A Racehorse Called Potoooooooo

The horse in the image below is the famous eighteenth-century racehorse, Potoooooooo… or Pot8os. I love the most widely accepted story of how he got his crazy name.

Potoooooooo, Or Pot8os by John Nost Sartorious

The National Horseracing Museum/Art UK

He was a chestnut colt, bred by Willoughby Bertie, 4th Earl of Abingdon in 1777 and sired by the famous Eclipse. Originally, the colts name was to be Potato. Fifty years later, the Sheffield Independent newspaper repeated a story told by King George IV:

One day looking at his stud his Lordship asked one of his stable-boys if he could spell the name of the animal in question, with a promise of a guinea if he succeeded. The boy wrote upon the stall with chalk, “Potoooooooo” – which so pleased the Earl, that he determined the horse should retain the name as written by the boy.

Hopefully, the inventive stable boy got his guinea!

Stable Boy Holding a Horse by John Collett,

Yale Center for British Art, Paul Mellon Collection

Potoooooooo won more than 25 races, and sired more than 172 winners. His skeleton is on display at Newmarket's National Horseracing Museum.

Source: Sheffield Independent, 23 June 1827