Informative Essay About Horse Racing

Snazzy Title Introduction!!!!!!!! Dictionary.com defines horse racing fairly simple. It establishes a horse race as, “a contest of speed among horses that either are ridden by jockeys or pull sulkies and their drivers”. Any and all forms of racing have been around for quite a while, especially horse racing. The sport began in the Greek and Roman eras through the form of chariot races. The term “jockey” started in 664 B.C.E., at the 33rd Olympiad, when men contested against one another while riding on the backs of horses. Thanks to the Roman expansion, horse racing was brought to Britain and very popular in the late 1500s’. The modern thoroughbred was created in Britain with the careful breeding of three horses: the Darley Arabian, the Byerly

He is most well known for beating War Admiral in a head-to-head race in 1938, which was dubbed the “Match of the Century”. He is also known to have raised gloomy spirits during the Great Depression (source 4). The light bay colt was born on May 23, 1933 in Lexington, Kentucky, and was the son of the stallion Hard Tack and the mare Swing On. Hard Tack was the son of Man O’War (source 6). Seabiscuit was known to be a lazy horse, and never seemed like he wanted to run full speed. Jockeys repeatedly and aggressively whipped him to try and get to run as fast as he could, and thus by three years old, Seabiscuit had developed a pathetic attitude and constantly performed poorly. He was thought as a freak compared to his royal ancestors; while he was short, thick, and ran with a odd trot, his forebears were slim and tall (source

When he came under Charles Howard’s ownership in 1936, Seabiscuit was anything but a thoroughbred great; he was vicious, quarrelsome, and severely underweight. Howard’s new trainer, Tom Smith, finally got the horse calmed down and retrained him to have good temperament and run the way he was supposed to. Red Pollard rode Seabiscuit for a majority of his races after coming under Smith’s training, and the two youngsters developed a deep bond. He was considered the greatest racehorse on the West Coast and was a serious contender in any race. News spread fast, and quickly the whole United States called for a match between Seabiscuit and War Admiral, the greatest racehorse on the East Coast. On November 1, 1938, War Admiral and Seabiscuit met to race at Pimlico Race Course in Maryland. The race was known as the “Match of the Century” and almost the entire United States watching or listening in to see who was the best out of the best. However, prior the match, Pollard was injured in a racing accident and shattered his leg. The jockey’s career was thought to be over and he could not ride his favorite horse in the biggest race of his life. Pollard had his good friend and fellow jockey, George Woolf, ride Seabiscuit. Retrained to break fast at the start, Seabiscuit took the lead and stayed there until Woolf allowed War Admiral to catch up around the final turn. Pollard had told Woolf that once