Laura Hillenbrand is a good enough writer - not often lyrical or poetic, but weaves a yarn as well as anyone else writing today, which is made made more impressive by the fact that she's writing non-fiction and is not at liberty to rewrite the story to suit the needs of her plot.
There are a couple of particularly great descriptions of Seabiscuit near the beginning:
"The colt's body, built low to the ground, had all the properties of a cinder block. Where Hard Tack had been tall, sleek, tapered, every line suggesting motion, his son was blunt, coarse, rectangular, stationary. He had a sad little tail, barely long enough to brush his hocks. His stubby legs were a study in unsound construction, with squarish, asymmetrical, baseball glove knees that didn't quite straighten all the way, leaving him in a permanent semi-crouch. Thanks to his unfortunately assembly, his walk was an odd, straddle-legged motion that was often mistaken for lameness. Asked to run, he would drop low over the track and fall into a comical version of what horsemen call an egg-beater gait, making a spastic, sideways, flailing motion with his left foreleg as he swung it forward, as if he were swatting at flies. His gallop was so disorganized that he had a maddening tendency to whack himself in the front ankle with his own hind hoof."
"Horses usually sleep in numerous brief sessions scattered throughout the day and night. About twenty percent of their daytime is spent snoozing. Because of the size and configuration of their bodies, they suffer impeded breathing and circulation when recumbent, and as prey animals who have trouble getting to their feet quickly, they are instinctively disinclined to stay down. As a result, the vast majority of horse's sleeping is done standing, which they can do thanks to ligaments that lock their leg joints in the extended position. The average stabled horse spends just five minutes at a time lying down to sleep, almost always at night. Seabiscuit was the exception. He could keel over and snooze for hours on end without suffering any negative consequences. While every other horse at the track raised hell demanding breakfast, he slept long and late, stretching out over the floor of his stall in such deep sedation that the grooms had to use every means in their power just to get him to stand up. . . . No one had ever seen a horse so relaxed. [A trainer] would remember him as 'a big dog,' the most easygoing horse he ever trained. The only thing Seabiscuit took seriously, aside from his beauty rest, was eating, which he did constantly with great vigor. He may have been an amiable little horse, but his career prospects looked dim. He was as slow as growing grass. He barely kept up with his training partners, lagging along behind with happy ineptitude."
Now that's a horse with character.
It's interesting that Hillenbrand rarely mentions anything about what's going on in the world outside of horse racing. There's a little bit of it in the personal history of Seabiscuit's owner, Charles Howard, because it helps explain how Mr. Howard got where he did. There's a little bit more in the epilogue, when she puts the racing back in historical context of the Great Depression and World War II. This information is truly not critical to the phenomenal story of the crooked little horse, but I think it does help explain why everyone was so enamored with him. During a time when our country's finances were in shambles, unemployment was high, and people generally felt run down, here comes this wonderful story of a champion who never should have been, but somehow was.
As with Atlantic fishing in The Perfect Storm, Hillenbrand writes not just to communicate the story of Seabiscuit, but also to teach the finer points of horse racing. It's fascinating stuff. I learned what the heck an impost is, what it's like to be a jockey, what's required to cool a horse after a race, and how the strange relationships between owners, trainers, and jockeys plays out. Did you know that horses running in some of these races are going nearly 50 miles an hour? Holy hell, that is fast! I've never even ridden my bike that fast, and that has wheels! I also found interesting the difference in a horse's ability between a "sprint race" at 1 mile and a "distance race" at 1-3/4 miles. In humans, where a sprint is 100 meters and a distance race is 26 miles, the difference of 3/4 of a mile seems trifling. But I guess when you think that they're doing it at highway speeds, it puts it into some measure of perspective.
If you've already seen the movie or read the book, or aren't concerned about spoilers there's some great video footage of Seabiscuit racing some of the key races here and here.
For a final parting shot, I looked around on the internet and found this fantastic picture of the Biscuit, oddly from some little kid's report on animal heroes:
What a great shot.
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