Seabiscuit

“There was a certain inevitability to Charles Howard, an urgency radiating from him that made people believe that the world was always going to bend to his wishes.”

This introduces the strong personality of Howard, Seabiscuit’s owner, and hints at the theme of “where there’s a will, there’s a way.” Hillenbrand describes him as a force of energy who left New York for California with only 21 cents and became a multimillionaire. It may have been this confidence that led him to believe in the ability of Seabiscuit to race again after a serious injury, when the rest of the racing establishment had counted him out.

“In Tom Smith’s younger days, the Indians would watch him picking his way over the open plains, skirting the mustang herds. He was always alone, even back then, in the waning days of the nineteenth century. He talked to virtually no one but his horses, and then only in their vernacular of small gestures and soft sounds. The Indians called him ‘Lone Plainsman.’ White men called him ‘Silent Tom.’ People merely brushed up against him. Only the horses seemed to know him well. They had been the quiet study of his life. He had grown up in a world in which horsemanship was as essential as breathing. Born with a prodigy’s intuitive understanding of the animals, he had devoted himself to them so wholeheartedly that he was incomplete without them. By nature or by exposure he had become like them, in their understatement, their blunt assertion of will. In the company of men, Smith was clipped and bristling. With horses, he was gracefully at ease. His history had the ethereal quality of hoofprints in windblown snow.”

This passage gives a good sense of author Laura Hillenbrand’s lyrical writing style. Her descriptions often match in tone and style the topic she’s writing about, as in the last sentence above. It introduces Tom Smith, Seabiscuit’s trainer, and gives a glimpse of the Old West, where he had absorbed the knowledge he brought to Seabiscuit’s training.  

“He believed with complete conviction that no animal was permanently ruined. Every horse could be improved. He lived by a single maxim: ‘Learn your horse. Each one is an individual, and once you penetrate his mind and heart, you can often work wonders with an otherwise intractable beast.’”

This again describes Tom Smith, illustrating his approach to working with horses. It was not “one size fits all” training; he studied each one and applied what he thought was needed for that particular horse. This was written about the beginning of Seabiscuit’s career, but it applies equally to its end.