The Great Racing Read

Wild Ride By Ann Hagedorn Auerbach A fascinating insight into the rise and rapid fall of Calumet Farm. Using a detailed and grisly account of Alydar's death in November 1990 to set the scene, Auerbach charts the rise of Calumet for its founder Warren Wright—an interesting read in itself that takes in the careers of Citation, Whirlaway and Alydar, etc.—before turning her attention to what went wrong in a matter of years under the management of J.T. Lundy. By the time of Alydar's death, the once stately institution was destitute,...

Monsieur X By Jamie Reid Subtitled 'An incredible story of the most audacious gambler in history', this book was offered to me by Teddy Grimthorpe, Juddmonte's racing manager, and from page one to the end it is fascinating. It features the rise and fall of Patrice des Moutis, a supremely intelligent engineer and fierce gambler who was supposed to be the brain behind the famous race-fixing coup of the Prix Bride Abattue at Auteuil racecourse. It is quite surprising that no French writer has ever written this story in detail....

This Was Racing By Joe H. Palmer Pick a favorite book about Thoroughbred racing? Not an easy task for most of us long in the game. As for myself, I still possess an extensive library of racing tomes, ranging from venerable to hot off the press and including everything penned by Jay Hovdey or Ed Bowen, many of which I have read and re-read to the point of frayed pages, but for the past half-century one and only one stands out: This Was Racing. The book that got me hooked....

My Animals and Other Family By Clare Balding Once I have found a book that captures my attention I become a compulsive reader who will only put the book down to eat a meal or sleep, until it ends. One such book was My Animals and Other Family. My family had initially taken it in turns to read the book while I waited impatiently for my opportunity to steal the book and leaf through its pages. I had watched Clare Balding present racing on the BBC many times and she...

Country Life Diary By Josh Pons I have just started re-reading my personally signed copy of Country Life Diary, a day-by-day account of three years in the life of a family-run Thoroughbred stud in Maryland, USA. Although over 30 years have passed since Josh Pons wrote the first chapter of a diary that was published every month for three straight years, the daily happenings of a working Thoroughbred farm are still the same every day around the world. The arrival and prospect of making a new stallion, covering the first...

Seabiscuit: Three Men and a Racehorse by Laura Hillenbrand While many of us will have watched the Oscar-nominated film adaption of the book which does no disservice to Hillenbrand's novel, you would truly be missing out if you didn't spend the time to read her excellent story. Set in 1930s America, Seabiscuit is a true underdog story about a crooked-legged horse who was transformed by the mysterious trainer Tom Smith, the half-blind jockey Red Pollard and overnight millionaire owner Charles Howard. Each character comes with their own fascinating story and...

A whole library of recommendations but, best of all, sales catalogues   The weight of it in the front basket of my bike on the ride home from the library overburdened my steering this way and that, but dicing with calamity was a small price to pay for being able to savour Ivor Herbert's 'Red Rum'—hefty as a breezeblock—at home, face down on a candlewick bedspread in the mid-Seventies, my hands and fingers contorted into galloping horses as they raced each other, re-enacting the last euphoric moments of the 1973...

Far From a Gentleman By John Hislop The racing recollections of the best gentleman rider of the inter-war period, Far From A Gentleman includes many amusing anecdotes of the characters and horses of that more leisurely time. The companion volume, Anything But A Soldier, details John's experiences in Word War II when he served behind the lines in Phantom, an offshoot of the SAS. John went on to breed Brigadier Gerard, one of the best, if not the best, of the colts that have raced in Europe since World War II.

A Caballo Entre Milenios By Fernando Savater  I would like to recommend this book by the Spanish philosopher Fernando Savater, a passionate supporter of horses. The book takes us around the world via the best horse races, with first-hand accounts from the Spanish Gold Cup to the Epsom Derby, Kentucky Derby, Prix de l'Arc de Triomphe, and stretching from Japan to Buenos Aires. A book that is essential reading, not just for horseracing but for cultural context from literature, cinema and politics at a time when Spain was still stricken...

The Australian & New Zealand Thoroughbred By Ross du Bourg There have been a handful of events through history which could trigger a sentence ending "... and nothing was ever the same again." The emergence of a previously unknown virus in Wuhan in the final quarter of 2019 might end up being in this list. One which is already there, alongside German soldiers marching into Poland on September 3, 1939, is Danehill starting to cover mares at Arrowfield in September 1990. Stallions were, admittedly, already being shuttled to the antipodes...

Sods I have cut on the Turf By Jack Leach Not only does this slim volume win the prize for the best title but it is also streets clear in the category for the best racing book ever written by a jockey or a trainer (Jack Leach was both) not to have been ghosted. In his foreword, Sir Gordon Richards describes Leach as "always the stylist, on or off a horse." That style is evident throughout the book. I recommend that you beg, borrow, buy or steal a copy. Leach...

Waterhouse & Smith: The Rise To Power Of Two Racing Dynasties By John Ellicott  I recommend this book for anyone new to or interested in Australian racing. Written by John Ellicott, it is divided into two sections—the first exploring the Waterhouse dynasty, and the second, the Smith dynasty. With the TJ Smith Stakes to be run next week, and Gai Waterhouse having recently landed the Golden Slipper, it gives a good timely account of how the families rose to prominence in Australian racing but it also provides some of the...