again and won anyway.” When asked if Kayak could have won, George Woolf, who had ridden both horses, laughed and said, “If Kayak had charged at him … [Seabiscuit] would have bounded away.… That fellow never saw the day when he could take the champ.” Asked the same question, Tom Smith said, “Kayak never saw the day when he could beat Seabiscuit, at ten yards or ten miles.”
Kayak was a grand athlete, but the idea that he was robbed of the race isn’t very plausible. To speculate about Kayak is to miss what is by far the most important fact about the race: By any measure, Seabiscuit delivered an astounding performance, running a vastly better race than Kayak or any other horse. The early pace was extraordinarily fast, and Seabiscuit helped to set it. Any race run with such a fast pace is tailor-made for closers, exhausting the front-runners and leaving the way open for late-runners to charge up from behind to win. While Seabiscuit burned his energy in a fierce speed duel, Kayak lay last, preparing to pounce when the front-runners grew weary. As the speed collapsed and closers like Kayak got going, Seabiscuit, remarkably, sustained his speed, clocking the second-fastest ten furlongs in American racing history. He did it at age seven, carrying highweight of 130 pounds, returning from serious injury. Nothing Kayak did that day, or any other, compared to that.
3 Officially, there were two ten-furlong times that were faster than Seabiscuit’s, but the American record of 2:00, set by Whisk Broom II at Belmont in 1913, is almost universally regarded as inaccurate, the result of a timer that malfunctioned and recorded a far faster time than the horse ran. The true American record was held by Sarazen, who ran ten furlongs in 2:00? at Kentucky’s Latonia Racecourse in 1924.
EPILOGUE
On a soft April day in 1940, Smith led Seabiscuit out of the Kaiser Suite for the last time. There had been countless requests for appearances—the promoters of the Golden State International Exhibition, having secured the attendance of F.D.R., wanted to host “that other great American, Seabiscuit”—but Howard declined them all. It was time to let the horse rest. Howard had preceded Seabiscuit up to Ridgewood and had coaxed every reporter, newsreel man, admirer, and friend in his address book into driving up to attend the horse’s homecoming. He proudly introduced everyone to Seabiscuit’s first foal, still wobbling on new legs. The owner passed out cigars and showed off the sacks of fan mail addressed to “Daddy Seabiscuit” and “Pappa Seabiscuit.” The foal delighted Pollard in particular; he was a redhead. Howard named him First Biscuit.
Smith wasn’t going to join the celebration. He preferred to say his good-byes at the track. He slipped his fingers into Seabiscuit’s halter and led him down the shed row. A somber group of newsmen, spectators, and horsemen quietly parted to let them pass. Seabiscuit paused and looked toward the track, and Smith’s eyes clouded over. He led his horse up the ramp and disappeared into the darkness. A moment later, he emerged alone.1
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The men who handled Seabiscuit quietly scattered. Woolf continued his dizzying ascent, becoming the leading rider in America. On the day in 1942 when he rode Triple Crown winner Whirlaway to break Seabiscuit’s earnings record, Pollard was up in the stands cheering him on with his usual lack of restraint, bouncing around the box, rooting himself hoarse, and drawing the stares of everyone nearby. Dismounting, Woolf was swamped by reporters asking him to confirm that “Whirly” was the best horse he had ever ridden. Woolf was as impolitic as ever. “Seabiscuit,” he said, “is the greatest horse I ever rode.”2
On a January day in 1946, Woolf rode into the Santa Anita starting gate for a weekday race. At thirty-five, he was preparing to end one of history’s greatest athletic careers. He was struggling with his diabetes, and friends had noticed that he was unusually thin that winter.3 That afternoon, Woolf wasn’t feeling well enough to ride, but a friend needed a jockey for a horse named Please Me. Woolf didn’t need to think about it. “There was one thing special you can say about George,”4 Smith would say of him. “He remembered the little fellows who were his friends when he needed them. He never forgot about his friends. Say that about George.” Please Me was an ordinary horse in an ordinary race, so Woolf used weekday tack. When he walked out to the paddock, he left his lucky kangaroo-leather saddle in his trunk.5
For George Woolf, the last sensations of life were the sight of Santa Anita’s russet soil and the curve of Please Me’s neck, the coarse feel of mane in his hands, the smell of the horse’s skin, the deep roll of his breathing. As Woolf and his mount passed the grandstand and banked into the first turn, some witnesses thought they saw Please Me stumble. But most saw Woolf sink from the saddle, unconscious, his dieting and diabetes finally taking their toll. He slid into the air.6 There was the awful dissonance of a lone horse galloping riderless. There was terrible speed and terrible, sudden stillness.
The sound of the Iceman’s head striking the track carried over the crowd.7 Woolf’s friends turned away.8
Fifteen hundred people came to say good-bye to Woolf.9 Genevieve, widowed at thirty-two, sat in a front pew. Gene Autry sang “Empty Saddles in the Old Corral,” his voice wafting out over rows and rows of faces, spilling back to the church’s opened doors, down the steps, and filling the street. Pollard was among them, sobbing for his best friend. “I wonder who has Woolf’s book?”10 he said later. “Saint Peter, or some other bird?”
Three years later a wistful bugle cry carried over the empty track at Santa Anita, and sixteen thousand people gathered by the paddock to witness the unveiling of the George Woolf memorial statue. Much of the price had been footed by Please Me’s owner, Tiny Naylor, who sold a horse at auction and donated the proceeds to the statue fund. The rest had come from the California Turf Writers Committee and countless contributions from trackers and fans the world over. Genevieve joined Charles Howard in the center of the paddock to hear a eulogy delivered by Joe Hernandez, the man who first called Woolf “Iceman.” The jockeys lined up in silent attention before Woolf’s veiled likeness, their hats over their hearts. The cloth was slid from the statue.
Woolf’s handsome face looked out across Santa Anita once again. He stood just as he always had in life, hand on hip, chin up, radiating insouciance, the kangaroo-leather saddle over his arm. His gaze fell to the east end of the paddock and rested on the life-sized bronze image of Seabiscuit that Howard had placed there.
“George Woolf is at Santa Anita, there near the paddock, facing [sculptor Tex] Wheeler’s magnificent figure of Seabiscuit,” wrote the
Howard lobbied to get Smith named champion trainer of 1940, but Smith would never have the respect he deserved. Owner and trainer continued to work together until the spring of 1943, when Smith underwent back surgery and wound up in a yearlong convalescence that forced Howard to replace him. They parted amicably, and Smith went, of all places, to the East, signing on as trainer for cosmetic queen Elizabeth Arden Graham.12
Graham was a woman of famously dubious sense, and working for her was a tall order. She demanded that her trainers apply her beauty products to her horses. Prone to premonitions, she once dreamt that her filly had climbed a tree and called her trainer in the middle of the night to see if the dream had come true. “I climbed all the way up in that tree,” replied the much abused trainer, “and if [the filly] was up there, she got back in that stall all right.”
