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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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