I 👏🏽need 👏🏽to👏🏽 talk👏🏽 about👏🏽 this 👏🏽horse👏🏽
*I read Seabiscuit: An American Legend by Laura Hillenbrand for the 5th time and need process my feelings*
Okay, so this good boy is named Seabiscuit, a renowned racehorse. Or this might be his identical brother Grog. They got switched out for photo ops regularly, and it’s almost impossible to tell the difference between the two.
Look at his legs!! Look at his knees! Those wobbly, crooked little things! People would think Seabiscuit was lame (as in unsound, not uncool) when they met him. He couldn’t even run straight. He had this wonky gallop in which his legs would fly out in the completely wrong direction. And people would get concerned. They would write to his stable, “How is it ethical to race a horse like that?” Or “WTH I’m going to call 1930s PETA on y’all!” And his owners would have to be like, “No we promise he is perfectly fit and happy. He just wobbles a little.” Seabiscuit was also only 15 hands high ( 5′2″), which is small for a racehorse. Physically, it made absolutely no sense that Seabiscuit was a fast horse. He had short legs and couldn’t run streamline fashion. He didn’t show much promise in racing until 1936, when he was sold to the Howard family for the paltry sum of $8,000. He flourished under their care and started to dominate racetracks in California.
So in 1938, Seabiscuit enters a match race against War Admiral.
War Admiral, as seen above, is a racing legend. He had legs for days and an aerodynamic racing bod. He won 21 out of his 26 races. Three of those races included the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes, making him the fourth American Triple Crown winner in history. Being the ultimate racing machine that he was, War Admiral was named the 1937 Horse of the Year. When running the Belmont Stakes, he literally sliced part of his hoof off in the starting gate and still won. It’s sorta like winning the Olympic 100 meter dash after losing a toe at the starting line. What an absolute bad ass. The odds were against Seabiscuit, literally. You could bet 1-4 for War Admiral or 2-1 for Seabiscuit. Not only did War Admiral have the better racing record and physique, but he also was a notoriously fast starter. In match races, the horse that gains the early lead almost always wins. Seabiscuit typically made his move more towards the end of his races. Additionally, Seabiscuit was only a big deal in the West Coast racing community, which was not taken seriously in the East Coast where War Admiral reigned supreme. It was thought that War Admiral simply the faster horse and would lead wire to wire.
Except none of that happened. Seabiscuit, not War Admiral, broke faster at the starting gate and led by two lengths. It was inexplicable. Seabiscuit out-gunned the legend! But then War Admiral, tough as nails, managed to catch up. The two horses were even, and it was thought that War Admiral, having managed to make a herculean recovery after loosing the initial lead, would make mince meat out of Seabiscuit. Little did they know that George Wolf, Seabiscuit’s jockey, was intentionally holding his horse back and letting War Admiral pull even. See, Seabiscuit did not just use his speed to best his opponents, he was also adept at pYchoLoGicaL WaRefAre. Seabiscuit was a dick and would slow down to let other horses catch up. Then every time they tried to pass him, he would speed up a little. His stablemates could only stand to train with him few times before refusing to run with him again. Seabiscuit looked War Admiral in the eye and something about this knobby-knee’d wonder horse just absolutely destroyed the reigning champion. Wolf later recounted that he saw War Admiral’s eyes rolling back in their sockets. Both horses ran their personal bests for a 1 3/16 mile distance, and Seabiscuit still won by 4 lengths.
Seabiscuit was the 1938 Horse of the Year, and got more press than FDR. It was estimated that 40 million people tuned in via radio to listen to him defeat War Admiral. His races were usually won carrying 15+ pounds more than any other horse on the track (It is thought that each 2-3 pounds slows a horse by a length in mid-distance races). In 1940, he set a world record for the amount of money earned by a horse, winning $437,730 (roughly $8 million USD today). To many people, the success of this crooked-legged horse represented hope during a period of economic turmoil.
