of men. He relaxed and walked down the gangplank with his usual ease.
Having heard the radio commentators state that Seabiscuit’s injuries were career-ending—statements that no one in the Seabiscuit camp had uttered—and having heard persistent rumors that Smith had lied about the horse, the reporters were immediately suspicious when they saw Seabiscuit step out, walking soundly. They made no secret of their cynicism. “Does he really have a sore tendon?” asked one. “Why was he scratched from the Massachusetts?” yelled another.
“My,” Smith replied, “but you must be having rainy weather around Chicago.”
Someone suggested that Arlington Park officials would demand that Smith work Seabiscuit in their presence before his next scheduled race, the July 4 Stars and Stripes Handicap, to see that there was no “monkey business.” Smith said that complying with such a demand was up to Howard. Then he swung up on Pumpkin, grasped Seabiscuit’s halter, and led him, bucking and antsy, away from the reporters.
Seabiscuit had indeed been injured, but the veterinarians had been wrong. The injury was not as serious as they had feared. Under Smith’s care, Seabiscuit’s leg cooled and healed. He was soon dead sound.
The public pressure on the Howard barn was enormous. After seeing Seabiscuit walk from the train, a local reporter stated that the rumor that his injury had been faked had been “confirmed.” Another called for the stewards to demand that Howard file a definitive guarantee that the horse would start. Arlington Park officials made a point of warning the public that if it rained, Seabiscuit probably would be scratched. But though the press and track officials were skeptical, the public was not. They bought up advance seats at an unprecedented pace, packed into special trains, and crammed into the track in record numbers to see the horse they called “the Great Traveler.”
Right on cue, rain swamped Arlington on race day. Seabiscuit had been assigned 130 pounds, as much as 25 more than his rivals. He would be running on a course that clearly had no time to dry out. The only exercise Smith had time to give him was one slow gallop, followed by a brief half-mile sprint. The horse, idle since the Bay Meadows Handicap in mid-April, was as big as a house. He had no chance of winning the Stars and Stripes, and everyone in his camp knew it. But the pressure from the stewards and the press was too much to bear. Howard announced that as long as it wasn’t raining at the time of the race, his horse would go.
The rain stopped, and the puddles on the track went still. Pumpkin, Howard, and Smith brought Seabiscuit to the paddock, and drew him up beside a swaying willow hedge. The crowds gathered ten deep for one hundred feet in each direction, a few spectators reaching through the slats of the fence to stroke Seabiscuit’s chest as Smith cinched the girth on Woolf’s kangaroo-leather saddle. Howard gave the nod and Woolf rode Seabiscuit out before a crowd of fifty thousand. Shuffled back to last in heavy traffic and carried hopelessly wide on the first turn, Seabiscuit slipped through the mud, but still passed eight horses to finish second. The crowd was quiet. “The Seabiscuit myth,” wrote a reporter, “is broken.”
Smith loaded the horse back onto the train. Woolf and Howard climbed up with him. They were going back to California.
The destination was not Santa Anita, but the new Hollywood Park. The track was offering a $50,000 purse for the inaugural Hollywood Gold Cup, a ten-furlong race that promised to become one of the sport’s premier events. The field was topped by a familiar face. Bing Crosby and Lin Howard’s Ligaroti was finally coming into excellent form. On the day that Seabiscuit lost the Stars and Stripes, the “Argentine Jumping Bean” had broken the track record in the American Handicap. In the race he had defeated Whichcee, who had been universally regarded as California’s second-best horse, behind Seabiscuit. Bing and Lin were overjoyed, and prepped him for the Hollywood Gold Cup. Lin was listed as the official trainer of the horse, but the actual conditioning had been done by Jimmy Smith, Tom’s son. Track officials had been pleading with Howard to bring his horse to the race and make it a family affair, and though Seabiscuit had been assigned 133 pounds, between 13 and 28 pounds more than his competition, Howard accepted. Seabiscuit’s stock was falling through the floor. No one in the Howard camp had any credibility left, and it was widely speculated that the horse’s great days were behind him. Seabiscuit had to run in a big race, and he had to win it.
The race was scheduled for July 16, giving Smith only a week to prepare Seabiscuit after his arrival in California. The trainer did his best to keep him fit on the long journey west. Whenever the train pulled into a stop, he backed Pumpkin into a corner of the railcar and trotted Seabiscuit around and around. Outside the train, admirers mobbed the platforms to watch him go. As the train pulled out, the fans cheered him on his way. With each stop, news that the horse was coming buzzed up the telegraph wires, and a new throng would gather farther along the route. In town after town, through Kansas, New Mexico, and Arizona, the story was the same. At Albuquerque, even the reservation population turned out. As Smith walked the horse by, an ancient Indian leaned up and looked the horse over.
“Racehorse?” he said. Smith nodded.
“Looks like a cow pony to me.”1
Smith was pleased.
The rumors followed them west. The backstretch at Hollywood was thick with stories, chief among them that Seabiscuit was lame. The stewards listened and worried that they would be burned by Seabiscuit as Belmont and Suffolk Downs had been. They had some reason to be wary. Earlier in the meet, a much-anticipated meeting between Kentucky Derby winner Lawrin and Preakness winner Dauber had to be canceled at the last moment when Dauber suffered a minor injury. The event had been traumatic for the Hollywood Park officials and seemed to make them overly concerned about Smith.
On July 11, 1938, Smith walked Seabiscuit onto the track for his first workout at Hollywood. The trainer didn’t like the looks of the track, which was so deep and crumbly that it was playing at least a second slower than usual.2 “It looked like they were trying to grow corn on the track,” he said.3
Before five hundred spectators, Seabiscuit breezed an easy mile under Woolf. He didn’t show a trace of lameness, prompting Smith to announce that the horse was ready to run in the Gold Cup. But no one was ready to believe that things were as they appeared. The rumors about Seabiscuit’s bad-leggedness continued to circulate, and the stewards’ anxiety escalated. Two days later Smith stacked Seabiscuit with 133 pounds, including Woolf, and turned them loose for another workout. With Woolf pulling hard on the reins, Seabiscuit went smoothly and soundly, looking so fit that even the clockers were singing his praises.
The pair of workouts should have been enough to dispel the rumors. They weren’t. As Smith led the horse back to the barn, someone gave him an incredible piece of news. The stewards had commissioned a veterinarian to go over to the Howard barn, pull Seabiscuit out, examine him, and determine whether or not Smith was lying about his horse’s condition.
The action was unprecedented; no one had ever seen stewards treat a trainer with such blatant distrust.4 It was all the more extraordinary given the record of the trainer in question; aside from Fair Knightess, Tom Smith had reportedly never had a horse in his care suffer a serious injury.5 But Smith had played around with his pursuers for too long. Ever since Oscar Otis had discovered the trainer working
