Basic Information

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Horse Speeds

Horses can move pretty fast when they want to:

Walking rate: 2-4 mph
Trot: 8-10 mph
Canter: 10-17 mph
Gallop: 30 mph on average, but higher for horses bred for it:
- 40 mph for distance-running Thoroughbred horses
- up to 55 mph (over short distances) for racing Quarter horses.

Man Vs Horse

By comparison, most humans walk at 2-3 mph, and the world record for a human doing the 100m dash works out to about 23 mph. So an average horse gallops a good 40% faster than the fastest person can sprint.

However, humans are better at traversing uneven and broken ground, and on such terrain a human can sometimes outdistance a horse over time. There's a town in Wales that runs a yearly "Man Versus Horse" Marathon. They've been running it every year since 1980, and the winner has been a human just twice in those nearly 30 years.