Piece of race equipment taken in hand (5)
I believe the answer is:
spoon
'hand' is the definition.
The definition and answer can be both man-made objects as well as being singular nouns.
Perhaps you can see a link between them that I can't see?
'piece of race equipment taken in' is the wordplay.
'piece' becomes 'p' (abbreviation for Pawn).
'of' becomes 'o''.
'race equipment' becomes 'son' (I can't justify this - if you can you should believe this answer much more).
'taken in' means one lot of letters goes inside another (some letters have taken in others).
'p'+'o'='po'
'po' placed inside 'son' is 'SPOON'.
Can you help me to learn more?
(Other definitions for spoon that I've seen before include "A runcible item of cutlery?" , "Canoodle" , "Dining utensil" , "Piece of cutlery" , "Eating implement" .)