A peculiar madness was seizing the press box and clockers’ stand. There were more than a dozen clockers at the track, yet not one had seen Seabiscuit in a single workout since Santa Anita opened in December. Unable to catch him on their stopwatches, some of them began to circulate old rumors that Seabiscuit was lame.7 The rumors were quickly picked up by the press, which set out to investigate. While leading Seabiscuit out for walks, Smith stared in amazement as newsmen got down on their hands and knees to see if the horse had a game leg.8 Howard watched and laughed. Other journalists began seeing ghosts, reporting imaginary sightings of Seabiscuit working late at night. “The ‘mystery’ of Seabiscuit,” wrote David Alexander, “seems to have been bothering a lot of the boys here to the point of a nervous breakdown.”9
January 31 started out as an ordinary Monday for the clockers. They watched the waves of horses coming and going from the track at their usual early-morning times. As Santa Anita was closed on Mondays, they would normally have gone home in midmorning, when the workouts were over. But they still hadn’t timed a single workout for Seabiscuit since he arrived at Santa Anita a month before. They settled in to wait him out. Gradually, attrition thinned the ranks. By lunchtime, only two hardy clockers remained. A handful of reporters gutted out the wait with them. Their hopes dimmed as they watched a rainstorm approaching. They knew that Seabiscuit didn’t work on wet tracks.
Shortly after lunch, just before the rains hit, the clockers were startled by an improbable spectacle. Two men and two horses materialized from under the purple storm clouds, walked up the track, and reined up in front of the press box. It was Tom Smith, on a broad yellow horse. Alongside him, Red Pollard sat in his customary seat atop the familiar little bay horse. The clockers gaped: Smith was
They lunged for their stopwatches. Smith, seeing that the track was standing at attention, cantered the horses once around, then pulled up at the finish line while Pollard and his mount peeled off for a workout. With Pollard sitting motionless in the saddle, they reeled off rapid fractions, clipping under the wire after six furlongs. Smith took the horse back to the barn. The reporters bounced along behind, teasing Smith for letting himself get caught. Smith, for some reason not his usual surly self, laughed with them, saying he hadn’t been aware that the clockers and reporters were still there. “I figured I’d just steal the march on everybody,” he said. “Doggone those clockers.10 I’ll fool them yet.” The next morning the papers were full of the news.
But a year of dealing with Tom Smith had gotten to some of the reporters. Paranoia was setting in. Something wasn’t right. Wasn’t it suspicious that Smith had waved at them? Didn’t Seabiscuit seem to be blowing a little too hard after the work? Wasn’t it odd that Smith was so amiable about having been caught? Had anyone
Back in Barn 38, Smith must have read that headline and smiled.
The laughter subsided immediately. A few days after Seabiscuit’s six-furlong workout, a tipster contacted the local district attorney’s office with a startling claim: On the backstretch at Santa Anita a man was preparing to harm Seabiscuit. His name was James Manning, and he had infiltrated the barn area with plans to break into Seabiscuit’s stall and shove a sponge up his nostril, impeding his breathing. Manning had been sent by a group of men from the East Coast who wanted to ensure that Seabiscuit would lose the Santa Anita Handicap. Because Seabiscuit’s fans had made him the prohibitive favorite in the race, his rivals had become relative long shots. If the race-fixing conspirators could stop Seabiscuit, they could take advantage of the other horses’ long odds, cash in huge bets, and disappear.
The district attorney took the tip seriously. Manning was quickly hunted down and arrested before he could reach Seabiscuit’s stall. In interrogation, he confessed. Because the police had caught him before he could carry out his crime, prosecutors didn’t have much to charge him with. They settled for a charge of vagrancy and gave him the option of being expelled from the state or serving jail time. Manning chose the former. Police escorted him to the border and booted him across.
The news broke on February 1 with front-page banner headlines. A ripple of horror spread across the backstretch. “Sponging,” an old race-fixing technique from racing’s corrupt days, threatened horses’ lives.12 The ensuing partial strangulation frequently triggered systemic, stress-related diseases that were often fatal. And unless a horseman was actively looking for the sponge, it could go undetected for weeks.
Smith put Manning out of his mind and went back to tormenting the clockers. By mid-February the reporters had figured out that when Howard went to the training track Seabiscuit was soon to follow, and they had taken to trailing the owner around. Smith used this to his advantage. During the races he sent Howard over to his box at the main Santa Anita track as a decoy while he led Seabiscuit over to the training track nearby.13 Just before Seabiscuit worked out, Howard excused himself from his box for a moment. Sprinting to the training track, he stayed for the one and a half minutes necessary for Seabiscuit to blaze through a mile workout. A moment later he was back in his box. He’d been gone so briefly that no one suspected he’d done anything more interesting than visit the men’s room.
The workout demonstrated that the horse was ready for the February 19 San Carlos Handicap, and for once the track secretary relented, assigning him 130 pounds. Pollard, finally released from his suspension, was itching to ride him. On the day before the race, everything seemed to be coming together.
But again, luck ran out. All night long, rain pounded the track. The next morning the course was a swamp, and Smith scratched his horse for the fourth straight time. Fair Knightess, a better mudder, was left in the race, and Pollard opted to ride her instead.14 The decision was the pivot point of his life.
As the San Carlos field leaned around the far turn, Pollard was bent over the back of Fair Knightess, who was racing along the rail in fourth. Around him, close enough to touch, was a dense phalanx of horses moving at terrific speed: Indian Broom on the rail, Pompoon on the outside, Mandingham right on Fair Knightess’s tail. Just inches ahead of Fair Knightess was He Did, the horse famous for having sideswiped Seabiscuit’s old stablemate Granville at the start of the 1936 Kentucky Derby, knocking his jockey off. Midway around the far turn at Santa Anita, He Did did it again.
Leading the dense pack of horses around the turn, He Did took an awkward, sagging step. For an instant, he lost his momentum. The formation of runners collapsed, and horses began to rack up behind him. With nowhere to go and no time to stop herself, Fair Knightess charged straight into the bottleneck. Pollard must have seen He Did’s dark hindquarters suddenly in his face, too close. He had no time to react. Fair Knightess reached forward just as He Did kicked out with his heels.
Jockeys say there is a small, bright sound when hooves clip against each other, a cheery portent of the wreck that is likely to follow. Pollard must have heard it. Fair Knightess’s forelegs were kicked out from under her. Unable to catch herself, she pitched into a somersault at forty miles per hour. Under Pollard her head and neck dropped
