Kutaisi Hippodrome

The Kutaisi Hippodrome is Georgia's secondary horse racing venue, located in Kutaisi — the country's second largest city and one of the oldest continuously inhabited cities in the world, once the capital of the ancient Kingdom of Colchis and subsequently of the medieval Kingdom of Georgia. The Kutaisi area's equestrian heritage is extraordinary — Colchis was one of the ancient world's most significant horse-breeding regions, and the mythological Golden Fleece (the object of Jason and the Argonauts' quest) is believed by some scholars to have been a ram's fleece used in gold-panning rivers of the Rioni valley — a region whose prosperity was partly based on horse breeding and trade with the Greek world. The Kutaisi Hippodrome operates a horse racing programme that serves the Imereti region's racing community, providing a western Georgia circuit that complements the national programme centred on the Tbilisi Hippodrome. The track hosts regional championship races including the Kutaisi Classic and the West Georgia Cup, and participates in the Georgian Equestrian Federation's national point-scoring system. Like the Tbilisi programme, Kutaisi racing has developed from Soviet-era harness racing toward thoroughbred flat racing, though the harness racing tradition retains cultural significance in the Imereti region's rural equestrian communities.