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Sunday 7 September 2014

Dark Horse

The term "Dark Horse" is used to describe a little-known person or thing that emerges to prominence, frequently in a sporting context. It was first used in horse racing to describe a racehorse that is not known to gamblers and thus is difficult to place betting odds on. The earliest-known use of the phrase was in novelist and future Prime Minister Benjamin Disraeli's 1831 novel The Young Duke: A Moral Tale Through Gay. He described a horse race where, "a dark horse, which had never been thought of… rushed past the grandstand in sweeping triumph."

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