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Author Interview

Video: Laura Hillenbrand
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1. Charles Howard, owner
2. Tom Smith, trainer
3. Red Pollard, jockey
4. Agnes Conlon, Red Pollard's wife
5. George Woolf, jockey
6. James "Sunny Jim" Fitzsimmons, trainer

Tom Smith
Transcript: He took Seabiscuit out in secret, out on the Tanforan racetrack. It was just him, the horse, and an exercise rider, and it was the first time he was going to really see how fast this horse could go. And he turned the horse loose, and he actually pulled out his stopwatch this time, and he watched the horse flatten down and start really rolling on the backstretch, and Smith later said what he thought was, "He's burning the top off the racetrack."

The horse was absolutely flying, and he watched him bend into the turn, and the horse had this suppleness to his body when he turned. And Smith thought, no horse has ever run a turn like this one, and he kept glancing down at the watch, thinking the horse couldn't possibly be going this fast. And the horse went under the wire, and he clicked the stopwatch, and the horse had crushed the track record. And this was in a workout. Horses rarely run as fast in workouts as they do in real races, and Smith knew what he had on his hands, and he was scared to death.





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