After having achieved fame and winning races all over the place, there was a great deal of pressure to run Seabiscuit in a match race against War Admiral, his blood relative who was cleaning up the tracks in the East. After finally making the arrangements for a race at Belmont in late 1939, not so easily done because War Admiral, a triple-crown winner, was due to be retired at the end of the year and what did the owner have to gain by possibly losing to a rival, the race was called off because Seabiscuit had knee problems. He was then entered in a race with War Admiral in a full field. "Red" Pollard, the jockey who was scheduled to ride him in the race, and who had ridden Seabiscuit many times, was terribly injured just before the race. He was known for his extraordinary use of scatological language and he was forced to make a 45 minute ride to the hospital with his leg horribly mangled. NBC arranged for a live interview with him and his good friend and rival jockey [c:]Wolf. Because network executives had nightmares that Pollard might indulge in his penchant for expletives, they gave both riders a spirit to follow. Everything was just fine until the interviewer had Wolf ask Pollard how he should ride Seabiscuit. At this point Pollard, in his hospital bed "accidentally drop the script and said as the producer rushed to give them to him in the correct order, "well you just put one leg over his back, put your feet in the stirrups, and then fuckitup as usual." As technicians tore out of their seats to cut the transmission, Wolf collapsed on the floor laughing hysterically. The match race was finally held at Pimlico in 1938. That year Seabiscuit obtained more newspaper space than Hitler or FDR
Seabiscuit didn't look like much. With his smallish stature, knobby knees, and slightly crooked forelegs and a reputation for being lazy, loving to lie around his stall sleeping much more than most horses. He looked more like a cow pony than a thoroughbred. But looks aren't everything; he had heart. Tom Smith, one of the heroes of the story, had an uncanny ability to recognize quality in horses --"he had cultivated an almost mystical communication with horses" (but ironically hated talking to people) -- and to get the absolute best out of them. Smith had all sorts of tricks to make the horse adapt to unusual situations. Smith was a character himself who played all sorts of hide-and-seek games with the media so they would not find out how fast his horse was during practice sessions.
There were numerous setbacks. On several occasions Charles Howard, Sea biscuit's owner, an automobile baron who once declared that "the day of the horse is past," was told by veterinarians that his horse would never run again after an injury, but each time Smith was able to nurse the horse back to greatness. And what's truly astonishing is that many of his record-breaking runs were made when he was considerably older than the other horses and carrying unheard of added weight. Not only that, Seabiscuit was known to slow down (this was even sometimes used as a strategy) to let other horses close up during a race, because Seabiscuit seemed to love taunting his rivals and then effortlessly racing ahead to finally win by several lengths.
Hillenbrand describes the social atmosphere of the 1930s when Seabiscuit became an American icon: the snobbery of the eastern establishment that regarded western horses as inferior, and the horrible conditions that jockeys worked under. They were constantly dieting using even tapeworms and purgatives to lose weight. Often they were so weak they could barely keep themselves in the saddle.
Hillenbrand is a wonderful story teller. You can feel yourself pulling for the characters, whipping through the pages to see what happens next. This book should not be missed.
