Seabiscuit: An American Legend (Ballantine Reader's Circle)

Very nice book. Great story.

Laura Hillenbrand is a wordsmith of the top rank. She has written a great book about a horse who has largely been forgotten except by veteran racing fans: Seabiscuit. Seabiscuit, a descendent of the legendary Man O' War, had a rather modest racing career at the beginning having started from the claiming ranks. Thanks to a great trainer, he galloped his way up to the stakes level after having literally dozens of races under his girth. Seabiscuit was not the only colorful character in this claimer-to-champion saga. His trainer Tom Smith was a controversial character who loathed publicity and yet at the same time encouraged it. For example, Hillenbrand's stories of Smith's attempts to thwart the media and racing timers from reporting Seabiscuit's workouts (because Smith feared the weights assigned by the track would be so great as to hamper the horse's considerable ability) are hilarious. Seabiscuit's regular jockey, Red Pollard, was a man who loved to quote Shakespeare but also had to cover up a disability that may have contributed to one of Seabiscuit's most famous losses: Pollard was blind in one eye. Like most jockeys he battled a weight problem. (In one chapter, Hillenbrand writes brilliantly and humorously of the struggle of jockeys like Pollard to make the unnaturally low weights required of racing.) Finally, Seabiscuit's millionaire owner, Charles Howard, was perhaps the least colorful of the horse's connections, but he lost faith in neither Smith nor Pollard. He was the glue who held this unlikely hodgepodge together.Hillenbrand slowly but very entertainingly works the Seabiscuit story to the legendary 1938 match race with yet another descendent of Man O' War, 1937 Triple Crown winner War Admiral. She doesn't ignore the Admiral's connections either. Sam Riddle comes to life, as do the horse's infamous temper tantrums on the racetrack. There are constant difficulties in getting the two great horses together on the same track on the same day, including jockey Pollard's injuries (vividly described by Hillenbrand), Seabiscuit's injuries, and other delays. When the horses finally do get together (with the underdog Seabiscuit clobbering the Admiral), Hillenbrand writes with such vividness that you feel you are right there at the track witnessing the race. (She was fortunate enough to have obtained rare footage of this race and several other Seabiscuit races.)After the climax of this famous race, Hillenbrand continues the Seabiscuit saga to the deaths of the principals. On the last page she writes of Howard having buried Seabiscuit to a secret site at his ranch where he had an oak sapling planted where the great horse was buried. She writes: "He told only his sons the location of the grave and let the oak stand as the only marker. Somewhere in the high country that was once Ridgewood, the tree lives on, watching over the bones of Howard's beloved Seabiscuit."What a great writer. What a read.

I thoroughly enjoyed reading this book and hearing about these people and this horse, although I am not a big horse racing fan. This is a well written book, and I enjoyed getting to know them.

Even if you have no interest in horses or horse racing, this book is so wonderful it will grab at your heart and leave it thumping as you ride with the jockeys on the incomparable Seabiscuit. You'll find the horrible existence of the jockeys before there was medical insurance or protective headwear appalling, but there's something magical about these guys and horses- they know their horses as well as a modern fellow would know his car. George Woolf, one of the greatest jockeys who ever lived rode a horse as though he and the animal were one, a centaur. Author Hillenbrand's descriptions of how it must feel to have a 40 mile an hour machine under you will put you right in the saddle. You know Seabiscuit is going to beat War Admiral when the two are matched up for the famous Pimlico race but the author gives a thrilling description of that pivotal event and you almost feel sorry for War Admiral who did the best he could, both horses setting track speed records. But Seabiscuit sort of thumbed his nose at the Admiral, spooking him, and pulled away.The humans in the story are no less compelling. Charles Howard the former bicycle repairer who became a millionaire and sentimental owner of Seabiscuit. Tom Smith the trainer, who virtually never smiled, never said much but knew the soul and heart of a horse and often slept right in the stall with his charges. Seabiscuit was not only small for a thoroughbred, he had knobby knees, a scruffy tail, had a bad temper and given to sulking and acting up. Smith had an instinct. He saw in Seabiscuit what a horse whisperer sees- he saw the power.Smith turned Seabiscuit into a horse of a different color. The two jockeys who rode the Biscuit- George Woolf and Red Pollard, played him like a violin. But the price was high: Red was frightfully injured in accidents on the track and had been blinded in one eye by a rock one of the horses kicked up during a race. (Now of course jockeys wear protective helmets). Red, although his leg had been shattered, and earlier his chest caved in by a horse that fell on him, rode Seabiscuit to victory in the Santa Anita Handicap. Woolf, who was a diabetic in the days before the disease could be controlled, apparently fainted while riding in a race, slipped from the saddle and fell to the ground. He died the next day.There was romance in being a top jockey but also a horrible reality and enormous danger. The sport of kings took a huge toll in the days before insurance and protective gear. Nowadays a little of the romance is gone but this splendid book will put the romance right in your lap.

The story of Seabiscuit, his owner, trainer and the two jockeys who rode him is a story I will never forget - and in fact, it gives me courage at this time in history. Extraordinary men and an extraordinary horse in extraordinary circumstances at a time in history (the Great Depression of the 1930s) when hope - similar to current times in 2024 - was in short supply, came together to produce a story that would be nearly unbelievable if it were fiction. Laura Hillenbrand is also an extraordinary writer who is able to bring the personalities, emotions and excitement in the story of Seabiscuit to life. So glad I had not seen the movie or knew much about Seabiscuit prior to reading this book.