Cold Schooling: Horses Train for Traditional Banei Keiba Races at Obihiro in Japan’s Hokkaido

The Yomiuri Shimbun

11:46 JST, January 22, 2026

Draft horses train for traditional races known as banei keiba at Obihiro Racecourse in Hokkaido from early Monday morning amid severe cold.

The training begins before dawn and aims to improve the horses’ cardiovascular endurance for banei keiba, in which the horses pull sleds weighing up to one ton. On Monday morning in Obihiro, where temperatures dropped to minus 15.9 C as of 7 a.m., the horses pulled sleds under the dawn-lit sky, exhaling white breath as they worked.