Jennifer S. Kelly's Blog, page 4

Author Answers: Milt Toby

[image error]This weekend, both Milt Toby and I will be at the Southern Kentucky Book Festival in Bowling Green, Kentucky. Milt will be there to talk about Taking Shergar, his book on the kidnapping of Shergar, 1981 Epsom Derby winner, and the mystery surrounding the horse’s ultimate fate. I can’t wait for the chance to talk to Milt in person about his latest book, which I profiled here earlier this month. To follow up my profile of Taking Shergar, here are Milt Toby’s Author Answers!

What is the advantage of writing about a story that many people think they know already? What does that give you as a writer?

When I’m considering a topic for a long-form article or a book I always ask two questions: First, what do people already know or, more importantly, what do they think they already know? Second, is there anything relevant left to say? I need good answers to both questions before committing several months of my time to a long-form piece or probably years to a book project.

I like readers to have at least a passing familiarity with my topic but not so much that writing more on my part is redundant. Mention Dancer’s Image to even a casual horse racing fan and the odds are good that the stock response will be: “didn’t he win the Kentucky Derby and then get disqualified for a positive drug test?” Readers have a similar reaction when they hear the name Shergar: “wasn’t he that racehorse that was stolen by terrorists and held for ransom?” Those answers are good indications that readers already know something about the story I want to tell. If the next question they ask is this—“I wonder what happened with that?”—I’m reasonably confident that people will know enough about my topic to start reading and are interested enough in learning more to keep turning the pages.

The challenge then is to come up with something new, a narrative that starts with what people already know about the story and then expands on that knowledge base. For me, the research is almost always much more fun than the actual writing. That was certainly the case with Taking Shergar. One of the early readers evaluating my proposal was not enthusiastic about the project because he said there was nothing left to say. As things turned out, there was a lot still to say about the intersection of economics in the Republic of Ireland and the Troubles in Northern Ireland that made the theft of Shergar by the Irish Republican Army inevitable.

In England and Ireland, Shergar was a star horse, winner of the Epsom and Irish Derbies. How does Shergar compare with American horses of his era or even of the last decade or so?

[image error]Objective evaluation of Shergar and others was a favorite exercise as the 20th Century wound down. By far the best of his generation, Shergar won the 1981 Epsom Derby by a record 10 lengths, albeit in a relatively slow time, and he was the consensus choice as Europe’s best racehorse that year. Michael Church, a noted Epsom Derby historian, ranked Shergar as the best Derby winner of the 1980s. Prominent turf writers John Randall and Tony Morris put Shergar as 18th among the century’s “World Top 200 Flat Champions.” European champion Sea-Bird topped that list, with American Triple Crown winner Secretariat second.

It’s fair to say that Shergar was one of the best horses ever to race. I joined the editorial staff at the Blood-Horse in 1973, Secretariat’s Triple Crown year. His Belmont Stakes win was the most dominant performance I’ve ever seen, but it’s not a stretch at all to include Shergar’s Epsom Derby in the same conversation. Ultimately, though, rankings are not what set him apart and not what made him an attractive target for the Irish Republican Army. Shergar was a national hero in Ireland—for many people there the horse still is—and he raced for one of the richest men in the world. After Shergar’s retirement, he was paraded through the streets of Newbridge as a horse syndicated for £10 million. For a guerilla group starved for cash, everything about Shergar screamed: “steal me.”

What was your biggest challenge in tying together all of the disparate threads that made up this story?

There were plenty of moving parts in the story: the prominence of the Aga Khan IV’s family and their influence on racing that continues to this day, Shergar’s dominance as a three-year-old, his retirement and syndication, the “Troubles” and the IRA, the theft and subsequent investigations, ransom negotiations, the conspiracy theories, disputes over insurance liability, and the involvement of the Mobius Group. The cast of characters was huge, and the narrative was complicated because no single individual played a dominant role throughout the story. My job as a writer, and the task I ultimately gave my readers, both would have been much simpler if the story had revolved around one person from start to finish.

Unfortunately, horse racing sometimes doesn’t work that way. Interests shifted. The Aga Khan IV raced Shergar, but ownership and responsibility shifted to a large syndicate after his retirement to stud; trainer Sir Michael Stoute and jockey Walter Swinburn moved on to other horses and championships; the police were interested for a while but soon found other crimes to investigate; insurance companies didn’t get involved until after the theft; players in the conspiracy theories  weren’t identified until later. Even Shergar, the centerpiece of the story, played a relatively small part in the story’s timeline.

I wanted a dominant figure throughout the book but couldn’t find one. Instead, I found myself working on transitions from one person to another, to another, and to another. I hope it was successful.

What was the most surprising thing you learned in your research on Shergar and his abduction?

The research was full of surprises but far and away the most interesting was the involvement of the Mobius Group in the investigation. One of the first people I interviewed during a trip to London was Julian Lloyd, an insurance man from Lloyd’s of London who mentioned the Mobius Group, which he said was some sort of hidden band of psychics in the United States that worked on secret projects for the Central Intelligence Agency. He didn’t know anymore and had no current information.

It took 18 months to track down Stephan Schwartz, the director of the mystery organization. The Mobius Group was no longer operating, and Schwartz had moved on to other pursuits. I visited him at his home on an island off the coast of Washington State, where he gave me access to the Mobius Group’s Shergar files—several boxes of material about an investigation that had remained a secret for 35 years.

The Mobius Group was not a super-secret spy organization, far from it. The organization instead was a commercial business set up to offer the services of a group of remote viewers. For the uninitiated, remote viewing is a technique that allows individuals to see or sense things that are located somewhere else. As Schwartz explained to me, the commercial applications of remote viewing are endless, from assisting local police recover the body of a missing girl in Pennsylvania, to finding the wreckage of an airplane lost in the mountains, to locating a shipwreck resting on the bottom of the ocean. The US government has funded significant research into remote viewing, but the Mobius Group never worked for the intelligence services. It sounds like magic and it isn’t always successful, but when remote viewing works, the results can be mind-boggling.

In October 1983, some eight months after Shergar went missing, a group of insurers hired the Mobius Group to conduct an off-the-record search for the horse or his remains. The search was inconclusive, but the remote viewers also produced detailed descriptions of several of the people involved in the theft and other information that warranted further investigation. Sadly, official interest had waned, and little additional work was done on the case. The involvement of the Mobius Group remained a secret until I followed Julian Lloyd’s sketchy lead to Stephan Schwartz and the Mobius Group’s files.

Do you think we will ever find out what ultimately happened to Shergar or who was responsible for his kidnapping and likely untimely death?

No, not with absolute certainty. I put together a solid circumstantial case that implicates the Irish Republican Army in Shergar’s theft, and I’m confident that it was the IRA. No other explanation makes any sense. But to know what happened beyond a reasonable doubt, the evidentiary standard for a criminal conviction, one of two very unlikely things have to happen.

A sworn confession from one of the people who took Shergar would do it, but the odds of that happening now, more than 35 years after the fact, are long. Sean O’Callaghan, a police informant within the top echelon of the IRA, was not directly involved with the theft but he almost certainly knew the men who took part. O’Callaghan said that Shergar was machine-gunned to death a few days after he was stolen and also identified the IRA men who took the stallion in his autobiography, The Informer. In a sworn statement, one of the police officers who investigated the theft later said that O’Callaghan’s account of Shergar’s theft was supported by the official record. One of the men identified by O’Callaghan as the brains behind the theft, Kevin Mallon, lives near Dublin and spends his days visiting local off-track betting shops. Whether there is actual evidence of Mallon’s involvement and that of the others in the closed police files remains to be seen.

The case remains open, officially at least, but the investigation has been dormant for decades. No one ever was arrested, charged, or convicted.

Thank you, Milt, for contributing to the Sir Barton Project! I thoroughly enjoyed reading Taking Shergar and highly recommend Milt’s book to anyone who loves a great book on horse racing and a good mystery. Order the book here and see Milt (and myself) at SOKY Book Fest on Saturday, April 27th.

A Special Announcement: Old Friends Benefit Auction

As we count down to the publication of Sir Barton and the Making of the Triple Crown, coming soon from the University Press of Kentucky, I wanted to do something special for the amazing horses and people of Old Friends. Watch the video for more details!

 

You can find . Every single penny of the proceeds from this will go to Old Friends! I can’t think of a better way to celebrate Sir Barton and his legacy than to recognize the efforts of this wonderful organization.

I Have Been Busy!

The road to the 145th Kentucky Derby is paved with points; the road to the 45th was far different. You can read about it in “The Road to Glory.”

The Triple Crown celebrates its 100th anniversary this year. Learn more about the evolution of Triple Crown at Old Smoke Clothing Co.’s Dark Tuesday blog.

And I had the best time writing this for the Converse County (WY) Board of Tourism:

Who Is the Best of Them All?

[image error]The other day, I had someone ask me where I put Sir Barton in the pantheon of Triple Crown winners. Where did the first Triple Crown winner rank amongst the thirteen that have won the honor of being the most elite of this sport? In order to answer this question, I sat down with a notebook and my trusty copy of Champions and contemplated exactly how I was going to rank all thirteen.

Criteria: The Measuring Sticks

How does one compare thirteen horses who ran over the course of 100 years? All thirteen ran the Derby at the same distance, a mile and a quarter, but the Preakness and Belmont Stakes both changed distances between 1919 and 1930. Sir Barton’s Preakness and Belmont were a furlong shorter than what his successors ran. Does that mean that one throws out his times when comparing the three? Secretariat ran all three races in record time, the only one of the thirteen with a sub-2:00 Kentucky Derby time. Citation won the Preakness in 2:02 2/5, running the mile and three-sixteenths in the same time as the average Derby! That’s nearly ten seconds slower than Secretariat and several seconds slower than every other Triple Crown winner. Can one fault Citation for his slow times? Does that mean that he belongs lower on the list than a horse like Gallant Fox, who had similar slower times but still outpaced Citation?

[image error]How does the condition of the track affect one’s perception of the performance? Justify ran two of his three classic races on sloppy tracks and still beat American Pharoah’s Preakness time (also run on a sloppy track) by a couple of seconds? But Pharoah ran the Belmont faster than Justify; in fact, AP and Affirmed both had the fastest Belmont times after Secretariat’s record. Same with Sir Barton; his Derby is the slowest of all thirteen, 2:09 4/5, but he also ran on a muddy track much like the one Justify blazed over last year. How much weight should the surface carry in discussing the merits of one Triple Crown winner over another?

[image error]Then I thought about birthdays: I thought Sir Barton’s was the latest of all thirteen, but his April 26th birthday is six days before War Admiral’s. Does that make their performances more impressive than the others on this list? Six of the thirteen were born in March, with three in February and three in April. War Admiral won the Derby on May 8, 1937, just six days after his birthday, though his official birthday would have made him three years old on January 1st, like all other thoroughbreds. War Admiral must have been an outstanding horse to be so close to his actual foaling date in winning the first leg of the Triple Crown. However, weren’t all of the horses that won these three races outstanding?

Lastly, in my informal attempt to compare these thirteen icons of horse racing, I looked at win-loss records. Whirlaway had the most starts, 60, while Justify had the fewest, six. If one considers their records in terms of starts versus top three finishes, all of the Triple Crown winners except three have a better than 90% record of finishing in the top three in their lifetime starts. Only Sir Barton, Omaha, and Assault were under 90%. Justify has the lone perfect record of six wins in six starts, but Count Fleet finished in the money in all of his twenty-one starts. Because the vast majority of Triple Crown winners had such consistent records of in-the-money finishes, this criteria makes ranking them even more difficult. How can one compare sixty starts with six, forty-five with eleven?

Conclusion: The Pioneer 

[image error]I realize that these statistics are a mere fraction of the data one could consider when comparing these thirteen elite horses. I did not look at the number of starters in each Triple Crown race or the other champion or stakes-winning horses that each faced. Sure, I could leave you with my own personal list based on the criteria that I feel best defines each of these horses. However, I answered that question of where Sir Barton ranks among the other Triple Crown winners with this: he may not have been the best of them, but he was the first, the reason for this book. He pioneered the chase for the crown, opening the doors for all of these champions that followed him to race their way into our collective esteem.

Who is your favorite Triple Crown winner? How do you rank these thirteen champions? 

Books of Note: Taking Shergar

[image error]For my final Books of Note prior to the publication of Sir Barton and the Making of the Triple Crown, I wanted to spotlight Taking Shergar, the first book published under the Horses in History imprint from the University Press of Kentucky. Much like Jamie Nicholson’s book Never Say Die, Milt Toby tells the story that starts with a horse and ends with a story woven together from unexpected threads, a mystery that only a storyteller like Toby can truly tell.

I knew of Shergar as racing’s most famous cold case, a horse kidnapped for ransom and never recovered. However, like most mysteries, I discovered that this one has so much more to it than I thought.

The thing about mysteries is, they aren’t stories with a neat beginning, middle, and end. They have fits and starts, with information revealed in fits and starts as new threads are discovered and then woven into the known. Toby’s background as a lawyer gives him the tools to understand how disparate information comes together to create a cohesive picture of an incident. His book, Dancer’s Image: The Forgotten Story of the 1968 Kentucky Derby, pieces together the events that brought Dancer’s Image and his connections from the top of the world down to the realities of questionable drug testing and the politics of America in that era. When I learned that Toby had taken on the story of Shergar and his mysterious disappearance, I knew that book would be an expert distillation of both the knowns and unknowns from that 1983 kidnapping.

[image error]Shergar won the 1981 Epsom Derby by 10 lengths, still a record margin to this day. He would win the Irish Derby and then the King George IV and Queen Elizabeth Stakes before finishing fourth in his final start. His owner the Aga Khan syndicated Shergar, retaining six shares of the stallion and then standing him at Ballymany Stud in Ireland, rather than selling him to American breeders. Keeping Shergar in Ireland helped the Irish population in general maintain a sense of ownership of the horse — but also made him a target. During this early part of the 1980s, the Troubles, the conflict between the Irish Republican Army and the British, was still at a fever pitch. In an effort to roust the British from Northern Ireland, an arm of the IRA known as the Provisional Irish Republican Arms, or the Provos, used guerrilla war tactics to continuously pressure the British and make a united Ireland possible. In order to purchase weapons, the Provos needed money and decided to use kidnappings for ransom as a quick way to raise funds.

Ballymany Stud was not a secure facility so it was easy for the men in balaclavas to drive a ragtag horse trailer onto the property on February 8, 1983. They first kidnapped Shergar’s groom Jim Fitzgerald and then forced him to help them load a confused stallion onto the trailer. Fitzgerald himself was then pushed onto the floor of a van and driven around in circles while the horse trailer carrying Shergar drove off in a different direction. The horse was never seen again, though negotiations for his ransom and release went on for some time after. Toby includes one photograph that the kidnappers supposedly shared with the syndicate as they negotiated for Shergar’s ransom and release. That photo chills me every time I look at it.

[image error]The book then details the investigation behind Shergar’s abduction, the likely suspects, and then some of the extraordinary measures that members of the syndicate went through both to find the horse and then to recover any sort of compensation once they assumed Shergar was lost. Like so many true-life mysteries, the story does not end well for anyone: the horse lost, money never recovered, and difficult decisions and realities for all involved. Toby ties all of these threads together, reporting information while resisting the urge to speculate. What readers are left with is a new perspective on a time period they may not be familiar with, depending on their age. Shergar was a talented horse with classics wins, but his story with all of its attendant ups and downs must be considered within the context of his time, a context that is ably detailed through Toby’s writing.

That photograph, though, chills me still as does the thought of what the horse might have endured. I am left with the anguish of those who loved him while also intrigued by the complexities of mystery that demands to be solved to this day.

Order Taking Shergar from your favorite bookseller. Find more on Milt Toby and his books at his website, MiltonCToby.com. The Horses in History imprint is a series from the University Press of Kentucky. 

Welcome, Little Sir Barton!

My birthday was this past weekend and I got a lovely little gift from my talented sister-in-law: Little Sir Barton. He will join me at my appearances in support of Sir Barton and the Making of the Triple Crown. I hope you can come by and see us at any of the events listed on the Appearances page.

Many thanks to the amazing Krystal for this lovely gift!

Author Answers: Jamie Nicholson

[image error]My Book of Note for March is Never Say Die by Jamie Nicholson, a book about the winner of the 1954 Epsom Derby. Never Say Die’s victory marked the swing in how the thoroughbred industry regarded American breeding versus that of their European counterparts. The story of Never Say Die’s Derby win weaves together disparate threads of a story, from the genesis of the Beatles to the controversial figure behind the Singer Manufacturing Company.

Author Jamie Nicholson was kind enough to answer some questions about the book and his family’s Jonabell Farm (now part of Darley America), where Never Say Die was bred. Here are Jamie’s Author Answers!

Your grandfather John A. Bell III is part of the story of Never Say Die. How did you first learn of Never Say Die and his impact on your family and Jonabell Farm?

There was a small picture of Never Say Die hanging on the wall in the hallway outside the kitchen in my grandparents’ house. I remember asking about it when I was young. The gist of the explanation I got was that he won the Epsom Derby and was raised on the farm many years earlier (when the farm consisted of leased acreage at Hamburg Place). I was left with a vague understanding that the horse was owned by a man who had something to do with the invention of the sewing machine. Any historical significance of a Kentucky-bred colt winning England’s great race certainly wasn’t anything that was brought to my attention. Decades later, my dad heard an interview of original Beatles drummer Pete Best on NPR in which Best explained how his mother’s bet on the horse impacted the early history of the Beatles. So it was my dad who reintroduced me to the story.

  What was the most surprising thing you learned in your research for this book?

 I learned that it was possible for someone—specifically, nineteenth-century sewing machine manufacturer Isaac Singer—to maintain marriages with three different women in the same city, each unbeknownst to the others, fathering some two dozen children. He founded one of the first American multinational corporate conglomerates, which sold millions of sewing machines worldwide. But his aptitude in the fields of deceit and treachery was equally impressive to me.

This book weaves together many threads that seem unrelated on the surface. Talk a little about writing this book and figuring out how to tie these subjects together. Where did your biggest challenges lie?

With this project, I was starting with a set of anecdotal tidbits—a foal saved at birth by a drink of whiskey; jewelry pawned to fund a longshot bet on that horse, the proceeds of which paid for the bettor’s dream house; the introduction of Pete Best to his future Beatles bandmates at that house. The main challenge was to maintain a narrative thread while also incorporating the tangential backstories that illustrate the global economic and political dynamics that made Never Say Die’s Derby win possible. It’s a balancing act to try to tell an entertaining story while also trying to answer that all-important question for historians – “So what?” An analogy would be the tour guide who wants to point out all the pretty flowers and tell the histories of all the buildings along the way but must also get the tour group back to the bus by noon.

Have you ever been to the Epsom Derby? How does it compare to the Kentucky Derby, whose history you also have written about?

I haven’t been to the Epsom Derby, so I can’t speak to that in terms of personal experience. But I have been to the Oaks at Epsom, so I can clumsily compare Epsom Downs and Churchill Downs as sites of the two iconic events. To me the main difference lies in the physical settings of the venues. Churchill Downs, home of the Kentucky Derby, is situated amid suburban sprawl. The huge crowds on Derby day are a crucial part of the atmosphere, and the action on the racetrack seems to match the frenetic energy of the surroundings. By contrast, Epsom Downs is a park-like setting in Surrey, England, with views of hills, trees, and grass from the grandstand. From what I gather on TV, there is a more tranquil atmosphere there on Derby day than at Churchill Downs. The Epsom Derby is a physically demanding and beautiful race, with its undulating course, meandering turns, and dramatic uphill finish. But with the exception of Tattenham Corner, it’s perhaps not as chaotic as the Kentucky version, for better or worse.

A number of excellent horses were bred at or stood stud at Jonabell Farm during your family’s tenure there. Which ones were your favorites? Why?

When I was little, my favorite stallion there was Bailjumper. I liked the image his name conjured in my innocent young mind of a spry horse leaping over bales of straw. I also liked Vigors because he was gray. When I was a teenager, working there summers and weekends, Jonabell was probably punching a bit over its weight in terms of its stallion roster. So that was a fun time to be around. It was a big deal for a farm that size to have stallions like Affirmed and Holy Bull. And it was fun to notify Affirmed that Silver Charm and Real Quiet had failed in their Triple Crown bids. I don’t think he was particularly moved by the news, but he seemed happy enough to have a visitor on those Saturday evenings. My favorite runner bred on the farm was Epitome. She won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies in 1987. And her 1999 colt, Essence of Dubai, was the most impressive yearling I had seen. He became a very nice stakes winner, but as a yearling he seemed like a different species, like he already belonged on a racetrack.

Thank you, Jamie, for your contribution to and support of the Sir Barton Project! In addition to Never Say Die, Jamie has written about the Kentucky Derby and famed prizefighter John Morrissey. You can find Jamie’s roster of books here. 

I Will Be at the Kentucky Derby Museum’s Fan Fest!

[image error]The 4th Annual Kentucky Derby Fan Fest will be Sunday, April 28th, at the Kentucky Derby Museum, located on the grounds of Churchill Downs. I will be there for a signing and a presentation. I hope you can join me! This year’s theme is the Triple Crown! Fan Fest will celebrate the 1st and the 13th Triple Crown winners as we commemorate 100 years since Sir Barton’s spectacular wins.

Visit the Kentucky Derby Museum’s website for more information on Fan Fest! If you would like to pre-order Sir Barton and the Making of the Triple Crown, find your favorite bookseller and order a copy. I look forward to the chance to chat and sign!

Billy Kelly, Hall of Famer, Stablemate to History

In 2015, nearly sixty years after Sir Barton entered the Hall of Fame in its inaugural class, Billy Kelly, his stablemate and frequent workout partner, got his own place among the ranks of great horses in American racing history. This gelding, sprinting speed in a plain brown wrapper, had an unremarkable pedigree, his name and fame faded with time. Yet his place in the Hall of Fame was assured not because of his proximity to a Triple Crown winner, but because of his consistent excellence carrying high weights over a variety of distances.

[image error]Billy Kelly was sired by Dick Welles, who also had sired 1909 Kentucky Derby winner, Wintergreen. Trainer William Perkins bought Billy Kelly as a yearling from his breeder, Jerome Respess, and then sold W.F. Polson a half-interest in the little brown gelding. Polson later bought Perkins out, taking Billy Kelly from Kentucky to New York. His winning record at two saw the gelding carrying progressively more weight each time he started in a handicap, beating older horses at least twice. He caught Commander Ross’s attention early at Saratoga, after wins in races like the Flash Stakes and the United States Hotel Stakes. Ross was ready to make Polson an offer, but the latter refused any offers for his gelding — until Billy Kelly lost the Albany Handicap while carrying an astonishing 133 pounds, unheard of for a two-year-old. In his first start under the Ross orange and black, Billy Kelly won the Sanford Stakes, but was not eligible for the last great juvenile stake, the Hopeful Stakes. Another stellar two-year-old, Eternal, won the Hopeful, and, after a couple of additional wins, it was soon clear that Eternal and Billy Kelly were competing for the title of 1918’s best two-year-old.

[image error]Billy Kelly lost his match race with Eternal, setting the stage for the 1919 Kentucky Derby. Sir Barton and his historical Triple Crown is owed in part to Billy Kelly. It was Billy Kelly who worked out with Sir Barton at Havre de Grace in April when H.G. Bedwell decided that Sir Barton deserved a chance to try the Kentucky Derby. Billy Kelly’s rivalry with Eternal spurred Commander Ross to place that bet with Arnold Rothstein. All of that, though, is just one facet of the gelding’s Hall-of-Fame career. He won the Harford Handicap three times. He finished his time on the track in 1923, with 39 wins in 69 starts, a 57% win percentage. Billy Kelly finished out-of-the-money only NINE times in 69 races over six seasons. Had he not developed a recurrent bleeding issue in his last season he likely would have continued racing past his seventh year.

Finally retired, Commander Ross sent Billy Kelly to his Canadian farm at Verchères, outside of Montreal. He died in 1926, at only ten years old, his grave near the St. Lawrence River. In his time, he faced Exterminator, Sir Barton, and other greats, winning at distances from five furlongs to ten. He set records and carried the heaviest of handicap weights, all the while serving as Sir Barton’s workout partner in the mornings. While Sir Barton’s historic achievements might have garnered more glory, Billy Kelly ranks as one of the finest sprinters of the first half of the 20th century. His 2015 induction into the Hall of Fame was an honor long overdue.

Books of Note: Never Say Die

[image error]If you have read Seabiscuit or Man o’ War or any other book on a horse, you know that the races are the focal point and the narrative builds around what happens between them: the decisions, the challenges, and the interactions between horses and humans that color any career. Jamie Nicholson’s book Never Say Die takes its title from the 1954 Epsom Derby winner bred in the United States and raced in England, but the title belies the story beneath. Not only does the title refer to the horse in question, but also to the state of American racing and breeding within its global context. This is a horse book unlike any other I have read, weaving together the various threads of pedigrees and persons necessary to make American thoroughbreds the gold standard for racing globally.

In the mid-20th century, thoroughbred racing was in the midst of a sea change in both how horses were bred and how their origins were regarded in the context of their origins. The English were the progenitors of racing in America; the colonists who had settled in the New World brought thoroughbreds with them and established the conventions that would come to define American racing. As the colonies became a country, Americans continued to model their racetracks and the races they ran on them after what they saw and experienced in England. Our classics like the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes owe their distances to this desire to recreate the exacting standards that had made racing in England (and in France, to some extent) the best in the world. Limits on transportation, though, made it difficult and therefore rare for horses to cross the Atlantic in either direction before World War I. Before Never Say Die, the best of the best were considered to be in Europe, so much so that the Jersey Act prevented most American thoroughbreds from becoming part of the breeding stock in that part of the world. Their supposition was that American thoroughbreds, because of one particular uncertainty in a breeding line, were inferior to European stock.

[image error]Never Say Die with jockey Lester Piggott

However, as Nicholson chronicles, Never Say Die’s victory in the 1954 Epsom Derby is a  product of a series of circumstances that marked a shift in that thinking. By this time, the Jersey Act was no more and a number of European sires had been imported to the United States to make impacts of their own (including siring more than one Triple Crown winner). The best breeding establishments in the world of the thoroughbred were no longer based in Europe; instead, sires like Sir Gallahad, Nasrullah, and more, the ones who were producing horses like Never Say Die, were coming from the United States, especially from the bluegrasses of Kentucky. Never Say Die himself, the first Epsom Derby winner owned by an American in more than 70 years, had been foaled at the same Hamburg Place foaling barn where five Kentucky Derby winners (and a Triple Crown winner) had been foaled. From 1954 on, the tables begin to turn and American breeding becomes the model that the rest of the world seeks to copy.

Never Say Die the book pivots on the 1954 Epsom Derby, spending the first half of the book tracing the circumstances that led up to that seminal moment and then following up the colt’s two-length victory with an exploration of the aftermath of this shift in the locus of thoroughbred breeding. Woven in with this are stories about sewing machines, the Aga Khan(s), the Beatles, and the origins of a number of breeding institutions that modern racing fans will know. Never Say Die is a study in how horse racing in America became the dominant force in the sport worldwide, a result of the perfect storm of industry, innovation, and investment.

Here is a British Pathe recap of the 1954 Epsom Derby and Never Say Die’s victory.

Never Say Die by James C. Nicholson was published by the University Press of Kentucky and is available for purchase from your favorite bookseller.