tactic. Reaching across the gap between the two horses, he grabbed Seabiscuit’s saddlecloth and pulled back hard. Woolf couldn’t believe it. “What are you doing, Spec?” he shouted.8 Richardson didn’t let go.
Seabiscuit was now towing Ligaroti down the homestretch. Woolf couldn’t break him free. Anchored by Richardson’s grasp, Ligaroti began to haul himself forward. The two horses drew together again, running stride for stride with Seabiscuit’s head still in front. On their backs, Woolf and Richardson struggled. With seventy yards to go, Richardson abruptly released the saddlecloth and grabbed Woolf’s whip hand. Woolf twisted around in the saddle, trying to snatch his wrist free. It was here, Richardson later said, that he locked his leg over Woolf’s leg. If Seabiscuit moved up, Woolf would be scraped off his saddle and slammed into the track. The Howards’ sporting gesture had disintegrated into a back-alley brawl.9
With just a few yards to go, Woolf was frantic. Seabiscuit was fighting hard, but in Richardson’s grasp, he could not break away. The wire was looming overhead, and Ligaroti was lunging for the lead. Races in that day were not yet filmed with head-on and side-shot patrol cameras to police for riding infractions, so there was a good chance that Ligaroti would not be disqualified if his nose hit the wire first. Woolf could not move Seabiscuit up. He had to move Ligaroti back.
With twenty yards to go, Woolf tore his hand free, threw out his right arm and grabbed Ligaroti’s bridle, just above the bit. Just as the wire passed overhead, he pulled back, lifting the horse’s head up and to the left as Seabiscuit’s head bobbed forward. Seabiscuit flew under the wire first. Lugging 130 pounds, Ligaroti, and Richardson, Seabiscuit had run nine furlongs in 1:49. He had broken the track record by four seconds, the equivalent of some twenty-five lengths.
Up on the clubhouse, Oscar Otis looked quizzically at the finish line. He had seen Ligaroti’s head jerk up oddly at the wire. A jubilant celebration was going on all around him; almost no one else had noticed anything amiss. The reporters were raving. One called it “the dingbustingest contest you ever clapped an eye on … a ripsnorting race.”10 But the stewards, standing on an infield platform right above the finish line, had seen everything. The INQUIRY sign blipped up on the board.
Richardson galloped back first, jumped off the horse, bounded up the stairs three at a time, and muddied up the stewards’ stand carpets. Shouting passionately and waving his arms as he spoke, Richardson charged that Woolf had fouled him. The stewards called Woolf in. With his usual frankness, the Iceman admitted everything he had done but explained why he had done it. The stewards sent the jockeys outside while they conferred. The crowd buzzed in confusion.
Woolf and Richardson waited side by side on the track, Woolf with his hands on his hips, Richardson with his arms folded on the rail. Each one peered angrily out of the corner of his eye at the other, and neither said a word. Woolf was sure that Richardson was about to smack him.
The ruling came down. The foul was not allowed, and the result was allowed to stand. The baffled reporters asked the stewards why they had held an inquiry at all, but the stewards refused to explain themselves.
Clearly, something was up: Woolf and Richardson were told not to accept any more mounts pending a meeting by the stewards.
The riders stomped to the jockeys’ room, snapping at each other. The newsmen, in agonies of curiosity, tailed them. They overheard Richardson accusing Woolf of grabbing his bridle, and Woolf retorting that Richardson had grabbed his whip. Woolf said if Richardson had just stopped shouting for one single instant to concentrate on riding, he might have gotten his horse’s nose in front.11,12
Down in the winner’s circle, Crosby could smell disaster. Standing with Marcela, he waited, sober-faced and distracted, as his wife—universally known as “Mrs. Bing”—gamely presented the winner’s trophy to Charles. Lin and his father, laughing, shook hands. With the ceremony over, Crosby rushed after Woolf and Richardson. He found them on the verge of blows in the jockeys’ room, with all the reporters watching. Desperate to avoid bad publicity, Crosby stepped between them and told them to hold their tongues. Marcela, more excited than she had ever been over a race, downed several aspirin.13
The next morning the stewards called Woolf and Richardson in and threw the book at them. Not only were both suspended for the rest of the meeting, but the officials recommended that the state racing board ban them from all California tracks until January 1, 1939. It was a punishment tough enough to demand explanation, but the stewards still refused to reveal what had happened. In their zeal to avoid resurrecting the sport’s reputation for chicanery, they tried to bury the incident. Asked to release official photos, they declined. “I want the newspapers to forget this thing,” said the presiding steward.14 “Consequently, I have no further information to give.”
A more suggestive comment could hardly have been made. The press covering the race was already suspicious and scandal-hungry, and assumed that the stewards were hiding something shocking. Wild speculation was the order of the day. Someone was bound to make a public accusation of wrongdoing.15 Someone did.
It began four days after the race, with a
At first glance, it seems surprising that the story caused the stir it did. The uproar was not over the rough riding in the race—which was truly outrageous—but over a supposed shadowy conspiracy around it. Yet, however much the tone of the article suggested otherwise, even if true, the allegations were trivial. As long as Woolf intended to win, there would have been nothing wrong with minimizing his winning margin. At most, it would have created a more entertaining spectacle and saved Bing, Lin, and Jimmy Smith from the humiliation of seeing their horse routed. Likewise, there certainly was nothing wrong with Richardson trying to win the race. But the paper presented these allegations as scandalous bombshells, calling them “startling disclosures.” In an era in which the sport’s corrupt years were still a fresh memory, it was enough to set the ball rolling. The story was picked up by the wire services and distributed nationwide.
A massive controversy ensued. Richardson immediately denied placing any bet, and Woolf denied that he had ever made any such statement, or even spoken to any reporter. Though the allegations did not point to race-fixing, in the sensational atmosphere following the unexplained suspension of two jockeys, the race was now being referred to as a “frameup” and a “fix.”17 Resting in the Del Mar Hotel, Howard saw the
