Seabiscuit: An American Legend, in detail
Seabiscuit is the story of the undersized, knobby-kneed racehorse who became the most celebrated American athlete of the late 1930s — drawing larger newspaper audiences than Franklin Roosevelt or Joe DiMaggio at his peak. Laura Hillenbrand tells it through the interlocking stories of three men: Charles Howard, the self-made automobile tycoon who bought Seabiscuit; Tom Smith, the reclusive, intuitive trainer who saw what other horsemen missed; and Red Pollard, the half-blind, oversized jockey who formed an inseparable bond with the horse and nearly died twice before their final race together.
Hillenbrand's research is extraordinary. She wrote the book while severely ill with chronic fatigue syndrome, largely from her apartment, using letters, newspapers, and firsthand interviews. The technical detail is convincing — the book is as precise about the biomechanics of a horse's stride as it is about the sociology of Depression-era racetracks — and the writing achieves a sustained tension across races the reader may already know the outcomes of.
The Depression context is not background decoration. Hillenbrand argues that Seabiscuit's appeal was inseparable from the era's economic despair: here was a horse that had been written off, underestimated, and mistreated, that had come back from apparent defeat to beat the most celebrated horses in the country. The parallels were not subtle, and the American public did not require them to be. Radio broadcasts of Seabiscuit's races drew audiences in the tens of millions.
The match race between Seabiscuit and War Admiral — the Triple Crown winner, universally considered unbeatable — is the book's centerpiece, and Hillenbrand's reconstruction of the two minutes and eleven seconds it took is as good as sports writing gets. The subsequent chapter, in which both Seabiscuit and Pollard suffer near-fatal injuries and then return to win the Santa Anita Handicap, gives the book its emotional resolution. Hillenbrand is careful to distinguish the mythology that grew up around Seabiscuit from what the evidence shows, which makes her account more trustworthy rather than less compelling.
The big ideas
- 1.
Seabiscuit was undersized and poorly conformed by racing standards — his owners had previously raced him too frequently and with too little care. Tom Smith recognized potential that conventional horsemen had written off.
- 2.
Red Pollard was too heavy for a jockey and had lost significant vision in one eye from a childhood accident. His insistence on riding Seabiscuit despite these obstacles drove the partnership that defined both their careers.
- 3.
Charles Howard was a car dealer who had essentially created the Ford dealership model in California. His approach to Seabiscuit — marketing him, staging him, managing the public narrative — was borrowed from the automobile business.
