![]() ![]() "For anybody who loves horses, and for all of those who are thrilled by horse racing and the behind-the-scenes drama of the track, The Horse That God Built is must reading." Over four years, these unlikely partners survived a phenomenal run of bad fortune, conspiracy, and severe injury to transform Seabiscuit from a neurotic, pathologically indolent also-ran into an American sports icon.Īuthor Laura Hillenbrand brilliantly re-creates a universal underdog story, one that proves life is a horse race. ![]() Smith urged Howard to buy Seabiscuit for a bargain-basement price, then hired as his jockey Red Pollard, a failed boxer who was blind in one eye, half-crippled, and prone to quoting passages from Ralph Waldo Emerson. When he needed a trainer for his new racehorses, he hired Tom Smith, a mysterious mustang breaker from the Colorado plains. Three men changed Seabiscuit’s fortunes:Ĭharles Howard was a onetime bicycle repairman who introduced the automobile to the western United States and became an overnight millionaire. But his success was a surprise to the racing establishment, which had written off the crooked-legged racehorse with the sad tail. ![]() About a million people placed a bet-equivalent to 1 in 7 city residents.Seabiscuit was one of the most electrifying and popular attractions in sports history and the single biggest newsmaker in the world in 1938, receiving more coverage than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. That balmy November night, the pot had gone unclaimed six times over. When no one picks correctly, the prize money rolls over to the next set of races. More than 10 million combinations are possible. The wager is a little like a trifecta of trifectas it requires players to predict the top three horses, in any order, in three different heats. 6, 2001, all of Hong Kong was talking about the biggest jackpot the city had ever seen: at least HK$100 million (then about $13 million) for the winner of a single bet called the Triple Trio. ![]() Their cathedral is Happy Valley Racecourse, whose grassy oval track and floodlit stands are ringed at night by one of the sport’s grandest views: neon skyscrapers and neat stacks of high-rises, a constellation of illuminated windows, and beyond them, lush hills silhouetted in darkness. Horse racing is something like a religion in Hong Kong, whose citizens bet more than anyone else on Earth. ![]()
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