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Seabiscuit: The Movie© Greg Melikov
Aug 15, 2002
Laura Hillenbrand's best-seller "Seabiscuit: An American Legend" is being made into a movie with two jockeys playing key roles.
In addition, Spider Man star Tobey Maguire will be cast as Red Pollard, who rode Seabiscuit in many memorable races.
On Sept. 7, 1936, Pollard was aboard Seabiscuit when he won the Governor's Handicap, the big event of the Detroit Fair Grounds season. "Red Pollard had won his fourth stakes race in eleven long years in the saddle," Hillenbrand wrote. "He was radiant. He galloped Seabiscuit out to the cheers of the crowd, and then turned him back toward the grandstand. He was a new horse. In the fiftieth start of his life, Seabiscuit finally understood the game."
Recently retired Hall of Fame jockey Chris McCarron will portray Charley Kurtsinger, who rode Seabiscuit's great rival War Admiral.
At the end of his 3-year-old season, Seabiscuit had only won a total of 14 races in 58 starts. The best was yet to come.
In 1937, the son of Hard Tack captured 11 of 15 races, including 10 in a row and stakes on both coasts. He earned the most money, $168,580, even more than Triple Crown winner War Admiral. However, The Admiral was voted Horse of the Year; The Biscuit was top Older Horse of the Year.
In '38, Horse of the Year would be decided by their match race. The Biscuit convincingly defeated The Admiral - the grandson of Man o' War had whipped the son of Man o' War.
Three-time Kentucky Derby-winning jockey Gary Stevens plays George "Iceman" Woolf, Pollard's best friend and substitute rider for Seabiscuit who was aboard in the match race triumph because Red was injured.
But Hillenbrand believes Seabiscuit's greatest accomplishment came in '40 when he won the Santa Anita Handicap after years of failing. Ironically, Pollard was the jockey in The Big Cap like he had been in the beginning.
"Seabiscuit was 7 years old and he had been retired for a year," she wrote. "He was returning from a severe (ankle) injury that was thought to have made racing impossible for him. No elite horse in history had ever returned to top form after such an injury. And Seabiscuit not only won the race, he ran the second fastest 1 1/4 miles ever run in America.
"When Seabiscuit retired that year, he was literally worth his weight in gold, having earned a world record $437,730, nearly sixty times his price."
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