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Three Strides Before the Wire: The Dark and Beautiful World of Horse Racing by Elizabeth Mitchell
xxstefaniereadsxx's review
informative
slow-paced
4.0
It took me forever to finish this book. I had it in my car to read while my daughters were in dance class, so I didn't sit and read it all at once like I normally do. I bought this book simply because it was about horse racing, which is a sport I fell in love with in sixth grade. I had no idea what the subject of the book was...as it turned out, it was about the horse I fell in love with the first year I started watching horse racing!
Charismatic was such a long shot in the 1999 Kentucky Derby, I just felt like I had to pull for him. This book covered his birth up through the end of his life. I learned a lot about him, which I very much enjoyed. Charismatic was foaled on March 13, 1996. His dam was Bali Babe. His sire was Summer Squall, winner of the 1990 Preakness. He was sold for $200,000 to Bob and Beverly Lewis, and trained by legendary trainer, D. Wayne Lukas. Charismatic was strikingly unimpressive during his training and two year old season, even being entered into claiming races. He hit his stride in his three year old season, winning the Lexington Stakes in 1999. He went on to race in all three Triple Crown races, ridden by Chris Antley. He won the 1999 Kentucky Derby and the 1999 Preakness Stakes. He came in third in the 1999 Belmont Stakes, where he was pulled up just after crossing the wire. As it turned out, he had broken two bones in his leg. He had surgery and recovered to stand stud. He was voted United States Champion 3 Year Old Colt in 1999, and American Horse of the Year in 1999. He was retired to Old Friends farm in 2017, dying soon after arriving from a pelvic fracture. The research the author put into learning about the horse and his training was very impressive to me.
I have some favorite jockeys, and others whose name I recognize, and Chris Antley was not one of them. I actually thought that a completely different jockey was riding Charismatic in the Triple Crown races, and I have no idea how I missed this information. Antley was born in Florida, and moved to South Carolina where he grew up. He quit school at age sixteen, moving to Baltimore to ride professionally at Pimlico. In 1985, he was the United States Champion Jockey, with 469 wins. He was eighteen years old. In 1987, he won nine races on nine different horses in a single day, making his way into the Guinness Book of Records. In 1989, he won a minimum of one race per day for sixty four straight days. Unfortunately, he struggled with substance abuse and weight issues. He spent a lot of time in rehab facilities, losing his license or being suspended for his actions. He alienated himself from a lot of his fellow jockeys because of his treatment of them on and off the track. He came back in 1999 to ride Charismatic in the Triple Crown races. He jumped off the horse after pulling him up in the Belmont and held his leg and tried to calm the horse until help arrived. I absolutely wailed when I watched this happen on tv, and I cannot imagine how he must have felt. This image is burned into the hearts and minds of so many, it was even voted the Moment Of The Year in 1999 by the NTRA. He was found dead in his home in December 2000, having suffered traumatic injuries that are speculated to have been from a fall due to a multiple drug overdose. What a tragic end to a brilliant career and life. Antley was posthumously inducted into the Racing Hall of Fame in 2015.
I would strongly recommend this book to any fan of horse racing. It certainly shows the glory and the prestige that comes with having a winning horse, as well as the dark side. There are injuries, bad blood, bad money deals, losses, drug and weight problems. I am glad that I was able to learn more about Chris Antley, and it was nice to read about the horse that I was pulling for way back in sixth grade. What a nice surprise this book was for me!
Charismatic was such a long shot in the 1999 Kentucky Derby, I just felt like I had to pull for him. This book covered his birth up through the end of his life. I learned a lot about him, which I very much enjoyed. Charismatic was foaled on March 13, 1996. His dam was Bali Babe. His sire was Summer Squall, winner of the 1990 Preakness. He was sold for $200,000 to Bob and Beverly Lewis, and trained by legendary trainer, D. Wayne Lukas. Charismatic was strikingly unimpressive during his training and two year old season, even being entered into claiming races. He hit his stride in his three year old season, winning the Lexington Stakes in 1999. He went on to race in all three Triple Crown races, ridden by Chris Antley. He won the 1999 Kentucky Derby and the 1999 Preakness Stakes. He came in third in the 1999 Belmont Stakes, where he was pulled up just after crossing the wire. As it turned out, he had broken two bones in his leg. He had surgery and recovered to stand stud. He was voted United States Champion 3 Year Old Colt in 1999, and American Horse of the Year in 1999. He was retired to Old Friends farm in 2017, dying soon after arriving from a pelvic fracture. The research the author put into learning about the horse and his training was very impressive to me.
I have some favorite jockeys, and others whose name I recognize, and Chris Antley was not one of them. I actually thought that a completely different jockey was riding Charismatic in the Triple Crown races, and I have no idea how I missed this information. Antley was born in Florida, and moved to South Carolina where he grew up. He quit school at age sixteen, moving to Baltimore to ride professionally at Pimlico. In 1985, he was the United States Champion Jockey, with 469 wins. He was eighteen years old. In 1987, he won nine races on nine different horses in a single day, making his way into the Guinness Book of Records. In 1989, he won a minimum of one race per day for sixty four straight days. Unfortunately, he struggled with substance abuse and weight issues. He spent a lot of time in rehab facilities, losing his license or being suspended for his actions. He alienated himself from a lot of his fellow jockeys because of his treatment of them on and off the track. He came back in 1999 to ride Charismatic in the Triple Crown races. He jumped off the horse after pulling him up in the Belmont and held his leg and tried to calm the horse until help arrived. I absolutely wailed when I watched this happen on tv, and I cannot imagine how he must have felt. This image is burned into the hearts and minds of so many, it was even voted the Moment Of The Year in 1999 by the NTRA. He was found dead in his home in December 2000, having suffered traumatic injuries that are speculated to have been from a fall due to a multiple drug overdose. What a tragic end to a brilliant career and life. Antley was posthumously inducted into the Racing Hall of Fame in 2015.
I would strongly recommend this book to any fan of horse racing. It certainly shows the glory and the prestige that comes with having a winning horse, as well as the dark side. There are injuries, bad blood, bad money deals, losses, drug and weight problems. I am glad that I was able to learn more about Chris Antley, and it was nice to read about the horse that I was pulling for way back in sixth grade. What a nice surprise this book was for me!
xterminal's review
3.0
Elizabeth Mitchell, Three Strides Before the Wire: The Dark and Beautiful World of Horse Racing (Hyperion, 2002)
No less a personage than Tom Wolfe proclaims on the back cover of this book that Elizabeth Mitchell is the perfect person to tell the story of the meteoric rise of a no-name colt called Charismatic in 1999 from the claiming ranks to missing the Triple Crown by a fractured sesamoid a few feet before the finish line of the Belmont Stakes. Which may well be true. It is unfortunate, however, that the result comes off as an unsuccessful mating between the recent literary smash Seabiscuit: The Making of a Legend and the much less-known and much finer Bill Barich book Laughing in the Hills, which remains to this day the finest racing book ever published.
This is not to knock Mitchell's work. She takes the same basic tack Hillenbrand did in Seabiscuit, using each chapter to focus on a specific connection: the jockey, the owners, the trainer, the horse, tracing the history of each as they got closer to Derby Day 1999, and then combining them all to go through the Triple Crown. Where she crosses into Barich territory is in the addition of personal experience, and her own story as it intermeshed with that of Charismatic's connections. These sections didn't ring quite right, for reasons unknown. There are also a number of factual errors therein; most wouldn't be caught by non-racing fans, but there are a few that glare (in one particularly nasty one, jerry Bailey is on a horse as that horse loads into the gate, and around the far turn, said horse is being ridden by Gary Stevens. Not the same guy, even if all jocks look alike to you).
Better to start with Hillenbrand and Barich, and come to this afterwards. ** ½
No less a personage than Tom Wolfe proclaims on the back cover of this book that Elizabeth Mitchell is the perfect person to tell the story of the meteoric rise of a no-name colt called Charismatic in 1999 from the claiming ranks to missing the Triple Crown by a fractured sesamoid a few feet before the finish line of the Belmont Stakes. Which may well be true. It is unfortunate, however, that the result comes off as an unsuccessful mating between the recent literary smash Seabiscuit: The Making of a Legend and the much less-known and much finer Bill Barich book Laughing in the Hills, which remains to this day the finest racing book ever published.
This is not to knock Mitchell's work. She takes the same basic tack Hillenbrand did in Seabiscuit, using each chapter to focus on a specific connection: the jockey, the owners, the trainer, the horse, tracing the history of each as they got closer to Derby Day 1999, and then combining them all to go through the Triple Crown. Where she crosses into Barich territory is in the addition of personal experience, and her own story as it intermeshed with that of Charismatic's connections. These sections didn't ring quite right, for reasons unknown. There are also a number of factual errors therein; most wouldn't be caught by non-racing fans, but there are a few that glare (in one particularly nasty one, jerry Bailey is on a horse as that horse loads into the gate, and around the far turn, said horse is being ridden by Gary Stevens. Not the same guy, even if all jocks look alike to you).
Better to start with Hillenbrand and Barich, and come to this afterwards. ** ½
raehink's review
4.0
The dark side includes pedigree breeding, jockey lifestyles, horse injuries and gambling addictions. The beautiful is everything else. A good portion of this book tells the story of jockey Chris Antley and his three Crown races on Charismatic (the last ending the horse's career with two shattered leg bones). I enjoyed this a lot.
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