horse racing,guts,strategy,heartbreak The match race of the 20th century: Seabiscuit & War Admiral

The match race of the 20th century: Seabiscuit & War Admiral

posted by maudlin

2 years 3 months 3 weeks ago • 2133 views

tags: horse racing, guts, strategy, heartbreak

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Seabiscuit meets his uncle, the Triple Crown winner War Admiral, in a match race in 1938, and crushes him. [more inside]

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From Laura Hillenbrand's "Seabiscuit":

He told Woolf to gun to the lead but to keep him in check on the backstretch. When jockey Kurtsinger launched War Admiral in his final drive for the wire, Pollard said, do something completely unexpected and probably unprecedented: Let him catch up. ...

Pollard was sure that if Woolf let War Admiral challenge him, Seabiscuit would run faster and try harder than if Woolf tried to hold the lead alone. "Seabiscuit is the gamer horse. I know that." From there on in, the instructions were simple. Once War Admiral hooked Seabiscuit, "race him into the ground". ...

[The race]: For thirty yards, the two horse hurried down the homestretch side by side ... War Admiral, straining with all he had, was losing ground. ... After a sixteenth of a mile, Seabiscuit was half a length ahead. ... Kurtsinger made a new game plan. He would let Seabiscuit exhaust himself on the lead, then run him down. ...

Seabiscuit cruised into the backstretch on a one-length lead ... [Woolf] called back to Kurtsinger: "Hey, get on up here with me! We're supposed to have a horse race here!" ... War Admiral swooped up alongside him, his head pressing Seabiscuit's shoulder. Kurtsinger thought: I'm going to win it. ...

Woolf loosened his fingers and let an inch or two of the reins slide through. ... Pollard's startegy, Woolf's cunning and Smith's training had given Seabiscuit a chance in a race he otherwise could not have won. ...

written by maudlin

| 2 years 3 months 3 weeks ago | CH

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