Seabiscuit: An American Legend

flicking his ears forward. The spectators were in a frenzy. As the horses were midway down the first pass through the homestretch, the crowd suddenly gushed over the infield retaining fence ten feet inside the track rail. Thousands of fans surged toward Woolf and Seabiscuit. Caught at the infield rail, they bent themselves over it, pounding and clapping and flailing their arms in Seabiscuit’s path. Seabiscuit, his ears flat and eyes forward, didn’t even seem to see them.

Neither did Woolf. He had his eyes on the tractor wheel imprint, but War Admiral was on it. Woolf had to get far enough in front to cross ahead of War Admiral and claim it. He let Seabiscuit roll. By the time he and his mount hit the finish line for the first time, they were two lengths in front. Woolf looked back left and right, cocked back his left rein, and slid Seabiscuit across War Admiral’s path until he felt the firm ground of the tractor imprint under him. He flattened his back, dropped his chin into Seabiscuit’s mane, and flew toward the turn.

Behind him, Kurtsinger was shell-shocked. His lips were pulled back and his teeth clenched. In a few seconds, Woolf and Seabiscuit had stolen the track from him, nullifying his post-position edge and his legendary early speed. Kurtsinger didn’t panic. War Admiral, though outfooted, was running well, and he had a Triple Crown winner’s staying power. Seabiscuit was well within reach. Conway had spent weeks training stamina into the horse, while Smith had not done much for Seabiscuit’s endurance. Seabiscuit was going much, much too fast for so grueling a race. He couldn’t possibly last. Kurtsinger made a new game plan. He would let Seabiscuit exhaust himself on the lead, then run him down. He eased War Admiral over until he was directly behind him, dragging off him, his mount’s nose caboosing Seabiscuit’s tail. He took hold of his horse and waited.

As the two horses banked into the first turn, Woolf remembered Pollard’s advice to reel Seabiscuit in. He eased back ever so slightly on the reins and felt the horse’s stride come up under him, shortening. His action was little more than a faint gesture, but it meant that Kurtsinger had to either slow down or commit to the outside. Kurtsinger chose the latter, nudging War Admiral out.

Seabiscuit cruised into the backstretch on a one-length lead, with Woolf holding his chin down. War Admiral chased him, his nose nodding up and down behind Seabiscuit’s right hip. The blur of faces along the rail thinned, then vanished altogether, and the din from the crowd quieted to a distant rumble. War Admiral and Seabiscuit were alone. With nothing but the long backstretch ahead of him, Woolf carried out Pollard’s instructions. Edging Seabiscuit a few feet out from the rail, he tipped his head back and called back to Kurtsinger: “Hey, get on up here with me!¹⁸ We’re supposed to have a horse race here! What are you doing lagging back there?”

Kurtsinger studied the ground ahead. Woolf was dangling the rail slot in front of him, inviting him to take it. Kurtsinger measured the gap between Seabiscuit and the rail and saw that War Admiral was narrow enough to get through. But Kurtsinger knew the Iceman well. He knew that the instant he drove his horse up to full speed and pointed him to the hole, Woolf would drop in toward the rail and slam the door on him, forcing him to change course and lose momentum. Kurtsinger tugged his right rein and moved War Admiral outside.

In a storied career of twenty-three races, through the Triple Crown and virtually every fabled race in the East, no one had ever seen all War Admiral could give.¹⁹ Kurtsinger asked the colt for the full measure. With five furlongs to go, he reached back and cracked War Admiral once across the hip. War Admiral responded emphatically. A shout rang out in the crowd, “Here he comes! Here he comes!” Woolf heard the wave of voices and knew what was happening. In a few strides, War Admiral swooped up alongside him, his head pressing Seabiscuit’s shoulder. A few more, and he was even. Kurtsinger thought: I’m going to win it. The grandstand was shaking.

Woolf loosened his fingers and let an inch or two of the reins slide through. Seabiscuit snatched up the rein, lowered his head, and accelerated. Pollard’s strategy, Woolf’s cunning, and Smith’s training had given Seabiscuit a chance in a race he otherwise could not have won. From here on in, it was up to the horse. He cocked an ear toward his rival, listening to him, watching him. He refused to let War Admiral pass. The battle was joined.

The horses stretched out over the track. Their strides, each twenty-one feet in length, fell in perfect synch. They rubbed shoulders and hips, heads snapping up and reaching out together, legs gathering up and unfolding in unison. The poles clipped by, blurring in the riders’ peripheral vision. The speed was impossible; at the mile mark, they were nearly a full second faster than a fifteen-year-old speed record. The track rail hummed up under them and unwound behind.

They ripped out of the backstretch and leaned together into the final turn, their strides still rising and falling together. The crowds by the rails thickened, their faces a pointillism of colors, the dappling sound of distinct voices now blending into a sustained shout. The horses strained onward. Kurtsinger began shouting at his horse, his voice whipped away behind him. He pushed on War Admiral’s neck and drove with all his strength, sweeping over his mount’s right side. War Admiral was slashing at the air, reaching deeper and deeper into himself. The stands were boiling over. A reporter, screaming and jumping, fell halfway out of the press box.²⁰ His colleagues caught his shirttails and hauled him back in. In the crowd below, several dozen spectators fainted from the excitement.²¹

The horses strained onward, arcing around the far turn and rushing at the crowd. Woolf was still, his eyes trained on War Admiral’s head. He could see that Seabiscuit was looking right at his opponent. War Admiral glared back at him, his eyes wide open. Woolf saw Seabiscuit’s ears flatten to his head and knew that the moment Fitzsimmons had spoken of was near. One horse was going to crack.

As forty thousand voices shouted them on, War Admiral found something more. He thrust his head in front.

Woolf glanced at War Admiral’s beautiful head, sweeping through the air like a sickle. He could see the depth of the colt’s effort in his large amber eye, rimmed in crimson and white. “His eye was rolling in its socket as if the horse was in agony,” Woolf later recalled.²²

An instant later, Woolf felt a subtle hesitation in his opponent, a wavering. He looked at War Admiral again. The colt’s tongue shot out the side of his mouth.²³ Seabiscuit had broken him.

Woolf dropped low over the saddle and called into Seabiscuit’s ear, asking him for everything he had. Seabiscuit gave it to him. War Admiral tried to answer, clinging to Seabiscuit for a few strides, but it was no use. He slid from Seabiscuit’s side as if gravity were pulling him backward. Seabiscuit’s ears flipped up. Woolf made a small motion with his hand.

“So long, Charley.”²⁴ He had coined a phrase that jockeys would use for decades.

Galloping low with Woolf flat over his back, Seabiscuit flew into the lane, the clean peninsula of track narrowing ahead as the crowd pushed forward. A steeplechase fence in the infield had collapsed, and a line of men had crashed through the line of police and now stood upright on the inner rail near the wire, bending down toward Seabiscuit and rooting him on.²⁵ Clem McCarthy’s voice was breaking into his microphone. “Seabiscuit by three! Seabiscuit by three!” He had never heard such cheering. Arms waved and mouths gaped open in incredulity as Seabiscuit came on, his ears wagging. Thousands of hands reached out from the infield, stretching to brush his shoulders as he blew past.

When he could no longer hear War Admiral’s hooves beating the track, Woolf looked back. He saw the black