Seabiscuit
Seabiscuit was a Thoroughbred racehorse descended from the legendary Man o' War. His sire, Hard Tack, was known for speed but also a vicious temper. His dam, Swing On, belonged to a Mrs. Gladys Phipps. From his father, Seabiscuit inherited his stubbornness and competitive instinct.
Smaller than most racehorses, with an unusually large head and front knees that did not straighten all the way, Seabiscuit was easygoing, relaxed, amiable, and lazy. However he was also intelligent enough to rebel against his trainers. His earliest trainer, James Fitzsimmons, noticed that Seabiscuit had speed but also severe behavioral problems.
A late foal born near the end of May in 1933, Seabiscuit did not compete well against other two and three year old horses partly because of his age disadvantage: all the other horses in his age class were almost six months older than he was. However, after a new trainer Tom Smith discovered his talent Seabiscuit became a regular winner in the "handicap" division, where horses aged three and up could race.
Charles Howard
A self-made multimillionaire, Charles Howard was well into his fifties when he met Seabiscuit. Tall, bald, and with an eye for opportunity, he made his fortune as an automobile dealer in San Francisco after the 1906 earthquake. Charles Howard and his first wife Fannie May had two sons, Lin and Frankie. But when Frankie was killed in a car accident, Charles never recovered emotionally. His marriage with Fannie May collapsed in 1932, after which point he married his second wife, Marcela.
Having been trained to ride a horse at an early age, Charles owned a ranch but did not commit to racing until the legalization of the pari-mutuel system made horce racing a viable sport. In 1935, Charles and Marcela started their own stable, registered under Marcela's name, and started buying horses and hiring trainers.
Confident and extroverted, Charles Howard knew how to sell and how to manipulate the press. Although he liked it when his horses won and his stable made money, he did not commercialize Seabiscuit.
Marcela Howard
Having married the fifty-two-ear-old Charles Howard when she herself was only twenty-five, Marcela Howard was charming, unconventional, and very good at getting her way. She designed the Howard riding silks: a crimson and white cap, a jacket with white sleeves and a crimson vest, and the Ridgewood cattle brand which was an H inside a white triangle.
Marcela, whose maiden name was Zabala, had a pleasant smile, dark wavy hair, and a love of adventure. Daring but not scandalous, Marcela was a risk taker who was not afraid to join her husband on a safari in Africa, shoot a lion that was charging the party, or walk into the all-male pressbox during a race. She was extremely fond of horses but also made sure the jockeys and stable boys were treated fairly.
Tom Smith
Tom Smith was Seabiscuit's trainer. An old cowboy of few words, he was sometimes known as "the lone plainsman". Years of working with horses gave him an excellent knowledge of equine psychology. He seldom appeared in public without a cap or hat, and after he came to work in the Howard stable he became a neat dresser who favored gray suits, dark vests, and wing tip shoes. He was particularly known for wearing a gray felt fedora.
Smith's training techniques were unconventional at the time, but a modern psychologist would recognize and approve of the way he used clocks, bells, and other noisemakers to desensitize a nervous animal and to train horses to respond to specific cues in specific ways. Yet most of the time he operated on instinct. He sensed, for example, that Seabiscuit had hidden potential as a racehorse.
John "Red" Pollard
Johnny Pollard was a thin man, five feet seven inches tall, born in Edmonton, Alberta. He had two nicknames. The first, "Red", came from his shockingly orange hair. The second, "the Cougar", came from his brief prizefighting career.
Gregarious and with a surprisingly deep voice, Johnny was the second of seven children. He loved to read and especially enjoyed great English literature, particularly Emerson, but he was an extremely restless young man who eventually ended up in Montana, alone, at the age of fifteen. Slender and light enough to ride, he found work at a track warming up horses and eventually became a jockey.
Over the years, Red Pollard struggled with injuries. He was partly blind in one eye, possibly due to a boxing injury, and was hurt several times while racing or warming up horses. Injuries to his shoulder, ribs, and legs hospitalized him several times, and he developed a dependency on alcohol.
Red married a nurse named Agnes and fathered two children, Norah and John.
George Woolf
An extremely talented jockey whose career eclipsed Pollard's, George Woolf rode Seabiscuit in the 1938 Santa Anita Handicap and again in the famous stakes race against War Admiral.
George Woolf, called "the Iceman" due to his coolness under pressure, was short, handsome, with dark blond hair and an intelligent riding style. He suffered from diabetes due to the constant dieting and weight cutting necessary to stay light enough to ride. He died at age 35 when he lost consciousness during a race.
