Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand

I’ve never considered myself a horse guy.  Horses scare me and horse racing has always bored me.  Of course I watch the triple crown races when they’re on TV, but generally I haven’t been interested in horses.  Seabiscuit certainly runs contrary to my expectations and my experience. 

Seabiscuit, a descendant of the great Man O’ War, began his career as a difficult horse who wouldn’t cooperate with trainers or jockeys.  Furthermore, he was small and undistinguished looking.  After the great trainer Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons gave up on him, he was bought in a claiming race by the west coast Buick magnate Charles Howard and put into training with maverick trainer Tom Smith.  Under Smith’s tutelage and ridden by Red Pollard and George Woolf, both deeply flawed men, as his jockies, Seabiscuit flourished as a handicap stakes winner for four years into horse middle age.  With Horse of the Year honors, a race against the fabled War Admiral, and a victory in the Santa Anita Handicap as major goals, Seabiscuit was campaigned across the country, becoming a darling of race fans and generating more inches of newsprint in 1938 than any other individual, including FDR.  The story of Seabiscuit’s racing career, however, tells only a part of the story.

Hillenbrand is at her best in presenting the context in which this remarkable story takes place.  The backgrounds of the characters provide life and interest.  Charles Howard who drifted to California and became one of the richest men in the west because he foresaw the future of the automobile and talked himself into the Buick franchise for the entire west, became Seabiscuit’s owner.  Tom Smith came out of the rough cowboy west and became one of the country's premier horse trainers.  Red Pollard, the jockey, grew up in comfort and when his father lost his fortune had to make his own way.  His small size and great energy brought him to the track.  Tijuana, Hollywood Park, Santa Anita, Pimlico, Belmont and all the other tracks where racing and track politics interact supply a world separated from the humdrum of ordinary life.  Within these contexts these extraordinary men, women, and animals live out their competitive lives.  Put these stories together with the America of the 1930’s and a complex and interesting tale emerges.  Hillenbrand is a careful researcher and a fine, sometimes inspired, writer.  Seabiscuit is well worth a reader’s time.