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It's dawn in Sicily and the next illegal horse race is about to begin. The street is blocked. The sidewalks are crowded with noisy men holding fists full of money.

At the far end of the road, two visibly agitated horses stamp nervously, their hooves sliding on the sticky asphalt. A few men armed with long sticks and serious gazes stand behind the animals, trying to keep them under control.

Recent investigations by Italian authorities have revealed that the business of clandestine horse racing in Sicily has doubled in the past several months.

Illegal horse races have always existed in Sicily, tolerated by citizens because they were viewed as an expression of Sicilian culture. Occasionally, races were even organised during regional holidays. More rarely, they were authorised by city hall. Such traditional races are also held elsewhere in Italy, the most famous of which is the centuries-old Palio race in the Tuscan town of Siena.

Sicily's races are different - they are run illegally by criminal organisations.

City streets get closed off at random for the purpose. A select group of people is informed about a race's time and whereabouts. Residents who live along the makeshift urban courses are threatened with violence if they leave their houses during the event.

The horses run on asphalt, many to the point of exhaustion. They are often killed if they lose, some butchered and sold as meat on the black market; if they are troublesome, they are beaten. In this way, Sicily has become a giant racecourse, managed and sponsored by the mafia, the organisers of these clandestine races.

Giuseppe, a 29 year-old jockey from the city of Agrigento who did not want to be identified,  talked about the brutal nature of illegal horse racing on the island. He has been riding since he was a young boy.

He began participating in horse races at town festivals and eventually discovered the 'legendary' mafia races. He has seen many. Although he would not admit taking part in them as a jockey, he recounted how they unfold: 'They start at dawn, or sometimes at night, by the light of car headlights. The streets are closed off from one end to the other. No one can get through.

'The course is about 400 metres, sometimes 500. They look for streets on an incline so that the horses don't slip. But it's asphalt all the same and every once in a while a mess happens - the horses slip on the stuff. You understand? Asphalt isn't good for horses. It damages their tendons. And in order to ease the pain, [the organisers] drug them. But sometimes a horse takes a bad fall and breaks some bones. It is then that the horse gets shot.'

Giuseppe explained that having the horses' broken bones mended by a veterinarian was too expensive, 'and anyway, it's rare that a horse that has had that type of accident will ever run the same again'. And if a horse doesn't run as it once did, it is no longer useful to the mafia.

A few months ago, on a beach near the city of Catania, authorities found a horse that had been brutally stoned to death, presumably after losing a race.

On the other hand, there are those who invest in the meat of the dead horse. 'There are also those who butcher it,' confirmed Giuseppe, 'but they obviously don't bring it to the everyday, local butcher shop.'

At the local butcher shop, the meat is inspected, and the meat from these horses would never be approved for sale. The drugs the mafia uses to dope these horses make the meat unfit for humans.

Although races vary in location and the number of horses participating, they all come down to two things: illegal betting and animal abuse. Many animal rights organisations in Italy have brought the problem to the attention of the authorities.

The Anti-Vivisection League  recently released a report  on the subject. It underlines how criminal organisations have been focusing more and more on illegal horse racing, 'an industry truly based on violence and exploitation'.

In a separate report,  the National Organisation for the Protection of Animals notes that in the western Sicilian province of Catania, illegal horse races were held on a weekly basis. The report  calls clandestine horse racing an 'epidemic' that is affecting not only Sicily but Campania and Puglia as well.

Ciro Troiano, 42, is head of Zoomafia, a department of the Anti-Vivisection League that reports on and works to prevent cruelty to animals by the mafia. 'In the last few years, clandestine races have been rapidly growing in Sicily,' he said. 'In fact, it has come to light that criminal organisations are behind this business.'

The bets on these horse races have reached astronomical levels and are becoming a big business for criminal  organisations.

'The jockeys get paid no matter how the race goes for them,' Giuseppe said. 'Of course, if they win, they get a lot more. The others bet a ton of money.'

He refused to comment on how much they wager.

Mr Troiano claimed that 'for every horse, up to Euro7,000 [HK$74,000] may be bet. So the profit of every race runs at about Euro50,000'.

Illegal horse-racing is estimated to generate as much as Euro1.5 billion a year for criminal organisations in southern Italy, where the influence of the mafia is strong. Police estimate that about 300 illegal races are run every year, but only a handful are stopped by authorities.

When police do manage to stop races, as they did in the city of Syracuse, they seize horses and money and send some of those responsible to prison.

Author Gery Palazzotto  recently wrote a book on clandestine horse racing in Sicily entitled Fotofinish. Palazzotto writes: 'Clandestine horse races are quick events that are born at dawn on any particular day and don't leave any traces. Once in a while, the police are able to film or block them thanks to a tip from the public. But it's not enough. In Sicily, it is certainly not [the races] that are the emergency, but they are part of a system that makes up the 'true Sicilian emergency' - the mafia. And by now it is absolutely clear that Cosa Nostra is up to its neck in these races.'



They're off and racing in the mean streets of Sicily