What are your favorite books about thoroughbreds and TB racing & why?

I love this question. Books recommended to me and that I have read and think are great follows. One of my favorite books is "Three Strides Before The WIre", written by Elizabeth Mitchell. It tells the dark side of the sport and all about the day of Chris Antley and his battle with drugs and his demise. Gary Stevens talks about his friendship with him and his efforts to help him. It is truly great reading.

"Wild Ride" by Ann Hagedorn Auerbach is also excellent. It is the story of the rise and fall of Calumet Farm, which America's premier Racing Dynasty. This book is riveting from start to finish. I couldn't put this book down. It tells the story of Lundy's involvement yet does not quite put the finger on him. But once you read it, you will assume his guilt. It explains all about Alydar's accident and his very sad death. I can't recommend this book enough.

"Holy Grail" by Steve Haskins is another great one. It explains the quest to not only enter, but win Horse RAcing's greatest Race, The Kentucky Derby.

"Dirt Road To the Derby" by Bob Baffert is another one. He speaks about his early days of training in the sport and some mishaps that happened to him along the way. There were parts of this book that had me laughing so hard my sides hurt. He speaks of one filly that he trained to lightly and when the gate sprang and she broke, she bucked all the way around the track. Talk about embarrassing.

Of course "Seabiscuit" is another great book, much better than the movie, and gives a lot more detail. I am sure you know the story of the book, so I will not take up your time revealing anything more about it. But it is realy great reading and worth filling in the blanks the movie leaves out.

These are really good books and will keep you occupied for a while, while educating you on some of the greatest true stories in the industry. You won't be sorry if you read any of these books. Good luck

Source(s):

Lifelong horse racing enthusiast

I don't read a lot of nonfiction, but I love some of the great racing fiction by Dick Francis. He's a former champion steeplechase jockey in Britain, and when he retired he began writing. He's written an absolutely riveting series of mystery thrillers, most either set in the racing world or revolving around the racing world. Because of his own involvement, he's able to provide the flavor and intensity of that world, while writing brilliantly about it.

I learned more about racing from these books then anywhere else - not the detailed history, but the feel, the triumphs and the disasters, and the whole industry.

Bernborough The Story Behind the Legend is the best book I have ever read! The author is Bill Sigley and it was written with the jockey George Mulley. I first read this when i was 9 yrs old I borrowed it from the library and then asked my grandma to buy it for me for christmas...she couldnt believe I was reading a book like that being so young. I'm nearly 30 now and it's still the best true story I've read to this day! Still have my old copy too :) Worth a read its about an Australian racehorse

Highly recommend "Wild Ride" by Ann Hagedorn Auerbach about Calumet Farms

Pretty good was "Not by a LongShot" by T.D> Thornton about Suffolk Downs

Mediocre "The Best and Worst of Thoroughbred Racing" by Steve Davidowitz

The definitive book on Thoroughbred racing is William H. P. Robertson's "The History of Thoroughbred Racing in America", http://www.amazon.com/History-Thoroughbred-Racing-... which IMO is one of the best go-to books to help people understand the Thoroughbred horse and how racing in America developed. It's out of print, but usually available on Amazon.com and on eBay.

Another great, indispensable book: "The Life and Times of Sir Archie: The Story of America's Greatest Thoroughbred, 1805-1833." Blanchard, Elizabeth Amis Cameron; Wellman, Manly Wade (1958). Lasker, Edward; Lasker, Cynthia. eds. University of North Carolina Press. http://books.google.com/books?id=tJLrGAAACAAJ. This book is very very very VERY hard to find, so if you come upon a copy, GRAB it. Sir Archie was Bold Ruler, Storm Cat, Northern Dancer and Sadler's Wells all rolled into one. There was a time when you couldn't find an American Thoroughbred that didn't have him in its pedigree. That was in the time when American Thoroughbred racing was conducted in heats, rather than dashes, and this book gets into some of the heroic, epic, regional match races between the North and South. It gives you a flavor of what America was like both at the frontiers and at the urban centers in the period before the Civil War and how the horse, particularly the Thoroughbred horse, fit into the picture. It's an amazing book but so hard to find.

Any copy of the American Racing Manual that you can get your hands on is good. These were compiled by The Daily Racing Form, and they're basically annual reviews of the racing that was conducted during that year. They are WONDERFUL source books for things like track records, attendance, purses, handle, as well as the best races and horses for that year. I'm sitting here with the 1952 Racing Manual, and it's got articles in it about Citation, Kiss Me Kate, The Pimpernel, Counterpoint, Tom Fool, Rose Jet and many, many other horses from that year; it has a listing of all horses that won $10,000 or more during the year; sire records, yearling sale prices, a month-by-month recapitualation of news. These books are fabulous sources of information as well as giving a gestalt of what the year the book represents was like. Right now there are ab out two dozen of them on eBay, and any one of them is a great buy.

Not a book about Thoroughbreds directly, but a book that will help you understand the eastern origins of the Thoroughbred: "The Authentic Arabian Horse" by Lady Wentworth, Judith Anne Dorothea Blunt-Lytton, and "Lady Anne Blunt: Journals and Correspondence 1878-1917", edited by Rosemary Archer and James Fleming. Okay: we all know that the Thoroughbred breed's foundation sires were Arabian stallions. But how those horses got here, what the places they came from were like...Lady Anne Blunt, who was a granddaughter of Lord Byron, and her daughter Judith, Lady Wentworth, are revered for coalescing the scattered efforts at importing and breeding Arabian horses in England, and are the founder and guiding light of Crabbet Park Stud, respectively. If you know anything at all about Arabians, then you have heard of Crabbet. Lady Anne Blunt's life is INCREDIBLE, I don't understand why no one has made a movie about it. Great reference books on the Arabian horse.

Those are all good books to go on with. Hope that helps.