Seabiscuit: An American Legend

Grantland Rice, “keyed to the highest tension I have ever seen in sport.”¹⁰ “Maryland, My Maryland” wafted over a strangely quiet grandstand. The spectators, wrote Rice, were “too full of tension, the type of tension that locks the human throat.”

War Admiral walked up the track first, twirling and bobbing. Blunt-bodied Seabiscuit plodded along behind, head down. He looked up once, scanned the crowd, then lowered his head again. One witness compared him to a milk- truck horse. Shirley Povich of The Washington Post thought he exhibited “complete, overwhelming and colossal indifference.” The appearance was deceiving. Woolf could feel it. In post parades, he was accustomed to the smooth levelness of Seabiscuit’s walk, the gentle gait of a horse that puts his hooves down carefully. But this day Woolf felt something new, a gathering beneath him, something springlike. The horse was coiling up.

As the horses strode up the track, NBC radioman Clem McCarthy grabbed his microphone and turned to run to his race-calling post atop the clubhouse. The crowd was so dense that he couldn’t get through. He struggled in vain against a current of bodies, then gave up, exhausted. He did the best he could, climbing up on the track’s outer rail by the wire and settling in to call the race from there. His voice crackled over the radio waves to an estimated forty million listeners, including President Roosevelt.^11,12 Drawn up next to his White House radio, F.D.R. was so absorbed in the broadcast that he kept a roomful of advisors waiting. He would not emerge until the race was over.

The reporters massed by the railings in the press box. War Admiral was the toast of the newsmen; every single Daily Racing Form handicapper had picked him to win, as had some 95 percent of the other writers. Only a small and militant sect of California writers was siding with Seabiscuit. Down in the stands, the allegiances were more muddied. War Admiral was the heavy favorite in the betting, but reporters mingling in the crowd found that most racegoers were rooting for the underdog.

Up in her box, Gladys Phipps gazed down on Seabiscuit with pride. Her hard-tested faith in nasty old Hard Tack had finally paid off. After Seabiscuit began winning with Smith, the renowned Claiborne Farm, which had once politely but firmly rejected Hard Tack, changed its mind. Phipps retrieved her stallion from under the mulberry trees at the little farm where she had left him and shipped him to Claiborne, where the managers boosted his stud fee from nothing to a respectable $250. When Seabiscuit took the East by storm, they doubled the fee. Now, as the Biscuit challenged War Admiral, Hard Tack’s fee was $1,000, comparable to that of some of the nation’s most prominent sires.

Nearby, Fitzsimmons watched the horses. He held a win ticket. It was on Seabiscuit.

As the track was one mile around and the race a mile and three sixteenths, the starting point was at the top of the homestretch, with the horses set to circle the course roughly one and one quarter times. As War Admiral walked to the line alongside the flagman and starter Cassidy, Woolf worked to fray the Triple Crown winner’s famously delicate nerves.^13,14 He put Seabiscuit into a long, lazy warm-up, sailing past his skittering rival and galloping off the wrong way around the track. Cassidy ordered him to bring his horse up. “Mr. Cassidy,” Woolf called back cheerily, “I have instructions to warm Seabiscuit up before the start.” Cassidy barked that he had not been forewarned of this. Woolf shrugged and kept right on going. He and Seabiscuit swung around the far turn and into the backstretch.¹⁵

At the five-eighths pole, Woolf stopped Seabiscuit and turned him toward the grandstand. For a long moment, man and horse stood out on the backstretch. It was quiet. The infield crowds massed up against the rail by the grandstand, leaving the backstretch oddly vacant; most everyone thought the only time the horses would run together would be in that first trip down the homestretch, before War Admiral’s speed put Seabiscuit away. Seabiscuit gazed at the throng, stirring gently in the sunshine; Woolf studied War Admiral, watching him unravel at the starting line, whirling in circles.

After an agonizing interval, Woolf cantered Seabiscuit back to the top of the homestretch. He drew up alongside War Admiral. The flagman raised his arm, and Cassidy poised his finger over the button of Smith’s bell. Seabiscuit and War Admiral walked forward together, each rider watching Cassidy. The immense crowd drew its breath.

At the last moment, something felt wrong to Woolf. He jerked his right rein and pulled Seabiscuit out. Kurtsinger reined up War Admiral, who bounced up and down in frustration. They lined up again and stepped forward, but this time it was Kurtsinger who reined out. The two horses trotted back to the turn. As they aligned for a third try, Woolf called over to Kurtsinger.

“Charley, we’ll never get a go like this.¹⁶ We can’t watch the starter and our horses at the same time. Let’s walk up there watching the horses, and when we get even, let’s break away ourselves. Cassidy will see us in line and will have to bang the bell.”

Kurtsinger nodded. The two walked up a third time, each jockey watching the nose of his rival’s mount. Woolf tightened his left rein, cocking Seabiscuit’s head toward War Admiral to let him focus on his opponent.

The horses were perfectly even. Woolf knew that this was it. As they approached Cassidy, Woolf suddenly blurted out, “Charley, look out because the Biscuit kicks like hell and I don’t want you or your horse to get hurt.”¹⁷

Kurtsinger stared at Woolf in befuddlement, then cleared his mind and trained his eyes back on Seabiscuit’s nose. The flagman’s hand hovered high in the air. Up in the Howard box, Marcela squeezed her eyes shut.

The two noses passed over the line together, the flag flashed down, and the hushed track clanged with the sound of Smith’s bell. War Admiral and Seabiscuit burst off the line at precisely the same instant.

The gathering Woolf had felt in Seabiscuit vented itself in a massive downward push. Lines of muscle along the horse’s back, flanks, and belly bulged with the effort, cutting sweeping stripes into his coat. His front end rose upward. Woolf threw himself forward as ballast, thrusting his feet straight back. Seabiscuit reached out and clawed at the ground in front of him, then pushed off again. Beside him, War Admiral scratched and tore at the track, hurling himself forward as hard as he could. Seabiscuit drove over the track, his forelegs pulling the homestretch under his body and flinging it back behind him. Woolf angled him inward, keeping him close to War Admiral, letting him look at his rival. For thirty yards, the two horses hurtled down the homestretch side by side, their cutting, irregular strides settling into long, open lunges, their speed building and building.

A pulse of astonishment swept over the crowd. War Admiral, straining with all he had, was losing ground. Seabiscuit’s nose forged past, then his throat, then his neck. McCarthy’s voice was suddenly shrill. “Seabiscuit is outrunning him!” War Admiral was kicking so hard that his hind legs were nearly thumping into his girth, but he couldn’t keep up.

An incredible realization sank into Kurtsinger’s mind: Seabiscuit is faster. Up in the press box, the California contingent roared.

After a sixteenth of a mile, Seabiscuit was half a length ahead and screaming along. He kept pouring it on,