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AJ McKenzie
  • 2 days ago
Racehorse with a movie about him
IG: aj_mckenzie416
Twitter: AJMckenzie94847
Transcript
00:01Hello, I'm Chris Fowler, and welcome to SportsCentury.
00:04For more than half a century, the story of a great racehorse
00:07lay buried in the musty back aisles of newspaper and magazine morgues.
00:12Then, a freelance writer suffering from a rare and debilitating
00:15disorder began researching the thoroughbred, and the more she dug,
00:20the brighter grew her interest. The result of her solitary labors
00:23was the rebirth of Seabiscuit, a little package of dynamite that
00:27not only ran fast, but lifted a spiritually bankrupt nation
00:31from its knees.
00:33Hmm.
00:45Reinvigorating the legend of Seabiscuit stemmed in part from
00:49a girl who didn't have the physical vigor
00:54to express herself in other ways.
01:00Whenever you have been through a great deal of pain yourself,
01:03you understand other people's pain.
01:07Seabiscuit appealed on every level
01:09to the American instinct for the underdog.
01:13And here it is, a half a century and more later,
01:16who chronicles this tale.
01:19Lori Hillenbrand, who suffers from chronic fatigue syndrome
01:22exacerbated by vertigo.
01:28It's the kind of fatigue that prevents you from being able
01:31to lift a spoon to your lips.
01:33And through the process of writing this book,
01:35there were times when she couldn't read, she couldn't write.
01:38Physically, it was extremely difficult.
01:40Not just at times, but throughout.
01:42I woke up every morning thinking about it,
01:45and I went to bed at night writing it in my head.
01:47It was that much of an obsession.
01:51In March of 2001,
01:53Laura Hillenbrand's four-and-a-half-year labor of love was published.
01:57And like the horse picture on its cover,
01:59the book shot to the front of the New York Times bestseller list in a month.
02:02When a major feature film followed in the summer of 2003,
02:07reflective glory fell on the great-grandson of the horse's owner,
02:10half a world away.
02:12Here I am, rolling with a marine...
02:16...my book here.
02:19I think our country is wondering what's going on with the world right now.
02:24It's very ironic that a horse that brought our country together 60 years ago
02:28is back sort of doing the same thing right now.
02:37Within a year of the stock market crash of 1929,
02:41there were four million people out of work,
02:44and the idea of sports and entertainment,
02:48finding an escape, was very appealing to Americans.
02:51At the time the Seabiscope came along,
02:53American horse racing was probably at its peak of popularity,
02:56and the country was certainly in need of heroes, human or equine.
03:00People needed him.
03:01Here's somebody we can identify with, who looks as beat up as America is right now.
03:06Seabiscuit taught Americans,
03:07it's not your circumstances, it's not your history.
03:09It's what you have in your head and in your heart.
03:13Yes, sir.
03:15Although Seabiscuit carried the genes of the legendary Man O' War,
03:18who won 20 of 21 races,
03:20he seemed at best to be a poor relation of his grandfather,
03:24and at worst, a caricature.
03:26Seabiscuit's legs were too short.
03:28Seabiscuit's legs were too short.
03:28His neck was too thick.
03:30He was a big horse on little legs.
03:32He swung one foreleg out wildly like he was swatting flies.
03:35He had a mind of his own.
03:38He'd fight you.
03:39We were about halfway through the work,
03:41and Seabiscuit just stuck his toes to the ground and pulled right up.
03:44Just pulled right up.
03:46He said, I'm not going any further.
03:48He was blessed or cursed with, in horse terms, a high order of intelligence.
03:54He was like a juvenile delinquent.
03:56A loser in his first 17 starts,
03:58Seabiscuit was not a candidate to run in the 1936 Triple Crown races.
04:03Deemed a bad risk, the three-year-old was sold for $8,000.
04:07Under new ownership by a car salesman, the horse soon developed new wheels.
04:12After losing the $100,000 Santa Anita handicapped by a nose in February of 1937,
04:18Seabiscuit won his next seven races
04:20and rushed to the forefront of public interest.
04:23It's Seabiscuit.
04:26He's...
04:26...to show his speed as they get away for one mile and an eight.
04:30News reels were fairly new,
04:32and the style of the day tended to glorify and glamorize their sports heroes.
04:39Seabiscuit was an incorrigible hand.
04:41When somebody raised a camera, he would strike a pose.
04:44Radio was becoming huge in the country.
04:46His races were broadcast.
04:48He was known to people from New Jersey to Nebraska.
04:53Seabiscuit was the greatest sold racehorse in history
04:58because the riders went out of their way to become hype masters and hucksters.
05:05He was, by newspaper column inches, the number one newsmaker in America in 1938.
05:10He had two lines of Seabiscuit oranges.
05:13There were Seabiscuit hats sold on Fifth Avenue.
05:16He was everywhere.
05:18World War II bomber crews would name their aircraft after this force.
05:22It was something that galvanized a sense of stoic endeavor in their missions.
05:27Seabiscuit traveled tens of thousands of miles in his own modified Pullman rail car.
05:33Masses of people would come out to the tracks just to get a glimpse of the horse.
05:37Seabiscuit owed his fame as much to the promotional genius of his owner, Charles Howard, as he did to his
05:43legs.
05:43He would do things like send barrels full of champagne up to the press box.
05:49He even had his shoes pulled after every race and made into silver ashtrays, which he usually gave to reporters.
05:56He was just doing what he did naturally.
05:58He could sell Seabiscuit.
06:01He believed in that product because he did one of those earlier Buick automobiles.
06:05Beyond Seabiscuit's pounding speed and the promotional pump provided by Howard, there were two others.
06:11A mystical trainer and a broken down jockey who filled out a team that would bring the racing world to
06:17its knees.
06:19The career of Seabiscuit was led by Charles Howard, whose life had been shattered one dark day in 1926.
06:26The thing that turned him away from the automobiles that he had devoted his life to was the fact that
06:32his own son, his 15-year-old boy, was killed in a car accident on his ranch.
06:37It was a single car accident, a rollover, and he was pretty badly injured.
06:42There was not enough assistance there. Perhaps they could have saved him.
06:45It was a traumatizing time for the family.
06:49He was the apple of Poppy's eye, a big part of his heart.
06:55So there was some very long-lasting pain there.
07:00Charles Howard's marriage collapsed. He became a very unhappy, grief-stricken man.
07:06He ended up discovering horse racing and falling in love with it.
07:09Before Howard purchased Seabiscuit, he hired a trainer, a loner reputed to have not only an eye for horses, but
07:16also an ear.
07:17Tom Smith captured and trained wild horses for the British cavalry.
07:21He had no sense of communication with human beings to speak of.
07:25But he did connect with horses somehow.
07:28We called him Silent Tom. He didn't talk idly to anybody.
07:33I was pretty good friends with him, but if I asked him something and he didn't want to answer me,
07:38he just wouldn't answer me.
07:39Really?
07:40Tom Smith was the horse whisperer. I think that's why they were willing to put up with his lack of
07:46social skills.
07:47That wasn't what his job was. His job was to train horses.
07:52Tom Smith was looking for a horse. Seabiscuit stopped right in front of him and looked at him.
07:58And Tom said he nodded at the horse and that the horse nodded back.
08:03And he said, I'll see you again.
08:07Soon to join the millionaire and the horse whisperer was an oversized jockey named Johnny Red Pollard,
08:13who was legally blind in one eye and won just three stakes races in more than a decade.
08:19He always felt sorry for the underdog because he identified with him, of course.
08:23He only went to grade school, but the teacher told him he would never amount to anything.
08:29Somehow that just ate him up and drove him.
08:34Basically, relied on literally fighting his way.
08:37You know, he'd get in the boxing ring and try to make a couple of bucks so he could eat.
08:41He did raise a lot of hell, you know. I could just see Red Pollard saying,
08:45you're going to go out tonight and get a little Bow Wow juice. That was Red Pollard.
08:50He was always trying to accrue intelligence from even books, reading Shakespeare.
09:00Maybe Red will see you and quote something.
09:03He had this dichotomy within him, this intellectual side and also this wild physical side,
09:10which he just had to live in that body and live that way.
09:16Penniless and out of work, Red Pollard showed up at the Detroit fairgrounds in August of 1936.
09:22There, he met Tom Smith's new horse and offered him a small gift and started a love affair.
09:29Seabiscuit at this time had been attacking everybody who came near his stall.
09:32But he kind of wanted the sugar and he pressed his muzzle to Red's chest.
09:36And Tom thought, this is my man.
09:39They probably both suffered from a lack of self-esteem.
09:43They had the same temperament, fiery and ornery.
09:46And together they became elegant.
09:49Red Pollard understood that Seabiscuit may have been his last chance in life.
09:54And all of a sudden, he became a better jockey.
09:58And Seabiscuit became a better horse.
10:02The jockey understood how to ride.
10:06The horse had to promote the horse.
10:07And as a team, they go on the wildest ride, maybe in the history of American turf.
10:16With Red Pollard in the irons, Seabiscuit increased his national fame by winning 10 of his last 12 starts in
10:231937.
10:24Meanwhile, on the East Coast, a big dark three-year-old was building a reputation on the hollowed venues of
10:30the sport.
10:31War Admiral won his last 11 starts and has never been out of the money.
10:35War Admiral won the Triple Crown as a three-year-old.
10:39He won the Jockey Club Gold Cup at the time.
10:43The most prestigious race run for all the horses in the country.
10:47War Admiral was by Zeus out of Venus.
10:51Seabiscuit was by a foot soldier out of a handmaid.
10:54And they emerged full-blown right out of their pedigrees.
10:57War Admiral was appointed for the major events on the racing calendar.
11:00And he was expected to win those, and he did.
11:03Seabiscuit had been bouncing around all over the country like a barnstorming attraction.
11:09Charles Howard knew if he was going to conquer American racing,
11:12his horse was going to have to meet War Admiral head in head, and he was going to have to
11:16beat him.
11:17Despite the public's love for the little horse that could,
11:21Howard knew that if Seabiscuit was to be taken seriously as a challenger to War Admiral,
11:25he would have to establish his own reputation in the East.
11:29Howard was really a master at capitalizing on this natural rivalry between California,
11:35which represented the future, and the East, which represented the past.
11:40Charles Howard wanted to prove to the world that a horse coming out of California
11:44could be the equal of anything that ran in the East.
11:47He issued challenges to Sam Riddle, the owner of War Admiral.
11:51For about a year, he was pretty much ignored.
11:53Samuel Riddle thought he'd be demeaning his horse to have him meet a Western horse.
11:59Seabiscuit has the finishing push. Seabiscuit has the speed.
12:02He sets a new track record of 1 minute 49 seconds.
12:05Winner by three lengths.
12:07Bring on War Admiral, says Seabiscuit.
12:10Faced with Seabiscuit's eastern success and Howard's headlines,
12:14Samuel Riddle agreed to the showdown in 1938 at Pimlico.
12:18The War Admiral's owner insisted that the horses would do a walk-up start.
12:23If Riddle thought he had negotiated an advantage, he didn't know Tom Smith.
12:27The thing that Tom Smith was going to have to do is train the horse to brake as fast as
12:32he possibly could
12:32to actually change his running style.
12:34So he built a box out of redwood and telephone batteries.
12:38He rang the bell and tapped that horse.
12:40And that horse, the first or three times, didn't get it.
12:44After the second, third or fourth time, he left there running.
12:47And it became like a Pavlovian response.
12:50The minute he heard that bell, he was gone.
12:53But if Seabiscuit was ready, Red Pollard was not.
12:56While working out another horse, he fractured his leg.
13:00Pollard's good friend, top jockey George Wolfe, rode Seabiscuit on November 1, 1938.
13:10The race of the century, fanfare and ballyhoo, tension and argument.
13:15Seabiscuit's a five-year-old grandson of man-of-war,
13:17the self-possessed co-star of this Turk thriller.
13:20War Admiral's the prima donna, the four-year-old son of man-of-war.
13:2440 million people listened to that race on the radio.
13:28The racetrack was so crowded that 10,000 people stayed outside the gates,
13:32sitting in trees and standing on cars and rooftops to try to see the race.
13:36The announcer, Clint McCarthy, wasn't able to get to his post, so he called it from the rail.
13:41FDR stopped a cabinet meeting to listen to the match race.
13:44It was an event that brought America to a standstill for a minute 56 seconds.
13:58The consensus was that the way this race would be run would be that War Admiral would take the lead,
14:03and that Seabiscuit would lay behind.
14:07I'm not coming to me head in head! War Admiral on the inside!
14:11Wolf is riding Seabiscuit, and Seabiscuit is outrunning him!
14:15People were astonished!
14:17My God! Seabiscuit is outrunning War Admiral!
14:22You know?
14:23Prior to the race, George Wolf had conferred with Red Pollard as to how to ride it.
14:29And Red said, once you get the lead, slow Seabiscuit down and wait for War Admiral to catch up.
14:36And it was a crazy thing to do.
14:38But Red knew that Seabiscuit ran much harder with another horse running alongside him.
14:44And there goes War Admiral after it!
14:46Now the horse race is on!
14:47And now War Admiral has a head advantage!
14:50And Seabiscuit's got a head advantage!
14:52They're going into a car turn!
14:53This is a real horse race!
14:55Just what they hope they get!
14:57They're head in head!
14:58And both suckies flying!
15:00Seabiscuit leads by a length!
15:02Now Seabiscuit by a length for the half!
15:04George Wolf said, I saw War Admiral's eyes rolling up in his head, like he was in agony.
15:10In pain.
15:12And then War Admiral's tongue flopped out of his mouth, which is a sign of being broken.
15:19Seabiscuit is the winner by four lengths!
15:23And who never saw such a wild crowd!
15:26I picked War Admiral.
15:28It might as well have been 50 miles.
15:32Impact it would have on racing.
15:34If War had ever won it, it would have just been another match race.
15:36Seabiscuit would have falsely been cast as a kind of pretender had he not won the match race.
15:44So it made sure that he was recognized not only as a national figure, but as a national champion.
15:52This horse didn't win every time he ran, but he won the very biggest one.
15:56Seabiscuit proved that he was the best racehorse in the world at that moment.
16:00Voted Horse of the Year in 1938, Seabiscuit stood atop the racing world.
16:06As one writer put it, he had a career admiral.
16:12But the joy was short-lived.
16:14Rupturing a ligament in his leg in his next race on Valentine's Day 1939,
16:19the career of America's sweetheart was in jeopardy.
16:25And it's all about Seabiscuit.
16:27I doubt if anybody can name another good horse they were ever involved with.
16:31Once you do hit that lightning in a bottle, you want to try to find it again.
16:35But what you find is how hard it is to do that.
16:41Seabiscuit spent most of 1939 healing at the Howard Ranch in California.
16:46By his side was Red Pollard, his own leg still on the mend.
16:50Disappointed by his past failure at Santa Anita,
16:53and by not riding in the match race against War Admiral,
16:56Pollard looked for redemption in the 1940 Santa Anita handicap.
17:01Red had invested everything in this horse.
17:04No one else would hire him.
17:05He knew that one little tap on his leg, and he might never walk again.
17:10But he wanted that Santa Anita handicap so badly.
17:12It was worth the risk.
17:14Charles Howard was in a quandary.
17:16He didn't know what to do, you know,
17:18whether to risk losing the race by having my father ride him.
17:25Sometimes it's better to break a man's leg than to break a man's heart.
17:30It was frantic to get out.
17:33And he bent over in the saddle, and he yelled,
17:35Now, Pops!
17:36Red's leg missed the other rider's stirrup by an inch,
17:39and they went straight through, took the lead, never looked back.
17:43Seabiscuit in second, and driving.
17:46Seabiscuit is making a drive of old.
17:48He's challenging for the lead.
17:50It's Seabiscuit and kayak.
17:52It's Seabiscuit up in the rim.
17:53Now they're coming across the line of training.
17:55And the Seabiscuit are wearing my legs to the floor.
17:57When Seabiscuit did win, it provided vindication for Red Pollard.
18:01This was his biggest win on the horse.
18:03It was the crowning achievement of Red Pollard's career.
18:07After Seabiscuit won the Santa Anita,
18:09the indomitable seven-year-old retired with 33 victories in 89 races.
18:13His earnings of $438,000 set an American racing record.
18:22It's an extremely fulfilling story, but it's a sad ending.
18:27When Seabiscuit left the lives of those people,
18:30he left a void that was never filled.
18:37Red Pollard's story is the saddest.
18:40He ended up riding in the Bush League in cheap little races
18:44and continued to be injured over and over again.
18:49Even after he stopped riding, he worked at the track
18:53in sort of demeaning jobs, but it put him in the atmosphere.
18:59He shined the boots of young jockeys who never even probably heard of him.
19:04He would banter. He was very witty.
19:07But there was another side to my father.
19:09That can sometimes even border on depression.
19:14I don't know what made him so sad.
19:18His body was just failing by the time he reached age 70.
19:22He ended up in a nursing home built on the grounds of the old Narragansett Park,
19:28where he and Seabiscuit had once run.
19:30And he stopped speaking one day.
19:33He just didn't want to talk anymore.
19:35He would always say, you know, old soldiers never die.
19:39They just fade away.
19:40And that's what he did.
19:47More than three decades before Red Pollard's death at the age of 71,
19:51Tom Smith trained the 1947 Kentucky Derby winner.
19:54But his career had been tainted 18 months earlier when he was charged with using an illegal drug called ephedrine.
20:01Smith insisted he was innocent.
20:03He was ruled off the racetrack for an entire year.
20:07He sat out the gate at Santa Anita and sat there ruminating and grew bitter.
20:13Tom Smith slowly slid into obscurity, which is where he came from.
20:19And in 1957, he had a stroke and ended up in a sanatorium until he died.
20:26Really?
20:27When Charles Howard's horse Noor won the 1950s Santa Anita,
20:31a reporter suggested that perhaps he'd found another Seabiscuit.
20:35Sir, said Howard, there will never, never...
20:39Did anybody come out this okay? Jeez.
20:42B, another Seabiscuit.
20:45Three months later, Howard was gone at 69, the victim of a heart attack.
20:50Three years earlier, Seabiscuit had taken his leave.
20:55Seabiscuit died suddenly of a heart attack at age 14.
20:59Howard had the horse's body carried to a remote site on the ranch
21:04and had an oak sapling placed over the grave instead of a gravestone.
21:09And he told only his sons where the sapling was.
21:17Seabiscuit didn't have an ongoing legacy through his offspring, so he just kind of faded away.
21:26It wasn't that people forgot.
21:29It's...
21:31Wrapped it all together and packaged it for another generation.
21:35People are drawn to it because there's a story of overcoming tremendous adversity.
21:42This is the ultimate underdog story.
21:45I think everybody identifies with the underdog.
21:47They want them to win.
21:48They don't always do it in real life, but this is one story where they did it.
21:56Before Seabiscuit was released in theaters across the nation,
22:00Laura Helen Brant was invited to join President Bush at a special screening.
22:04Usually bound to her apartment by her chronic infirmities,
22:08the author made her way from Georgetown to the White House,
22:11where she watched her alter ego on the big screen.
22:13She rates that summer evening in 2003 as the most exciting of the life.
22:20I'm Chris Fowler.
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