Degas remained faithful to racing scenes throughout his long career, but he stepped up their production in the 1880s. As with dancers in his ballet compositions, he manipulated a cast of horses and jockeys from one picture to the next, enlarging them, reversing them, or reducing them to fit the background. Indeed, all of the figures in this picture can be found in earlier works, and some of the poses have pedigrees even more distinguished than the horses' own: the prancing mount and rider at the center of the composition derive from Benozzo Gozzoli's Journey of the Magi (1459), which Degas copied in Florence in 1859. But this work is quite unusual in one respect: Degas made it with pastel on a plain, unvarnished wood panel. With skillful economy of means, he allowed the wood to color the sky and distant landscape—the suggestion of a village in Normandy—and to provide a warm undertone for the turf in the foreground.

Théodore Duret, a clever collector and critic who championed Manet and the Impressionists, was the first owner of this picture. Degas was displeased when Duret sold it for a good price at auction in 1894.