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He was not flashy in his color, so
he didn't stand out. He had no
"chrome", as they say in the
horse world, which meant he
had no white markings on his
ankles or on his face and he was
probably a pretty ordinary
brown color. This was part of his
appeal and inspiration to the
folks of the 30's - if this ordinary
looking horse can achieve greatness,
maybe I can, too.
But like many great athletes, he
didn't look like much standing
still. After seeing the PBS special
several times I’ve observed that
he had quite a long neck, which
he used very efficiently to run.
He'd stretch it over the top
where the strongest muscles are
and this gave him tremendous
stretch over his back.
But his efficient neck would not have made
the difference without a very flexible lower back. This
enabled him to curl his pelvis effectively on every stride.
That meant that his hind legs really jumped underneath him
to push him forward. He got a kind of maximum stretch and
maximum contraction on every stride as he galloped.
The trainer, Tom Smith was also
very clever at augmenting this
motion. The entire drama
around the match race and how
War Admiral's owner did not
want to use a starting gate
(where War Admiral acted up)
revealed how good a trainer Tom
Smith was. The line-up and start
off a bell made a great
Hollywood moment. Smith did
school the horse on quickness off
the bell, but in the actual footage
you see Seabiscuit "sit down"
and push to start - very much
like human runners in starting
blocks do.
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One
of the big Thoroughbred trainers today, Bob Baffert came
from Quarter Horse racing originally and uses similar techinques
in training. If you're only going a quarter mile, the start
is everything. In my opinion, he knows how to school a horse
to push off fast and efficiently. Tom Smith also knew this
and could train it.
Seabiscuit 's trainer had great, quiet kindness
and the horse responded. A good horseman has a sense about
when to push young horses and when to back off.
We think race horses aregrown
at 3 - they're still very young and growing. And, when a horse
is growing, they get very disorganized in their body motion
for periods of time. If you think about it, race horses are
freaks of nature that have been genetically culled by the
racing world to mature early. That is, the early maturing
horses win, get bred and they make more early maturing horses.
Seabiscuit matured a bit later - probably explains his legendary
ability to sleep - he was still growing.
My favorite part of everything
I've watched and read is the advice from Tom Smith to Red
Pollard going on to the track for the 100 Grander after
all their collective injuries. "You know the horse
and the horse knows you - bring him home" And that
horse did it for that man - they were great friends - and
Seabiscuit did it for him. And of course, he just loved
to run.
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