Seabiscuit: An American Legend

Something is happening. Lacking competition, racehorses in workouts rarely approach the speeds they achieve in races. But Smith had never seen a horse—any horse—flash this kind of speed, not in a workout, not in a race. Perhaps Smith thought his eyes were failing him, the clock in his head winding out of time. Coming up, a mile to go. He pulled his stopwatch out and pumped the trigger as the horse ripped past the marker. Seabiscuit kept rolling, faster and faster, covering more than fifty feet per second. His trainer watched intently, the surprise of it pushing up through him. Seabiscuit’s speed was not flagging. A thought drummed in Smith’s mind: He’s burning the top right off the racetrack.^1,2 Seabiscuit banked into the turn. There was a supple geometry to his arc, a fish bending through a current. Where virtually all horses decelerate and often drift out as they try to negotiate corners, Seabiscuit was capable of holding a tight line while accelerating dramatically. No horse has ever run a turn like this one.

When the colt flashed under the wire, Smith looked down at his hand. Seabiscuit had worked a mile in 1:36. The track record was 1:38. At that speed, Seabiscuit would have trounced the track record holder by more than a dozen lengths.²

Tom Smith was wide awake. In sixty years lived alongside thousands of horses, he had never seen anything like this. It was no fluke: in another clandestine workout not long after, the colt would tie a thirty-year-old world record for seven eighths of a mile, running it in 1:22.³

Smith took Seabiscuit back to the barn, his secret seething in his head. For the first time, he grasped the awesome responsibility that lay in his hands.

The old cowpuncher was scared to death.⁴

Smith wasn’t about to let anyone know what he had seen in that workout. Not yet. The weights weren’t out for the hundred-grander. He would keep Seabiscuit in San Francisco, where he could work in peace until he was ready for Santa Anita. Howard wanted to show his colt off to his hometown anyway.

On November 28, 1936, after nearly a month of legging up at Tanforan, Seabiscuit was trucked ten miles down the pike to run in Bay Meadows’ mile-long Bay Bridge Handicap. The field was the best the track had to offer, including Velociter, the former track record holder for the race’s mile distance, and the terrific mare Uppermost, the only horse to better Velociter’s time. Though his two main rivals had established themselves over the Bay Meadows course, Seabiscuit, by virtue of his Scarsdale Handicap win, was given the high weight of 116 pounds, 2 more than Uppermost and 9 more than Velociter.

Seabiscuit, a little stir-crazy after a full month on the sidelines, pushed off so hard at the starting bell’s ring that he shoveled a big hunk of ground right out from under his hind hooves, dropping nearly to his knees. At the same moment he was bumped hard by the horse to his left. Pollard somehow managed to stay aboard while his colt regained his footing. By then, the field was six lengths up the track.

Starting his race all alone, Pollard tried to turn the incident to his advantage, cutting in to the rail for a ground- saving trip while far ahead of him, Velociter and Uppermost cruised to the lead. Pollard unleashed Seabiscuit’s rally immediately, rushing up behind the field in hopes of finding an avenue through the pack. As the first turn approached, the horses farther out from the rail hustled inward and cut Seabiscuit off. With nowhere to go, Pollard waited. They pulled toward the backstretch, and Pollard saw a narrow hole open between horses and tried to send Seabiscuit through it. He didn’t make it, and had to snatch up the reins and yank Seabiscuit back to prevent him from clipping the heels of the horses coming together in front of him. Trapped again, Pollard waited until the field straightened out. A hole opened. Pollard told Seabiscuit to take it, and the horse darted in.

Seabiscuit shot through the pack, swung out, and drew ahead of Uppermost, claiming second on the outside. Only front-running Velociter remained to be caught. Tugging his right rein, Pollard fanned his colt out and hung on as Seabiscuit gunned Velociter down. All alone again, but this time in front, Pollard leaned back and slowed Seabiscuit for the last fifty yards. They cantered down the lane and hit the wire, winners by five lengths.

A thrill went through the crowd. Seabiscuit had equaled his Tanforan workout time of 1:36 for the mile, officially breaking the track record. Two clockers who had started their watches when Seabiscuit actually left the gate stared at their watch hands in disbelief. They had caught Seabiscuit running the fifth-fastest mile ever run, just three fifths of a second off the world record.

Back at the barn, the stable hands were shocked.⁵ They had no idea that the horse was so fast. Only Smith was unsurprised, but he was not happy that the news was out.

On Sunday, December 12, Team Seabiscuit re-assembled in the Bay Meadows paddock for the mile-and-three- sixteenths World’s Fair Handicap, the crowning stakes race of the track meeting. The field, including two major stakes winners, was the most formidable Seabiscuit had ever faced. Just after Pollard swung aboard, a paddock official waved him back so another horse could precede him in the post parade. Howard yelled across the paddock to the horse’s owner, “This is your last chance to be in front!” The crowd gave Howard a hearty round of applause.

Determined not to be left behind as they had been in the Bay Bridge Handicap, Pollard shot Seabiscuit from the starting gate and sent him blowing past the field. Seabiscuit streaked out to a twelve-length lead. The panicked jockeys behind him launched frantic rallies to catch him, but they could only cut the lead down to eight lengths. To wild cheering, Seabiscuit jogged down the homestretch all by himself. Pollard, laughing as he stood in the stirrups and leaned his full weight against the reins, did just about everything he could to slow Seabiscuit down. He wasn’t much of a match for his colt, who tugged away at the bridle, begging to run.

When they returned to the scales, Seabiscuit wasn’t even breathing hard. He had eclipsed another track record, running less than a second off the world record. His time was so fast that in the following year, no horse at Bay Meadows would come within three seconds of it. Pollard suddenly found himself in a sea of reporters. If he met the same field again, he sang out, he’d have time to ride Seabiscuit right off the track, canter him down to San Mateo for some Christmas shopping, swing by the post office for their fan mail, and still trot back in time to win the race.⁶

The Bay Meadows operators got the point: Seabiscuit was far too good for anything at their track. The message was underscored when the West Coast’s most prominent “future book” wagering operator, who was based in San Francisco, rated Seabiscuit above Rosemont for the hundred-grander. Hoping to keep Seabiscuit around for another race, the Bay Meadows racing secretary made an emergency trip out of town, hoping to scare up some of the Handicap favorites to face him at Bay Meadows.

Rosemont and the other big boys weren’t coming. Seabiscuit was going to have to go get them.

On December 18, Seabiscuit stepped onto the russet soil of Santa Anita for the first time. In Barn 38 Smith kicked down the wall between two stalls to create a palatial home for Seabiscuit and Pumpkin. The stable boys dubbed it the Kaiser Suite.

The locals at Santa Anita and the press outside the Bay Area greeted the raving headlines from San Francisco