born.

But the New Year date was chosen, Wrathall said, “because the racing world needs a single, standardised date for age categories”.

The age of a horse is really important in racing, she continued, because “a few months can mean a noticeable difference in strength, development and training readiness”.

© HuffPost