Horse Racing Fantasy Community

With all the talk about the possible match ups between Curlin and Zenyatta, Big Brown and Curlin, Zarkava and Zenyatta, and so on, my mind has been on the subject of match races lately. There were many such races in the 20th century, but the practice has been by and large discontinued after the tragic breakdown of Ruffian in the July, 1975 match race vs. Kentucky Derby winner Foolish Pleasure. Some of the great horses in the history of racing have competed in match races. The great Man o' War took on Sir Barton, the first Triple Crown winner, in the first nationally covered match race of the 20th century. The result wasn't close: Man o' War won by about six lengths. There have been many others as well. Swaps and Nashua comes to mind, for example, but the most celebrated match race in history took place in 1938 between Seabiscuit and War Admiral. Contrary to the film, these two horses were widely considered the best in the United States at the time, with Biscuit on the west coast, and War Admiral on the east. The event was highly anticipated, but postponed several times due to one horse not quite feeling well, the condition of the track, or disagreement on price. War Admiral's owner, Sam Riddle, was not, as the movie tries to say, ducking the race or looking down on Seabiscuit. In fact he had tremendous respect for Seabiscuit's ability and complimented him regularly in the newspapers of the day. He had good reason: Seabiscuit was a paternal grandson of the mighty Man o' War, who Riddle had owned and trained, so Riddle looked at the match race with War Admiral as a celebration of the greatness of his legendary sire's bloodlines. The race took place on November 1, 1938. You will notice that War Admiral does not tower over Seabiscuit like the film suggests. Instead, both horses were on the small side, about 15.2 hands. War Admiral was made a slight favorite for this race, called The Pimlico Special, but Seabiscuit was not a long shot by any means: