Download or read book The Most Expensive Racehorse in the World A True Story of the Global Racing Industry written by James Clay and published by Mill City Press, Incorporated. This book was released on 2019-12 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: FUSAICHI PEGASUS WON THE KENTUCKY DERBY RACE IN 2000. THE FIRST FAVORED HORSE TO WIN SINCE 1979. That win set off a riveting tale of a global race to acquire the horse for breeding. A tale that involved the richest horse farms in the world. A race that culminated in the greatest price ever paid for a racehorse. No other racehorse has ever generated such interest or price. This true story details the personal journey of James Clay. An attorney, working on the sunny side of the Big Island of Hawaii in the provincial town of Kailua-Kona, when a phone call about a golf game with a Japanese stranger set the wheels in motion for this engrossing tale. He ended up representing the Japanese owner of "Pegasus". The only non-Japanese representative on a small team of Japanese that travelled on an 18 month journey circling the globe to complete the largest sale in the history of thoroughbred horse racing. A story not so much about horse racing, rather about the racing industry, controlled at the top by the richest horse farms in the world. Sheik Maktoum of Dubai, John Magnier, owner of Coolmore Farm in Ireland, along with Ashford Stud in Kentucky and Coolmore Australia, the largest and richest farm in the world, Robert Clay, owner of Three Chimneys in Kentucky where Seattle Slew stood. Terry Yoshida of Shadai Farm in Japan. Billionaires. All jousting for the privilege of purchasing Pegasus to control breeding for the next 20 years. Come into this rarified world of private jets to California, Kentucky, New York, Paris, Ireland and Japan as the author attended three winners' circles. How he set up a revolutionary auction for the sale of Pegasus, complete with envelopes under the door. How he had to resurrect the final sale after being mislead as to the ownership of Pegasus causing the richest contract to be cancelled. Learn about syndication and how it affects the price in todays racing world and why the first Triple Crown and Breeders' Cup Classic winner, American Pharaoh and Triple Crown winner Justify will never run again.
Download or read book Seabiscuit written by Laura Hillenbrand and published by HarperCollins UK. This book was released on 2002 with total page 452 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: From the author of 'Unbroken' - a major motion picture releasing in 2015 - this is the bestselling true story of three men and their dreams for a racehorse, Seabiscuit. In 1938 one figure received more press coverage than Mussolini, Hitler or Roosevelt. He was a cultural icon and a world-class athlete - and an undersized, crooked-legged racehorse by the name of Seabiscuit. Misunderstood and mishandled, Seabiscuit had spent seasons floundering in the lowest ranks of racing until a chance meeting of three men. Together, they created a champion. This is a story which topped the bestseller charts for over two years; a riveting tale of grit, grace, luck and an underdog's stubborn determination to win against all odds. Made into a major motion picture starring Toby Maguire and Jeff Daniels.
Download or read book Seabiscuit written by Laura Hillenbrand and published by National Geographic Books. This book was released on 2002-03-26 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: #1 NEW YORK TIMES BESTSELLER • From the author of the runaway phenomenon Unbroken comes a universal underdog story about the horse who came out of nowhere to become a legend. Seabiscuit was one of the most electrifying and popular attractions in sports history and the single biggest newsmaker in the world in 1938, receiving more coverage than FDR, Hitler, or Mussolini. But his success was a surprise to the racing establishment, which had written off the crooked-legged racehorse with the sad tail. Three men changed Seabiscuit’s fortunes: Charles Howard was a onetime bicycle repairman who introduced the automobile to the western United States and became an overnight millionaire. When he needed a trainer for his new racehorses, he hired Tom Smith, a mysterious mustang breaker from the Colorado plains. Smith urged Howard to buy Seabiscuit for a bargain-basement price, then hired as his jockey Red Pollard, a failed boxer who was blind in one eye, half-crippled, and prone to quoting passages from Ralph Waldo Emerson. Over four years, these unlikely partners survived a phenomenal run of bad fortune, conspiracy, and severe injury to transform Seabiscuit from a neurotic, pathologically indolent also-ran into an American sports icon. Praise for Seabiscuit “Fascinating . . . Vivid . . . A first-rate piece of storytelling, leaving us not only with a vivid portrait of a horse but a fascinating slice of American history as well.”—The New York Times “Engrossing . . . Fast-moving . . . More than just a horse’s tale, because the humans who owned, trained, and rode Seabiscuit are equally fascinating. . . . [Laura Hillenbrand] shows an extraordinary talent for describing a horse race so vividly that the reader feels like the rider.”—Sports Illustrated “REMARKABLE . . . MEMORABLE . . . JUST AS COMPELLING TODAY AS IT WAS IN 1938.”—The Washington Post
Download or read book Saving Baby written by Jo Anne Normile and published by Macmillan Publishers Aus.. This book was released on 2015-03-01 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Jo Anne Normile was not supposed to keep the foal, an exuberant Thoroughbred, but she fell in love with the young horse who had literally been born into her arms. The breeder finally said she could keep the colt, whom she nicknamed 'Baby' - but only if she raced him. It was difficult to take Baby away from the safety of his pasture, but Normile had made a promise. She experienced a thrill every time Baby sprinted around the track but for every Seabiscuit, there are are tens of thousands of racehorses whose lives end in pain and despair because of the indifference and corruption that run rampant through the world of horse racing. Normile knew none of this. Not until an accident on a poorly maintained track. That's when everything changed. That's when Normile founded the most successful horse rescue in the country, an organization that would go on to save more horses than anyone else ever had. Saving Baby is Jo Anne Normile's story of perseverance and passion. A heartbreaking and ultimately life-affirming book, it testifies to the transcending power of hope, and the unshakable bonds of love. PRAISE FOR SAVING BABY "First-class storytelling...Action and emotion equally drive this compelling tale...A touching narrative that transcends its subject matter." Kirkus Reviews (starred review) "An engaging memoir that is a must-read for animal lovers." Publisher's Weekly
Download or read book Ringers Rascals written by David Ashforth and published by Eclipse Press. This book was released on 2004 with total page 286 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Chronicles Peter Christian Barrie's efforts to fool horse racing authorities by painting horses with henna dye to disguise good race horses as bad ones, fooling betters and fixing races.
Download or read book Popular Mechanics written by and published by . This book was released on 2000-01 with total page 140 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Popular Mechanics inspires, instructs and influences readers to help them master the modern world. Whether it’s practical DIY home-improvement tips, gadgets and digital technology, information on the newest cars or the latest breakthroughs in science -- PM is the ultimate guide to our high-tech lifestyle.
Download or read book Secretariat written by William Nack and published by Da Capo Press. This book was released on 2002-04-04 with total page 388 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In 1973, Secretariat, the greatest thoroughbred in horse-racing history, won the Triple Crown. The only horse to ever break the two-minute mark in winning the Kentucky Derby until recent winner Monarchos, Secretariat also pulled off one of the most astounding victories in the annals of horse racing by winning the Belmont Stakes by a record-breaking thirty-one lengths. Now William Nack updates his acclaimed portrait with a new afterword that examines the legacy of one of ESPN's "100 Greatest Athletes of the Century": the only horse to ever grace the covers of Time , Newsweek , and Sports Illustrated all in the same week.
Download or read book The Global Horseracing Industry written by Phil McManus and published by Routledge. This book was released on 2012-09-10 with total page 258 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Horseracing, thoroughbred breeding and gambling on racing are global industries worth several hundred billion dollars. They are also industries facing serious challenges, from the rise of alternative forms of leisure gambling to concerns about the ethical treatment of animals in all equestrian sports. This book offers a broad-ranging examination of the contemporary horseracing industry, from geographical, economic, social, ethical and environmental perspectives. The book draws on in-depth, mixed-method research into the racing and breeding industries in the US, Australia, the UK, Canada and New Zealand, and includes comparative material on other key racing centres, such as Ireland, Singapore and Hong Kong. It explores the economic structure of the global racing business, including comparisons with other major international sport businesses and other equestrian sports. It examines the social and cultural roots of the sport through its association with, and impact on, rural places, communities and environments from Kentucky to Newmarket – highlighting racing’s particular blend of tradition and scientific and technological innovation. The book also explores the ethical issues at the heart of horseracing, from reproduction to the use of the whip, and the inescapable tension between the horse as an instrumentally valuable commodity and the horse as an intrinsically valuable animal with needs and interests. The Global Horseracing Industry concludes by considering alternative futures for this major international sports business. The book is illuminating reading for anybody with an interest in sport, business, cultural geography, animal studies, or environmental studies.
Download or read book The Grand National written by Anne Holland and published by Weidenfeld & Nicolson. This book was released on 2020-05-19 with total page 0 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every year the Grand National produces very different stories from jockeys and horses alike; uplifting scenes from a victor and heartbreak when a mere inch divides the loser from the winner at the end of nearly four-and-a-half miles and 30 challenging fences. The race has evolved over the years but there is one constant: luck, or the lack of it. How fitting, then, that in 1839 the first winner was named Lottery. Back then, huge crowds rode to Aintree by horseback, in carriages, carts or on foot. Hotels were so full that some slept four guests to a bed. Today the Grand National is probably the world's most famous horse race, with a global television audience of some 600 million in 140 countries. Anne Holland's richly informed book focuses on the race's various record-breakers, rather than being a purely chronological history. In this greatest of all steeplechases, many records have stood the test of time. It is still jockey George Stevens from the 19th century who has ridden the most winners - five. In 2019, Tiger Roll's second consecutive victory was the first time that the feat had been achieved since Red Rum in 1973-74, and before that, Reynoldstown in 1935-36. Throughout its vivid history, many people have been opposed to the Grand National, claiming it to be dangerous. During the 21st century the famous fences have been modified, the drop at Becher's Brook reduced, and the landing levelled. All this has led to a laudable reduction in injuries. The Grand National continues to provide men, women and diverse thoroughbred horses with a true test of skill, bravery and perseverance. Anne Holland's authoritative history celebrates one of the world's greatest sporting spectacles.
Download or read book At the Track written by Barry Wood (Writer on horse racing) and published by . This book was released on 2013 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Following the best-selling Off the Track comes At the Track - a romp of intrigue, fascination, failures and great track triumphs. Join brothers Barry and Alan Wood as they once again explore the wonderful world history of horse racing. Includes the great thoroughbreds, the colourful personalities and the champions.
Download or read book Dream Horse written by Janet Vokes and published by Pan. This book was released on 2021-01-21 with total page 320 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The moving true story of an ordinary Welsh woman who dreamed of breeding a race horse, and Dream Alliance, who defied the odds to become a champion and brought a community together. Janet Vokes was working behind the bar in her local working men's club in the small Welsh mining community of Cefn Fforest when she fixed upon the idea of breeding a racehorse. She'd always loved animals, having dabbled in showing whippets and racing pigeons, and her husband Brian used to be a rag and bone man with a horse of his own. Why shouldn't a working-class horse take on the high flyers in the rarified world of racing? She bought a mare for £350, paired her up with a pedigree stallion and helped to create a syndicate of twenty-three friends from the village -- each paying £10 a week -- to raise the resulting foal, Dream Alliance. He may have grown up on an allotment but Dream Alliance had star quality, beating all the odds to become a winner at a number of world-class racetracks. Then a terrible injury to his leg threatened not just his career but his life. Refusing to have him put down, the syndicate paid for experimental surgery and Dream Alliance went on to not only make a full recovery but win the Welsh Grand National.
Download or read book Stud written by Kevin Conley and published by Bloomsbury Publishing USA. This book was released on 2008-12-02 with total page 226 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Every year, on Valentine's Day, the great Thoroughbred farms open their breeding sheds and begin their primary business. For the next one hundred and fifty days, the cries of stallions and the vigorous encouragement of their handlers echo through breeding country, from the gentle hills of Kentucky to the rich valleys of California. Stud takes us into this strange and seductive world of horse breeding. We meet the world's leading sire, Storm Cat, the Triple Crown winner, Seattle Slew, and a nearly unmanageable colt, Devil Begone, who has found peace and prosperity on the banks of the Rio Grande servicing desert mares like Patty O'Furniture. Cheap stud, top stud, old stud, wild stud, from the Hall of Fame horse to the harem stallion with his feral herd, Stud looks at intimate acts in idyllic settings and the billion-dollar business behind them.
Download or read book Bloodlines written by Melissa del Bosque and published by HarperCollins. This book was released on 2017-09-12 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: The riveting and suspenseful account of two young FBI agents in a pursuit of a drug cartel's most fearsome leader, Miguel Treviño Drugs, money, cartels: this is what FBI rookie Scott Lawson expected when he was sent to the border town of Laredo, but instead he’s deskbound writing intelligence reports about the drug war. Then, one day, Lawson is asked to check out an anonymous tip: a horse was sold at an Oklahoma auction house for a record-topping price, and the buyer was Miguel Treviño, one of the leaders of the Zetas, Mexico's most brutal drug cartel. The source suggested that Treviño was laundering money through American quarter horse racing. If this was true, it offered a rookie like Lawson the perfect opportunity to infiltrate the cartel. Lawson teams up with a more experienced agent, Alma Perez, and, taking on impossible odds, sets out to take down one of the world’s most fearsome drug lords. In Bloodlines, Emmy and National Magazine Award-winning journalist Melissa del Bosque follows Lawson and Perez's harrowing attempt to dismantle a cartel leader’s American racing dynasty built on extortion and blood money. With extensive access to investigative evidence and in-depth interviews with key players, del Bosque turns more than three years of research and her decades of reporting on Mexico and the border into a gripping narrative about greed and corruption. Bloodlines offers us an unprecedented look at the inner workings of the Zetas and US federal agencies, and opens a new vista onto the changing nature of the drug war and its global expansion.
Download or read book Off the Track written by Barry Wood and published by . This book was released on 2012 with total page 278 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: Carefully chosen from the racing lore found in Australia, New Zealand and around the world, Off the Track features compelling stories written, selected and meticulously honed by two brothers who are passionate about the subject. The colourful personalities, the criminals, and the conmen. Horses that were so talented they were never beaten, and those that had the dubious distinction of always being beaten.
Download or read book California Chrome Our Story written by Perry Martin and published by . This book was released on 2022-01-03 with total page 276 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: California Chrome - Our Story A compelling true story about family, life and love. Building a dream, and then getting swept away by the horse of a lifetime! The Martins had built a comfortable middle-class life, only to risk it all and push their finances to the limit in building Martin Testing Laboratories. After years of struggling, they made the business profitable through sheer will. Regaining their financial feet, you would think they would relax and enjoy their much earned success. Instead, they embark on the ride of a lifetime as the first horse they had ever bred, California Chrome, takes the world by storm and wins the Kentucky Derby! This book is an effort to clear the social media and internet fog surrounding California Chrome and to dispel the salacious gossip that in today's world passes for journalism. It is a clear-eyed look at the business of breeding and racing a champion racehorse, and all the thrills and heartaches that go along with it.
Download or read book Out of the Clouds written by Linda Carroll and published by . This book was released on 2018 with total page pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: In the bestselling tradition of the The Eighty-Dollar Champion, the propulsive, inspiring Cinderella story of Stymie, an unwanted Thoroughbred, and Hirsch Jacobs, the once dirt-poor trainer who bought the colt on the cheap and molded him into the most popular horse of his time and the richest racehorse the world had ever seen. In the wake of World War II, as turmoil and chaos were giving way to a spirit of optimism, Americans were looking for inspiration and role models showing that it was possible to start from the bottom and work your way up to the top-and they found it in Stymie, the failed racehorse plucked from the discard heap by trainer Hirsch Jacobs. Like Stymie, Jacobs was a commoner in "The Sport of Kings," a dirt-poor Brooklyn city slicker who forged an unlikely career as racing's winningest trainer by buying cheap, unsound nags and magically transforming them into winners. The $1,500 pittance Jacobs paid to claim Stymie became history's biggest bargain as the ultimate iron horse went on to run a whopping 131 races and win 25 stakes, becoming the first Thoroughbred ever to earn more than $900,000. The Cinderella champion nicknamed "The People's Horse" captivated the masses with his rousing charge-from-behind stretch runs, his gritty blue-collar work ethic, and his rags-to-riches success story. In a golden age when horse racing rivaled baseball and boxing as America's most popular pastime, he was every bit as inspiring a sports hero as Joe DiMaggio and Joe Louis. Taking readers on a crowd-pleasing ride with Stymie and Jacobs, Out of the Clouds unwinds a real-life Horatio Alger tale of a dauntless team and its working-class fans who lived vicariously through the stouthearted little colt they embraced as their own.
Download or read book Duel for the Crown written by Linda Carroll and published by Simon and Schuster. This book was released on 2014-04-22 with total page 368 pages. Available in PDF, EPUB and Kindle. Book excerpt: A gripping look at the great duel between Affirmed, the last horse to win the Triple Crown—comprised of the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes—and his archrival, Alydar. From the moment they first galloped head-to-head in Saratoga Springs, the two chestnut colts showed they were the stuff of racing legend. Alydar, all muscle with a fearsome closing kick, was already the popular favorite to win the Kentucky Derby. Affirmed, deceptively laid-back streamlined elegance, was powered forward by his steely determination not to settle for second place. In the Sport of Kings, the Triple Crown is the most valued prize, requiring a horse to win not just one race, but three: the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes. And 1978 would not be just for the record books, but also one of the greatest dramas ever played out in the racing world. There were names to conjure with, worthy of the Sport of Kings. The bloodline of Native Dancer. The teen wonderboy jockey Steve Cauthen. The once unbeatable Calumet Farm—the Damn Yankees of the racing world—now in eclipse and hoping for a comeback. The newcomer Harbor View Farm—owned by brash financier Louis Wolfson, who wouldn’t let even a conviction and a prison sentence for securities violations stand in the way of his dreams of glory. And the racetracks themselves: Belmont, Saratoga, Pimlico. And, of course, Churchill Downs. It has been thirty-five years since Affirmed and Alydar fought for the Triple Crown, thirty-five years when no other horse has won it. Duel for the Crown brings this epic battle to life. Not just two magnificent Thoroughbreds but the colorful human personalities surrounding them, caught up in an ever-intensifying battle of will and wits that lasted until the photo finish of the final Triple Crown race . . . and Alydar and Affirmed leaped into the history books.
