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The Passing of Seabiscuit By SALVATOR We will never forget either the first or the last sight of Seabiscuit that fell to our rvnrfinn The first occasion was on the afternoon of a great handicap for which he was a 9 to 10 favorite with an immense crowd which swarmed into the paddock to get a close-up of him just before the race. He was saddled in the open, under the trees, and then was walked back and forth walked back and forth by his groom until it came time to enter the walking-ring. So great was the curiosity and the anxiety to see him that the pressure of the throng scarcely left him room to make the small circuit around which he was walking. Several others of the candidates were also being led about nearby or else stood saddled waiting for the signal and, without exception, they were given plenty of room, which, in some cases, was required, as they were restive, fretful and some times "acted up," causing a scurrying about among the onlookers and little feminine screams from the fair ones among them. As for Seabiscuit, pent in as he was by pushing, heaving walls of humanity, he paid no attention to them whatever, but walked quietly and unperturbedly back and forth, with an equanimity that was unruffled. Gazed Upon Human Horde Repeatedly bystanders of the innermost segment would reach out their hands as he passed them and lightly touch his glossy body, behind the saddle or upon his haunches to which he paid not the slightest attention. Occasionally he lifted his beautiful head slightly and gazed for an instant upon the human horde that pent him in, then dropped it again as if too preoccupied with what he knew was coming when the bugle blew to have a thought for anything but that. The day was brilliant overhead but a heavy rain had left the track like a quagmire and, as is well known, Seabiscuit was not a "mudder." He was very rarely started over an "off" track, as it was equivalent to an invitation for defeat. That proved true this time. He had been assigned the heavy impost of 130 pounds and while, as usual, he gave his best, he was obliged to lower his colors to a horse of vastly inferior class that had gotten in at but 107 pounds. It was one of those results with which nobody is pleased except the very small body of patrons that for various reasons bought tickets on the longshot that "went over," and, with their exception, was received with chilly silence by the crowd. Our last sight of Seabiscuit was on the afternoon of his most sensational victory when, at Pimlico, he defeated War Admiral in the match race that will remain historic as long as American turf history is written. It was also his farewell to the East, as subsequently he started only at Santa Anita. Though the November sun shone brightly, the air was autumnal and a topcoat felt comfortable. War Admiral at to 4 This time he was not the favorite, the Admiral being at the tremendously short odds of 1 to 4, and "the Biscuit" at 11 to 5. So packed and jammed was "Old Hilltop" that it was necessary for a policeman to convoy us down into the paddock beneath the stand and even then it was like fighting ones way through the crowd. The paddock itself was similarly jammed, and as he and the Admiral walked around and around its tan-bark circle, they had to thread their way through a dense mass of men and women, which at times their grooms had literally to push out of the way in order to keep moving. The Admiral, much more temperamental than Seabiscuit, behaved, just the same, in exemplary fashion, while the latter was just his same self-contained and imperturable veteran. It had seemed to us that War Admiral had the edge on his rival until we saw them "face to face," when our feelings underwent one of those automatic revulsions that often occur at such crises. To put it bluntly, Seabiscuit looked ready to race for a mans life War Admiral, thin, drawn and fragile. The drama of the race, which opened with the thrilling getaway, in which Woolf so consummately outmaneuvered Kurt-singer and thereby stole the victory in about three seconds and 100 yards, was as unexpected in its take-off as in its denouement and can never fade from the memories of the 40,000 people that beheld it. As we have said, unknowingly to them at the time, this was their last sight of Sea-biscuit for eastern racegoers. He departed from among them, literally in a "blaze of glory" an exit in every way appropriate and one which a host of "cracks," if they should "speak their minds," would ask: "Why could not we have had one like it, instead of being hacked about until we were wrecks ourselves in the vain hope of a few more dollars being squeezed out of us?" Never Saw Seabiscuit Again Though we never saw Seabiscuit again, each Christmas brought us, with his compliments, his "counterfeit presentment," sometimes with his little family about him, sometimes with Mrs. Howard mounted upon upon his back for a ride over the California hills, some times just by himself. This last Christmas such was the case the photographer had posed him "en profile," almost "en silhouette," and the result was striking, not only from the artistic standpoint, but because it brought out so vividly his essentially Arabian individuality, his faultless outline and proportion, the symmetry and beauty that were, one might say, flawless throughout his ensemble at every point. "And where does Seabiscuit rank among Americas great racers?" the reader might inquire. To which only our individual opinion can be offered as reply. Seabiscuit, we believe to have been of the few truly and greatly great thoroughbreds that America thus far has produced. A castoff and a discard, so abused in his two-year-old form as to leave his underpinning always shaky, he rose to the very topmost rung of the ladder by his sheer ability to rise to the occasion when the occasion demanded all that a great horse can greatly, give. Well may his statue stand at Santa Ainta in everlasting bronze and well may those who behold it pause in silent homage. Death may have claimed him with unseemly haste but immortality remains his portion.
