I invented this phrase in 1975. I was a freshman in college and we were out drinking on a weekend. I had to go really badly and I needed a descriptive way to explain to my friends how badly I had to go, because I was drinking twelve ounce beers and I have a six ounce bladder. Unfortunately my friends were neither entertained nor sympathetic over my plight. I knew nothing about horses, except for the fact that when they pee they pee a lot. I ended up becoming a polo player later in life, but this was before that. When I became a polo player, my work around horses confirmed what I suggested when I invented this phrase. They pee a lot!!! And to confirm my story, many of the polo ponies on our horse farm were retired race horses. Anyway, I’m getting off the point a little. The truth was I really did NOT have to pee like a race horse, but the descriptive nature of my plea caught the ear of everyone in the car and at last they were entertained by my plight. And this caused the driver to stop and let me pee. After about 10 seconds, my six ounce bladder was empty and we were on our way again.
In the following years I heard the phrase again and again, and knew that was something that I first uttered in January of 1975. True story.
Later in life I began to believe I must have heard it somewhere before, and recently told this story to some of my family members who, um peed themselves laughing. So we went online looking for the origin of the phrase, and found no plausible or definable starting point. So, here I am to confess...it was me. Again, I emphasize: this is a true story. I am more than willing to be edified as to another source, which would confirm my later suspicion that I heard the phrase issued forth before me, and simply repeated what was planted submliminally in my mind. Yet, I have never been able to confirm any use of the phrase prior to the night I thought it up.
One point of interest. When I became a polo player, i worked around a lot of grooms, who took care of the horses. They would never say, “I gotta pee like a race horse”. Most of them hated horses, and only did that work because they knew how and they could not hold a normal job. So who else who hangs around race horses would say something like that? The people who bet on them? Perhaps, because they are a motley crew of gambling addicts. Perhaps. It certainly was not the royalty who owned the horses. But that’s about it. It was either me, or people who bet on horses.