Seabiscuit

This chapter details the harsh life of a jockey. The main challenge was their weight, which jockeys went to great lengths to keep low. Each horse was assigned a specific weight, or impost, to carry in a race, and jockeys could be no more than five pounds over. They endured sweat baths and grueling exercise regimens to sweat off pounds. They drank as little as possible (water being a major source of weight), went on drastic diets, and forced themselves to vomit. They consumed near-toxic concoctions to purge their bowels, and, as a last resort, they ate tapeworm eggs so the parasite would help them shed pounds. All this led to their malnourishment and poor health, causing chronic problems such as light-headedness and general weakness. (Some couldn’t even stay in the saddle to ride once they got themselves to the proper weight.)

Hillenbrand then describes how athletic jockeys need to be despite the above health issues, starting with the need for vast amounts of “balance, coordination, and reflex” (70). They also need great strength, as they don’t sit during a race so much as crouch above the saddle by standing slightly in the stirrups—“a task much like perching on the grille of a car while it speeds down a twisting, potholed freeway in traffic” (70). On top of that, it takes an agile mind to be a good jockey. Strategy is essential, as is an accurate sense of pace. Jockeys also need to know where to position their horse relative to the others and be able to read both riders and horses around them to make split-second decisions.

Accidents were common and could be lethal. Flying through the air at 40 miles an hour on animals weighing half a ton or more, jockeys put their bodies on the line every time they raced. They could be thrown, dragged, or trampled, and many racetracks made minimal provision for such accidents. But even when injured, jockeys pushed on for fear of being passed up for races. They avoided thinking too much about the dangers since any doubt could cause them to lose the edge that came with daring. Despite all that, jockeys lived for the sheer thrill of the race, Hillenbrand explains. Man and horse together created a racing machine greater than the sum of its parts—and it gave riders an unparalleled sense of exhilaration and freedom.

In Chapter 6, Hillenbrand describes the kind of life Red Pollard and George Woolf lived each winter for a few years at the racetrack in Tijuana, Mexico. It was an unrestrained environment, dominated by a brothel called Molino Rojo on a hill overlooking the track, and most jockeys lived a rather wild life there. Both Pollard and Woolf were dedicated to their profession and did not partake in such extracurriculars. They each found a measure of success starting in 1928, with Pollard winning $20,000 in total purse earnings and Woolf winning a phenomenal $100,000. Pollard was known around the track as a keen storyteller, with a quick temper and fondness for books, while Woolf was worshipped as the master who could do no wrong. 

But, Hillenbrand writes, “the halcyon days at the Tijuana track came to a spectacular end” (88). In the late 1920s, a flood dislodged an enormous manure pile behind the track and destroyed the track. In the panic, many horses were set free and disappeared into the countryside, gone forever. A new racetrack, named Agua Caliente, was built nearby, after which Pollard and Woolf regained their dominance. In 1933, Woolf won the prestigious Agua Caliente Handicap riding Gallant Sir, and the following year Pollard won it riding the same horse. 

Both jockeys, however, soon met with difficult circumstances that changed their lives. Woolf was diagnosed with Type I diabetes, probably in 1931. At that time, treatment was still rudimentary and uneven. Insulin had been discovered a decade earlier, but things like proper dosage had yet to be worked out. It was a serious condition for anyone, but for a jockey battling weight gain, it was doubly difficult. Diabetes often increases one’s appetite, and high-protein foods are recommended, which increase weight. It also made Woolf drowsy at times and there was the fear that he might faint mid-race. One way he coped with this was to reduce his racing schedule drastically. Because of his standing, he could select only the best horses, and despite a light schedule still come out among the top riders in terms of wins.

Pollard suffered a freak accident while on the track one morning working out a horse. When another horse passed, it kicked up a rock or clump of dirt that hit Pollard in the head and left him permanently blind in his right eye. This should have ended his career, as he would have no depth perception or sight on the outside where horses often passed. It would limit his ability to sense his relative position on the track and put every other horse and rider at risk as well. But he kept it secret and continued riding.

Soon after Pollard’s 1934 win at Tijuana, gambling was banned in Mexico and Woolf and him returned to the U.S.—where states were legalizing it again—and went their separate ways. Woolf won the first Santa Anita Handicap in early 1935 to continue his success, while Pollard’s record began to falter, even in the less important weekday races that had been the mainstay of his career. He hooked up with a jockey agent named Yummy, and, after a disappointing 1936 season in Ohio, the two made their way to the Detroit Fair Grounds, where Pollard looked for work. There someone pointed out Tom Smith standing by Seabiscuit’s stall. Pollard went up to introduce himself, and, as Hillenbrand writes, “[t]he scattered lives of Red Pollard, Tom Smith, and Charles Howard had come to an intersection” (95).