On Cup Day, the whole office talks about horses. The funny thing is that we’ve been doing it all year.
We back the front-runner for the job. We check a candidate’s track record. We worry about a dark horse in the tender. The two bids are neck and neck. The project is in the home straight. Everyone else is an also-ran. And when it all goes well, we win hands down.
Every one of those comes from the racecourse.
“Hands down” is my favourite. A jockey who is so far in front that the race is already won can drop his hands, loosen the reins and stop urging the horse on. He wins without trying. That’s the image we’re borrowing when we say a proposal won hands down.
“Dark horse” has a literary start. It first appeared in Benjamin Disraeli’s 1831 novel The Young Duke, describing a horse nobody had thought of that swept past the grandstand to win. “Track record” was the best time ever run on a particular track. “Also-ran” comes from the results lists, where horses that didn’t place were simply listed as having also run.
It’s easy to see why business likes racing language. It’s vivid, it’s quick, and it turns work into a contest with a clear winner and a finish line.
But most work isn’t a race. Projects don’t have a finish line where everyone stops. Teams don’t succeed by leaving each other behind. And very little at work is won hands down. If someone says it was, it’s worth asking who else was running.
So enjoy the sweep. Back a long shot. Cheer for the outsider.
And tomorrow, when someone calls a colleague a dark horse, remember what it originally meant: the one nobody had bothered to look at.
