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Outside Nairobi, the Only Track for 3,300 Miles

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When Steve Njuguna’s son told his father he wanted to follow in his footsteps as a jockey, Mr. Njuguna did all he could to dissuade him.

“I tried to push him to be a carpenter,” said Mr. Njuguna, who retired in 2011 after 33 years in the saddle. “There’s more of a future for a carpenter here.”

At Ngong Racecourse in Nairobi, Kenya, the only track in a 3,300-mile swath of Africa between Egypt and Zimbabwe, the jockeys struggle to earn $20 a ride, even in the big races. For the country’s biggest race, the Kenya Derby, the winning horse’s owner may take home little more than $7,200. Grooms, who wake up at 4:30 six mornings a week to muck out stables and brush down horses, make less than $100 a month. Yet, the dwindling numbers of trainers, jockeys, owners and breeders in Kenya are deeply committed to keeping the sport alive. To do that, said the trainer Nuno Nur, 35, “we have to get the booming middle class in Kenya off their golf courses and their polo fields and into the stands.”

Derby Day in Kenya, which was April 14 this year, attracted Kenyans and expatriates, young couples and families. Women in oversize sunglasses and summer frocks sipped Champagne. Bookies called final odds. Skittish horses shied from the starting gates. As John Sercombe, the course clerk, set the competitors off for the 1.5-mile race, the buzz in the air grew with cheers and whoops. Westonian, the winner, was ridden by Lesley Sercombe, the course clerk’s daughter, and trained by Patsy Sercombe, the clerk’s wife and Lesley’s mother.

The earnings might be low and the stands half-full, but for Mr. Njuguna, and now his son, who ignored his father’s advice: “This is the only thing that we can do in life. We must make it go as well as we can.”

DESCRIPTIONBrendan Bannon for The New York Times John Kuria shared a quiet moment with his horse Nutcracker before morning exercises.

Brendan Bannon, 43, is a photojournalist who has been working in Africa since 2005, when he began teaching photography and writing to teenagers who had been orphaned by AIDS. His pictures have appeared in The New York Times, Time magazine, Der Spiegel, Stern, The Christian Science Monitor and others. He is currently at work on a project called Daily Dispatches, a collaboration with Mike Pflanz that explores rapidly expanding African cities. He splits his time between Kenya and Buffalo, N.Y.

Follow @brendanbannon, @MikePflanz, @NYTSports and @nytimesphoto on Twitter. Lens is also on Facebook.