American Experience | Seabiscuit

Author Interview

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

George Woolf
Transcript: Part of what made George Woolf such a superb jockey was his pedigree. He was the son of a mounted circus acrobat and a stagecoach driver. He spent his whole life aboard horses right from very small childhood. Riding out on the ranges in Babb, Montana, riding rodeo horses and riding match races in Indian country. This man knew horses. He knew horses better than almost anybody.

He was very, very smart and he researched every race he rode. He would go into the Daily Racing Form, and not only study his own horse but he'd study every other horse in the field looking for a weakness.

And he did something that was before its time. He would sit in the jock's room, before a race, and close his eyes and visualize every race. People thought he was sleeping but he wasn't. He was riding it in his mind until he found a way to win it. And when he opened his eyes he knew he was going to win the race -- and he almost always did.

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