In a career that lasted from April 1830 to July 1832 he ran nineteen times and won seventeen races, including four walkovers.
Priam was a bay horse with two white feet standing 15.3 hands high, bred in Sussex by Sir John Shelley.
[3] Priam's sire, Emilius, won the Derby in 1823 and went on to become a successful stallion at the Riddlesworth stud which was owned and run by Thomas Thornhill.
Apart from Priam, Emilius’s best winners included Plenipotentiary (Derby), Riddlesworth (2000 Guineas) and Mango (St Leger) and he was British Champion sire in 1830 and 1831.
Two days later at the same meeting he won the Column Stakes by a short-head from Augustus, after his rider Frank Buckle Jr. was forced to drop the colt to the back of the eight runner field before he could obtain a clear run.
After a delay of an hour, caused by thirteen or fourteen false starts the race began with Priam being left behind by the other runners.
Day was able to wait until the final furlong before producing Priam with a strong run to take the lead and win by two lengths from Little Red Rover.
The wet weather of early summer had continued and heavy rain and a thunderstorm on the day of the race left the ground extremely soft and muddy.
He took the lead from Emancipator inside the final furlong but was overtaken in the closing stages and beaten half a length by Birmingham, a colt who seemed particularly well-suited by the conditions.
[12] At the next Newmarket meeting Priam ran in a "celebrated"[10] £200 match race against the mare Lucetta, winner of the Ascot Gold Cup.
[14] Priam was retired to stud and failed to appear in three scheduled races, including matches against Camarine and Emancipation, at Newmarket in October.
Although his racing career had ended more than fifty years earlier, Priam was ranked twenty-seventh, having been placed in the top ten by nine of the voters.
At his first season at Merritt's Hicks Ford stud in Virginia, he covered at least a hundred mares at a fee of 50 guineas, more than recouping his purchase price.