Seabiscuit
THURSDAY, SEPTEMBER 29 @ 7:00pm & 10:00PM
On New Year’s Eve, 1938, columnist Walter Winchell published his annual list of the year’s top ten newsmakers. Franklin Delano Roosevelt was among those mentioned. So was British Prime Minister Neville Chamberlain and Nazi leader Adolf Hitler. The tenth spot, however, went to a horse. Seabiscuit was dung-colored and boxy, with stumpy legs that wouldn’t completely straighten, a straggly tail and an ungainly gait, but though he didn’t look the part, he was one of the most remarkable thoroughbred racehorses in history.
Seabiscuit’s fame was unexpected. Overworked and underachieving, Seabiscuit had been struggling in horse racing’s minor leagues for the first three years of his life. But then Tom Smith, a taciturn, West Coast trainer and Red Pollard, a beat-up, failing jockey, turned the horse’s career around. Smith spotted him first and recognized his raw, untapped power. Pollard, whose undistinguished riding history had given him plenty of experience with mistreated and troubled mounts, knew how to ride him. Together, Pollard and Smith startled the racing establishment, turning out a tremendous athlete who became an overnight winner in race after race.
In the 1930s, when Americans longed to escape the grim realities of Depression era, Seabiscuit became a working man’s hero. “For a brief moment in America, says Laura Hillenbrand, author of the best-selling Seabiscuit, a little brown racehorse wasn’t just a little brown racehorse. He was the proxy for a nation.” At the height of his career, Seabiscuit became a national obsession. His name was used to sell everything from oranges to hotels, from ladies’ hats to dry-cleaning services. Tens of thousands of fans swarmed to the racetracks just to see him work out.
