Horse racing is regarded as America's first national pastime and first professionally organized sport.  Early settlers began this form of mass entertainment with "Quarter Racing."  Quarter races were run on a straight path ten to twenty feet in width and a quarter mile in length that had been cleared out of the wilderness.  They consisted of one to four mile heats with a brief respite between meets.  Planters, farm wives, children, African Americans and Native Americans came from great distances to witness two horses gallop down a crude track up to twenty times in one day.  The horses that competed were Quarter Horses, bred for their quick bursts of speed.

It would be the year 1730 before a new breed of horse was imported to America, taking the racing world by storm.  The English Thoroughbred, a direct result of selective breeding, was breed for speed and stamina.

Thoroughbred racing quickly grew in popularity, especially in the South, where almost every major city had its own racetrack and Jockey Club.  The Jockey Clubs were established to manage the tracks, and as early as 1807, Nashville had its own Jockey Club.  By 1839, there were at least ten established racetracks in Tennessee.  The decade 1830-1840 saw 63 official racecourses across the South, not counting plantation tracks.  The years 1838-1948 are considered the golden era of racing in Tennessee.

The Nashville Race Track was in operation from the 1820s to 1886.  It was located below town on the Cumberland River.  When the river would overflow, it flooded the track.  For this reason, a new track was constructed where present day Centennial Park is located.  The track was called West Side Park.

Belle Meade also had its own racetrack.  It was privately used for training colts, which were then entered in all principal races in the United States.  By 1881, the Belle Meade track had become a wheat field, but W. Harding's grandson, William Harding Jackson, built a new track on the West Meade property in 1898 for the purpose of entering horses into racing again after almost twenty years.

In the early days, racing was a sport for the upper classes; often the general public was not allowed to attend.  Races were conducted to "Prove the Breed" and show the best thoroughbreds by testing speed and stamina.  When betting on races became fashionable, more and more people attended.  It became a national sport that everyone followed.  Jockeys and trainers, even if they were enslaved, became sports stars that most people knew.  Racing slowly became controversial because of the gambling issue and by the turn of the century gambling had become illegal in Tennessee forcing horse racing to move out of state.