How Long Is a Furlong? Horse Racing Distances Explained

A furlong is one eighth of a mile: 220 yards, 660 feet or exactly 201.168 metres. Eight of them make a mile, and British and Irish racing still gives the distance of every race in miles, furlongs and yards, so a racecard reading 1m2f56y means one mile, two furlongs and fifty-six yards, or a shade over 2,062 metres. The shortest race on the Flat in Britain is five furlongs. The longest race of the jumps season, the Grand National at Aintree, runs a little over four miles and two furlongs.

That is the whole answer to how long a furlong is, and it fits in a sentence. What takes longer is the way the distance is used: the yards printed after the furlongs, the rails that add to them on the day, the posts that count them down beside the track, and a unit from medieval ploughing that survives in a country where speed limits are the only other place you meet the mile.

A furlong, a mile and a metre at a glance

The arithmetic is simple once the relationship is fixed. A furlong is ten chains of twenty-two yards. Eight furlongs make the statute mile of 1,760 yards. Because the international yard is defined as exactly 0.9144 metres, every conversion is exact to as many decimal places as anyone wants.

• 220Yards in a furlong
• 660Feet in a furlong
• 201.17Metres in a furlong
• 8Furlongs in a mile

Exact conversions. The furlong is defined as 220 yards, and the yard as exactly 0.9144 metres, so the metric figure is exact.

Reading a British race distance

Racecards abbreviate. "5f" is five furlongs. "1m" is a mile. "1m4f" is a mile and four furlongs, otherwise a mile and a half. "2m4f" is two and a half miles. Where the course measures a few yards over or under a round figure, the extra yards are printed: "1m6f115y", "2m87y", "3m2f70y". Commentators round those to the nearest half-furlong in speech, so "1m6f115y" is said as "about a mile and six and a half".

The quickest way to convert in your head is to treat each furlong as 200 metres and add a little. A mile is roughly 1,600 metres; a mile and a half is roughly 2,400. Those round figures are not accidents, as the section on racing abroad explains.

Common British race distances converted to metres

The table below sets the distances a British racegoer meets most often beside their exact metric equivalents. Distances shown are the round headline trips; individual races at individual courses add or lose yards from these.

Distance	Furlongs	Metres (exact)	Where it is typically run
Five furlongs	5	1,005.84	Juvenile races, top sprints such as the Nunthorpe
Six furlongs	6	1,207.008	Sprints including the July Cup at Newmarket
Seven furlongs	7	1,408.176	The sprint-to-mile bridge, common for two-year-olds in late summer
One mile	8	1,609.344	The 2,000 and 1,000 Guineas
A mile and a quarter	10	2,011.68	Middle-distance races such as the Eclipse
A mile and a half	12	2,414.016	The Derby, the Oaks, the King George at Ascot
Two miles	16	3,218.688	Long-distance Flat races, two-mile hurdles and chases
Three miles	24	4,828.032	Staying hurdles and chases
Four miles	32	6,437.376	The marathon end of jump racing

Five furlongs1006m

One mile1609m

A mile and a half2414m

Two miles3219m

Three miles4828m

Four miles6437m

Exact metric equivalents of the round headline distances. Actual race distances at individual courses add or subtract yards from these.

Show the numbers

Standard British race distances in metres

Item	Value
Five furlongs	1006m
One mile	1609m
A mile and a half	2414m
Two miles	3219m
Three miles	4828m
Four miles	6437m

The odd yards on a racecard

A distance such as one mile two furlongs and fifty-six yards is ten furlongs plus fifty-six yards. Fifty-six yards is about 51 metres, so the race is roughly 2,063 metres. Courses are irregular shapes, built around hills, rivers and old common land, and a race has to start somewhere a starting stall or tape can be placed safely. The yards are what is left over between the nearest convenient start and the nearest round number.

Advertised distances, measured distances and moving rails

For most of racing's history, the printed distance was partly an approximation. Jump races in particular were described as "about two miles" or "about three miles", and the word "about" in a race's conditions was an admission that the course had not been measured precisely along the line the horses actually ran. A three-mile chase might have been some way short or long of three miles.

That changed with two re-measurement projects run by the BHA with the Racecourse Association. The jumps courses came first: a new methodology was published in May 2015 and the revised advertised distances took effect from 1 June that year, with every course professionally surveyed to the nearest yard along a line two yards off the innermost running-rail position. The Flat tracks and the all-weather surfaces followed, re-measured by independent surveyors and republished in April 2017, the first time Flat distances had been reworked since 1991. Some races that had been advertised as round figures for decades acquired odd yards overnight; others turned out to be noticeably short. The "about" largely disappeared from conditions.

Rail movements and the extra yards on the day

Even an accurately measured course changes length from meeting to meeting. Clerks of the course move the running rail out by a few yards on bends to give horses fresh ground, and a race run with the rail out is longer, because the horses travel a wider arc. The BHA requires the added distance to be announced, and racecards and declarations note "race distance increased by X yards" for each affected race. On a course with several bends, a rail movement can add a meaningful amount to a long-distance race.

That matters to anyone comparing times. A race run a few yards further than its headline distance cannot be compared directly with the same race on a day when the rail was in its innermost position. The reason clerks move the rail at all, to protect the ground and keep the going fair, is covered in our guide to how the going is declared and measured.

Why a course is measured off the rail

A horse running wide covers more ground than one hugging the rail. The measurement line sits two yards off the innermost rail position, roughly where a horse running a sensible race would be. A horse forced wide round two bends will run further than the official distance. Nothing in the rules corrects for that; it is part of the race.

The Flat's distance bands, from sprints to staying races

Flat racing in Britain runs from five furlongs up to just over two and a half miles, and trainers and the race programme divide that span into bands that horses tend to specialise in.

Sprints: five and six furlongs

Five furlongs is a race run flat out from the stalls. There is almost no time to recover from a slow start. The top races include the King's Stand at Royal Ascot and the Nunthorpe at York. Six furlongs is the other classic sprint trip, with the July Cup at Newmarket and the Commonwealth Cup at Royal Ascot among the best known. Plenty of sprinters handle both, though a horse at its best over five often finds six a furlong too far.

Seven furlongs and the mile

Seven furlongs is a bridge between sprinters and milers, and it is a common trip for two-year-olds being tested over further. The mile is where speed and stamina meet; the 2,000 Guineas and 1,000 Guineas at Newmarket are run over it, and mile races reward a horse that can travel at sprint pace and still quicken at the end.

The middle distances: up to a mile and a half

A mile and a quarter and a mile and a half are the core of the middle-distance programme. The Derby and the Oaks at Epsom, and the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes at Ascot, are run over a mile and a half. The Eclipse at Sandown is run over a mile and a quarter. This is the trip on which much of the breeding industry judges a top-class horse.

Staying races: a mile and six furlongs and beyond

Beyond a mile and a half sit the staying races. The St Leger at Doncaster is run over a little more than a mile and six and a half furlongs, making it the longest of the five British Classics; more on its trip is in our guide to the St Leger Stakes. The Gold Cup at Royal Ascot is around two and a half miles, and the Queen Alexandra Stakes at the same meeting is longer still, the longest Flat race in the British calendar. The Cesarewitch at Newmarket, a handicap over about two and a quarter miles, is the most famous of the autumn staying handicaps.

Two-year-olds and the lengthening season

Juveniles follow their own ladder. The first two-year-old races of the British Flat season in spring are run over five furlongs, because a young horse is not yet strong enough to stay further and its trainer wants to learn whether it has speed. As summer goes on the programme stretches to six and seven furlongs, and by the autumn the top juvenile races include contests over a mile. That progression mirrors the horses' physical development. A two-year-old asked to run a mile in April would be asked something its frame is not ready for, and the race programme simply does not offer the option.

The same logic drives the weight-for-age scale, which gives younger horses an allowance when they race against older ones. The allowance depends on both the month and the distance: it is larger over longer trips and earlier in the year, because immaturity costs more the further a horse has to go. A three-year-old meeting older horses over a mile and a half in May receives far more weight than one meeting them over five furlongs in September. The furlong is built into the scale itself.

How the five Classics fit together, including the distances that define each, is set out in our guide to the British Classics.

Jumping distances, from two miles to the National

Jump racing starts where the Flat's middle-distance races finish. In Britain the usual minimum for both hurdles and steeplechases is two miles, and the re-measured distances of some two-mile races now print as a few yards over or under. Even the shortest jumps race is about three times the length of a five-furlong sprint.

Two miles

The two-mile jumps races are the sprints of National Hunt racing. The Champion Hurdle and the Queen Mother Champion Chase at Cheltenham are both run over about two miles. These races are run at a strong gallop with obstacles every couple of furlongs, and a mistake at a single fence or hurdle can end a horse's chance.

The intermediate trips

Around two and a half miles is an intermediate distance with races designed specifically for it, often for horses that are not quite fast enough for two miles and not quite stout enough for three. Many festivals have championship races at about two and a half miles.

Three miles and beyond

Three miles is the staying test. The Cheltenham Gold Cup is run over a little more than three and a quarter miles, the King George VI Chase at Kempton over three miles. Staying hurdles also run around three miles. These races reward horses that can keep jumping cleanly while tired.

The marathon races

Beyond three and a half miles are the marathon chases, led by the Grand National, run over a little more than four miles and two furlongs at Aintree. The exact distance has been altered more than once as the start has been moved, which is covered in our guide to how long the Grand National is. The Scottish Grand National at Ayr and the Eider Chase at Newcastle are both run over roughly four miles, give or take the odd furlong as starts have been moved.

Bumpers, the jumps race with no jumps

National Hunt flat races, universally called bumpers, sit in the jumps programme but have no obstacles. They are run over around two miles, for young horses bred to jump who have not yet started over hurdles, and they give those horses racecourse experience at a jumping trip before they learn to jump at speed. A horse that wins a bumper over two miles has shown it stays the minimum jumps distance; it has not yet shown it can jump. The distance is the bridge.

Jump distance band	Typical distance	Example races
Minimum	About two miles	Champion Hurdle, Queen Mother Champion Chase
Intermediate	About two and a half miles	Many festival championship and handicap races
Staying	Three miles or a little more	Cheltenham Gold Cup, King George VI Chase
Marathon	About four miles and upwards	Grand National, Scottish Grand National, Eider Chase

How long a race takes over each distance

A furlong takes a top racehorse roughly eleven to twelve seconds on good ground on the Flat. That gives a useful rule of thumb. A five-furlong sprint on good ground at a flat, fast track lasts a little under or around a minute. A mile takes a little over a minute and a half. A mile and a half takes around two and a half minutes. Jump races run much slower per furlong, because horses jump and stay: a three-mile chase on good ground takes a little over six minutes, and the Grand National takes about nine minutes or a little longer.

Why times vary

Those are rough guides. The same distance takes markedly different times depending on the going, the course's shape and gradients, the wind and the pace at which the race is run. A five-furlong race at Epsom, run largely downhill, is quicker than a five-furlong race at an uphill course. A race on heavy ground may take several seconds a furlong longer than on good to firm. Race times are therefore of limited use for comparing different courses.

Why records are kept course by course

For the same reason, racing does not keep national record times over a distance in the way athletics does. Each course keeps its own course records, distance by distance, and those are compared with the course's own standard times. A course record at Epsom over a mile and a half is not comparable with a course record at Ascot over the same trip; the tracks are different shapes and different gradients. The one fair comparison is a course with itself.

Seconds per furlong as the working unit

Form analysts break times down further. Dividing a race time by its distance in furlongs gives an average seconds-per-furlong figure, and comparing that figure with the course's standard for the trip gives a measure of how fast the race was run relative to what the ground allowed. Sectional timing, now recorded at many British tracks, goes further still and splits a race into its individual furlongs or groups of furlongs. A horse that ran its final two furlongs quicker than anything else in the race, having been held up behind a slow pace, has a performance that the overall time hides completely.

The furlong is the natural slice for this. It is short enough to show where a race was won and lost, long enough that one stride's error does not distort it, and every course already has a marker at each one. Sectional data in Britain is reported in furlong segments for exactly that reason, and it is one more piece of the sport's infrastructure that would have to be rebuilt in metres if the unit ever changed.

Furlong poles, "two out" and the old distance post

Beside the running rail at every British racecourse are markers counting down the distance to the winning post. They are placed at each furlong measured back from the line, which is why they are called furlong poles or furlong markers. Jockeys use them to judge where they are in a race. So do commentators.

1. 1Four furlongs outHalf a mile to run, jockeys start to position for the finish
2. 2Three furlongs outThe race starts to take shape, pressure being applied
3. 3Two furlongs outTwo furlongs from the line, where many winning moves begin
4. 4The furlong poleOne furlong to run
5. 5Inside the final furlongThe last 220 yards, often where a race is decided
6. 6The lineThe winning post, where the photo-finish camera is aimed

Common British commentary shorthand, measured back from the winning post. Usage varies a little between commentators and courses.

"Two out" means different things in the two codes

On the Flat, "two out" or "two furlongs out" is a distance marker. In jump racing "two out" means the second-last obstacle, and "the last" means the final fence or hurdle. A commentator saying "he's travelling well two out" in a chase means the horse is approaching the second-last fence, which may not be anywhere near two furlongs from the line. Racegoers moving between the codes get used to the switch.

Markers on a round course

On a straight sprint course the poles stand in a single line beside the rail, easy to count. On a round course they follow the track round the bends, and on a long race a horse may pass the same pole twice: once on the first circuit, once on the run for home. Jockeys riding a two-mile race on an oval know that the six-furlong marker they pass early on means nothing for their timing; the one that matters is the one they meet on the final circuit. On jumps courses the poles share the infield with fences and hurdles, and the countdown in commentary shifts from furlongs to obstacles once the field is in the home straight. Riders new to a track walk the course partly to learn where its markers sit relative to its bends and rises, because a marker placed at the top of a hill feels a long way further from home than the same marker on the flat.

The distance, 240 yards from home

Older racing language uses "the distance" for a point 240 yards from the winning post. It comes from the days of heat racing, when a horse that had not reached the distance post by the time the winner finished was "distanced" and eliminated from later heats. Some courses still mark it, and the phrase survives in older race reports, though most modern commentary has replaced it with the furlong markers.

Lengths, necks and noses: the margins beneath the furlong

Distances between horses at the finish are given in lengths and fractions of a length, not in furlongs or yards. A length is, notionally, the length of a horse from nose to tail, taken as about eight feet, or two and a half metres. The judge does not measure it with a tape.

How the judge turns time into lengths

The judge converts the time gap between horses at the line into lengths using a scale set by the racing authority. The scale gives more lengths per second when horses are going fast and fewer when they are going slowly: a horse a second behind on fast ground has been beaten by more distance than a horse a second behind on heavy ground, because the leaders were covering more ground in that second. The scale differs between the Flat and jumps and changes with the going: a Flat turf race on good ground is converted at around six lengths to the second, a National Hunt race on heavy ground at about four. The BHA publishes the conversion, and it has been revised over the years.

The smaller margins

Above a length the margins are divided into quarters as far as five lengths and into half-lengths from five to ten, a structure completed on 1 January 2020 when the BHA added six distances, among them four and a quarter, seven and a half and nine and a half lengths, to sharpen handicapping and to match the Irish scale. Below half a length come the descriptive margins: a neck, a short neck, a head, a short head and a nose, the smallest. These are read off the photo-finish image, with the vertical line placed at each horse's nose. How the judge reads a photograph, and what happens when two noses arrive together, is covered in our guide to the photo finish and dead heats.

Why a length is not a fixed distance

Because the judge works from time, a length is better thought of as a slice of time converted at a rate set by the conditions. "Beaten three lengths" in a five-furlong sprint on firm ground and "beaten three lengths" in a three-mile chase on heavy are not the same physical gap. On the sprint, the gap is a fraction of a second at very high speed. In the chase it is a longer interval at a much slower pace, and the scale gives fewer lengths per second to reflect it.

Handicappers then convert those lengths into pounds of weight when they assess a race. The conversion depends on the trip: a length is worth more pounds over five furlongs than over two miles, because in a short race a single length represents a larger share of the whole performance. A horse beaten a length in a sprint has been beaten by a bigger margin, in handicapping terms, than one beaten a length in a staying race. The detail of how those pounds then feed into a horse's rating is set out in our guide to how handicaps work in British racing.

Big margins

At the other end, very wide margins are given as numbers of lengths. Historically a margin beyond about thirty lengths in Britain was recorded as "a distance", a direct descendant of the heat-racing term, though modern results often give a figure even at those margins.

Where the furlong came from

The word is Old English: furh, a furrow, and lang, long. A furlong was the length of a furrow in the open-field system of medieval farming, the distance a team of oxen could plough before resting and turning. Fields were laid out in long strips, and the length of the strip became a unit of distance.

The acre and the chain

The furlong is tied to the acre. An acre was the area a team could plough in a day, a strip one furlong long and one chain wide. The chain was later standardised at twenty-two yards by the surveyor Edmund Gunter in the early seventeenth century, and Gunter's chain fitted neatly into the existing furlong: ten chains, 220 yards. So an acre is one furlong by one chain, or 4,840 square yards. The chain survives in another British sport: it is the length of a cricket pitch.

The Elizabethan mile

The Roman mile and the furlong did not originally fit neatly together, and for centuries the English mile varied. An Act of Parliament under Elizabeth I in 1593 fixed the statute mile at eight furlongs, setting it at 5,280 feet. The act was concerned with building around London rather than with measurement for its own sake, but its definition stuck. That is the mile British roads still use, and it is why eight furlongs make a mile today.

Why British racing kept the furlong

Britain metricated most of its official life from the 1960s onwards. Food is sold in kilograms, petrol in litres and athletics is run in metres. Yet road distances and speed limits stayed in miles, and racing never seriously moved off furlongs.

A sport written in furlongs

The reason is not sentiment alone. Every course's layout, every course record, every set of standard times and every race's conditions is written in furlongs and yards. Many of the most famous races are known by their distance as much as their name. Converting everything to metres would mean a two-mile hurdle becoming a 3,219-metre hurdle, or more likely a 3,200-metre race with a start moved, breaking comparison with every race run before. Breeding and pedigree analysis also relies on distance categories expressed in furlongs.

The mile on the road

The survival of the mile in road distances helped. A British racegoer thinks of a mile as a meaningful distance in everyday life, and a furlong as an eighth of one is easy to picture. A country that drives in miles finds it easy to watch racing in them.

There is also a practical reason. Ireland uses furlongs too, and the British and Irish racing programmes are closely linked, with horses moving freely between them. Neither country has much incentive to change alone.

Metres in France and beyond, furlongs in America

Most racing jurisdictions measure in metres. France, Australia, Hong Kong, Japan and much of continental Europe use metric distances, generally in round figures. The Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe at Longchamp is run over 2,400 metres. The Melbourne Cup is 3,200 metres. The Japan Derby is 2,400 metres.

The round figures that match British trips

Those round figures are not chance. A mile and a half is 2,414 metres, so a 2,400-metre race is the metric equivalent of a British mile-and-a-half race, a few yards short. Two miles is 3,219 metres; 3,200 metres is the metric version. A mile is 1,609 metres, matched by 1,600-metre races. A metric jurisdiction set its main distances by the round number nearest the traditional trip, which means a horse rated over a mile and a half in Britain can be compared directly with a horse rated over 2,400 metres in France.

British trip	Exact metres	Usual metric equivalent
Five furlongs	1,005.84	1,000 metres
One mile	1,609.344	1,600 metres
A mile and a quarter	2,011.68	2,000 metres
A mile and a half	2,414.016	2,400 metres
Two miles	3,218.688	3,200 metres

American furlongs and fractions

American racing kept imperial measures too, but uses them a little differently. Races up to a mile are given in furlongs, with six furlongs a standard sprint trip. Beyond a mile, distances are given in fractions of a mile: a mile and a sixteenth, a mile and an eighth, a mile and a quarter. The Kentucky Derby is run over a mile and a quarter. British racing rarely uses sixteenths, and a British racegoer reading an American card has to do the arithmetic.

Hands, stones and guineas: the other old measures in racing

The furlong is not the only old unit a racegoer meets.

Hands

A horse's height is measured in hands, from the ground to the top of the withers, the ridge between the shoulder blades. A hand is four inches, or 10.16 centimetres. A horse of 16.2 hands is sixteen hands and two inches, 66 inches in all, not sixteen and two-tenths. Thoroughbreds commonly stand somewhere in the high fifteens to the low seventeens.

Stones and pounds

Weight carried in a race is given in stones and pounds. A stone is fourteen pounds. A horse carrying 9st 7lb carries 133 pounds, including the jockey and saddle. Handicaps, weight-for-age allowances and jockeys' riding weights are all expressed this way, and the minimum and maximum weights in a race are among the most important numbers on a card. How riders make those weights is explained in our guide to how much jockeys weigh.

Guineas

At bloodstock sales in Britain and Ireland, horses are still sold in guineas. A guinea is twenty-one shillings in old money, or £1.05. The buyer pays in guineas; the extra five pence per guinea traditionally went to the auctioneer as commission. The 2,000 Guineas and 1,000 Guineas take their names from the original prize money, though neither has carried that sum for a very long time.

Measure	Used for	Conversion
Furlong	Race distances	220 yards, 201.168 metres
Hand	A horse's height	4 inches, 10.16 centimetres
Stone	Weight carried	14 pounds, about 6.35 kilograms
Guinea	Bloodstock sale prices	£1.05

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