Seabiscuit: The
Little Horse With a Big Heart
In her story of Seabiscuit, Laura Hillenbrand has opened a unique window into the world of horse racing. The main characters are a quiet horse trainer named Tom Smith, the flamboyant horse owner Charles Howard, a horse named Seabiscuit and jockey’s Red Pollard and George Wolfe.
The owner and trainer first hooked up at the Aqua Caliente Race Track in Mexico. Smith and Howard were as opposite as night and day, but they made accommodations for each other’s differences and their relationship flourished. Once Smith
worked the stable’s
horses into
racing condition they moved the operation north to Santa Anita and into Barn #38.
Their first season together was successful and near the end of the Santa Anita season Howard decided to move his
stable to a small track in Michigan called the Detroit Fairgrounds. Smith was sent farther east to look for some mature horses to augment their juvenile stable. On June 29th at Boston’s Suffolk Downs a horse stopped in front of Tom Smith and for a long moment the two eyed one another. Fate? The horse continued in the post parade, but Seabiscuit had gotten Smith’s attention. It wasn’t his build, he had a rectangular body with short legs, but Smith looked at the program and saw that the horse was a descendent of the great Man O’ War and was sired by Hard Tack. Seabiscuit reflected none of the beauty and breadth of his forebears.
All of Mam O’ War’s descendents had something in common – they were all nasty, mean and unruly in one way or another. Seabiscuit was no exception.
Tom Smith wanted that horse and Charles Howard made arrangements. Seabiscuit was taken to the Howard barn, but the former owners had worn the horse out. Seabiscuit was exhausted from a hard racing campaign. The horse was only three years old and had already run as many races as most horses would accumulate in a full career. What Tom Smith wanted was time to rest the horse, and give himself a chance to figure out the horses problems and how best to deal with them. Seabiscuit had been abused by a number of jockey’s and it would take some time to turn the horse’s attitude around.
Jockey’s Red Pollard and George Woolf showed up at the right time and became the two main riders for Seabiscuit. They were friends and great competitors. They also had their own physical problems to deal with. Red Pollard had but one eye and George Woolf was diabetic.
In November of 1936 Howard’s stable of horses were in the San Francisco Bay area of California, the idea was to enter Seabiscuit in the Santa Anita handicap on February 27th of the next year.
Tom Smith had finally found a way to settle the horse down and got Seabiscuit interested in what he was born to do – run. They ran him in two prep races at Bay Meadows and won them both. Red Pollard was aboard in both wins. Then it was on to Southern California for two more prep races prior to the Santa Anita Handicap.
The big cap was run before 60, 000 raucous and cheering race fans. Pollard rode a perfect race weaving his way through the field and got the lead in the stretch – but the
jockey let the horse relax around the eighth pole. No one knows for sure, but chances are due to Pollard’s right blind eye he probably didn’t see Rosemont flying down the middle of the track. Seabiscuit was overtaken and couldn’t regain the momentum to win. He lost in a photo finish but won the hearts of Americans all over the depression-plagued land. There was something about that little horse that gave hope to millions who had little more than hope to cling to during those hard times.
The little horse with a big heart gave them that. Seabiscuit became a legend, not because he won all of his races, he didn’t, but because of the mystique that grew out of the horses will to win,
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