Its his­to­ry began in 1831, when the Horse Rac­ing Hunt­ing Soci­ety received 122 dessi­atines of land on Kho­dyn­ka Field by decree of the Sen­ate. On August 1, 1834, the first trot­ting race took place on Kho­dyn­ka Field. It is 1834 that is con­sid­ered the year the Cen­tral Moscow Hip­po­drome was found­ed.

Then the hip­po­drome devel­oped rapid­ly: more and more hors­es took part in the races, and records began to improve at all dis­tances.

Since 1918, the Cen­tral Moscow Hip­po­drome was moth­balled. Due to the civ­il war, mil­i­tary train­ing ses­sions were held on the ter­ri­to­ry, and work­ers’ ral­lies were held in the stands. V. I. Lenin gave a speech at one of them.

Resump­tion of reg­u­lar horse tri­als began in the 1920s. Test runs and races at the hip­po­drome were held as ear­ly as the begin­ning of 1921 and served as the rea­son for the Main Direc­torate of Horse Breed­ing and Horse Breed­ing to decide to orga­nize sched­uled horse tri­als from the autumn sea­son of 1921. In Sep­tem­ber, trot­ting races were resumed in Moscow, and a total of 163 trot­ters passed the test that year. This fig­ure increased every year. Already in 1929, 1030 trot­ters passed the test in 101 rac­ing days.

Until 1930, the trot­ting and rac­ing hip­po­dromes in Moscow were sep­a­rate and locat­ed close to each oth­er, while they belonged to dif­fer­ent soci­eties. In con­nec­tion with the need to expand and recon­struct the Belorussky rail­way junc­tion, the ques­tion of rebuild­ing or mov­ing the rac­ing hip­po­drome arose. The project to merge the two hip­po­dromes into one — a com­bined one — was imple­ment­ed in 1930.

Dur­ing the Great Patri­ot­ic War, the hors­es from the hip­po­drome were evac­u­at­ed to oth­er cities. The hip­po­drome served as the loca­tion for anti-air­craft gun­ners who guard­ed the skies over Moscow from ene­my air raids, and infantry units were trained on the tracks. About 100 employ­ees of the Cen­tral Moscow Hip­po­drome vol­un­teered for the front.

In 1949, the hip­po­drome suf­fered a major fire. In 1951–1955, the hip­po­drome build­ing was restored and built in the style of Stal­in­ist archi­tec­ture.

From 1970 to 1983, trot­ters set more than 50 new all-Union records and one absolute record at the hip­po­drome.

Since July 1, 2012, legal bet­ting has resumed at the hip­po­drome. Prof­its from the bet­ting at the hip­po­drome, with the excep­tion of the costs of its oper­a­tion, are used to sup­port and devel­op horse breed­ing.

Cur­rent­ly, the hip­po­drome is still the largest test­ing ground for selec­tion and breed­ing work in horse breed­ing, com­bin­ing the func­tions of two hip­po­dromes: trot­ting and rac­ing. There are 4 tracks for hors­es: the first is a rac­ing track (sand sur­face, length about 1800 meters); the sec­ond is a prize track (spe­cial sur­face, length 1600 meters); the third is a work­ing con­crete track (cov­ered with spe­cial chips, length about 1400 meters); the fourth is a work­ing earth track (earth sur­face, length about 1200 meters).

In total, there are about 40 sta­bles at the hip­po­drome, where both trot­ting and rac­ing depart­ments are locat­ed, as well as sev­er­al eques­tri­an schools and clubs. The build­ings are equipped with many pad­docks and horse walk­ers. The ter­ri­to­ry also has sev­er­al rid­ing are­nas and parade grounds, a hos­pi­tal and a quar­an­tine depart­ment. As for tech­ni­cal equip­ment, the hip­po­drome has all the nec­es­sary equip­ment for ser­vic­ing the ter­ri­to­ry and tracks: start­ing box­es, pho­to fin­ish, start­ing car, sup­port car.

One of the few hip­po­dromes in the coun­try where tests are held all year round. In any weath­er and under any cir­cum­stances, trot­ters take to the track every Sun­day, and in the sum­mer, from May to Sep­tem­ber, spec­ta­tors can watch tests of thor­ough­bred and Ara­bi­an race­hors­es every week­end. Among the largest annu­al events: the Monte Car­lo Radio Grand Prix, the Trot­ter Horse Breed­ing Fes­ti­val, the Min­ers’ Cup, inter­na­tion­al cham­pi­onships, pres­ti­gious tra­di­tion­al prize draws, and oth­ers. The best rep­re­sen­ta­tives of trot­ter and rid­ing breeds com­pete for vic­to­ry in the Grand All-Russ­ian Prizes (Der­by) every sea­son. Events are held to mark impor­tant dates and hol­i­days: Defend­er of the Father­land Day, March 8, Vic­to­ry Day, and so on.