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A Fine Place To Daydream Bill Barich
HarperCollins 2006 0007191812 / 9780007191819 Softcover New
Experience the sheer thrill and joy of national hunt racing as an American novelist follows a select group of leading horses and their Irish trainers on their annual pilgrimage to the Cheltenham Festival, in this evocative book on the jumps and the Irish love of horse racing.
The last thing Bill Barich expected when he left California for a holiday in London was to fall in love - and yet he did, with a charming Irish woman. This led to Dublin becoming his home from home. 'I had friends who thought I was being rash or just plain foolish,' he writes, 'but trust and conviction grow if real love is in the mix.' His leap-of-faith left him slightly unmoored, adrift in a new city; so to anchor himself he began visiting the local betting shops to play the horses. Barich came to share Ireland's passion for the National Hunt. He even felt a kinship for the chasers and hurdlers who 'hang for a half-second in a cloud of uncertainty' every time they jump. That passion revealed to him a great deal about Irish culture, immediate and unvarnished, beyond any touristy stereotypes. So Barich wanted to go deeper. He spent a season - the season of Best Mate's third Gold Cup bid - with the leading Irish trainers, jockeys and horses, charting their progress on the road to their annual tilt against the British at the Cheltenham Festival. Here such major players as Jessica Harrington, Michael Hourigan, Paul Carberry, and Barry Geraghty are captured as never before, with Barich following the caravan from the humble races at Thurles to the glories of the Hennessy at Leopardstown. Here, too, are the big horses - Florida Pearl, Beef Or Salmon, and the quirky Moscow Flyer, who never loses except when he beats himself.
Price:
9.10 USD
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A Year At The Races Jane Smiley
Alfred a Knopf Inc 2004 1400040582 / 9781400040582 Hardcover, DJ New Copy
Smiley's great love for horses inspired her spectacular novel Horse Heaven (2000). Now she chronicles her real-life equestrian experiences as a novice but adventurous horse owner bringing her untried young horses to the track in California with the help of a gifted trainer, Alexis, and the astonishing disclosures of Hali, an animal communicator with whom Smiley's horses share their thoughts and concerns. The very qualities of mind that make Smiley such a compelling novelist - her keen attentiveness to the sensuous world, her deep sensitivity to psychological states, and her fascination with life's entwinement of chance and inevitability - enable her to write about horses, both their interior and exterior selves, with extraordinary avidity, empathy, wonder, and gratitude.
As she tells the intriguing stories of the horses she knows best, neurotic Persey, scintillating Waterwheel, and the book's irresistible star, ardent Hornblower (who tells Hali that he wants to be called by his nickname, Wowie, because Hornblower has negative "vibrational qualities"), Smiley, as erudite and probing as she is passionate and witty, meticulously and bewitchingly illuminates equine sense and sensibility. Ultimately, Smiley succeeds brilliantly in portraying horses not only as fully sentient beings but also as beautiful and intriguing creatures of unique intelligence and heart, who have, over the course of centuries, greatly enhanced and graced human life.
Price:
8.95 USD
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Against The Odds - Jockey Jerry Bailey Bailey, Jerry
Putnam Pub Group 2005 0399152733 / 9780399152733 Hardcover, DJ New Copy
Jerry Bailey has been America's premier rider for well over a decade, and has endured tumultuous times both on and off the track. In this brutally frank memoir, the jockey recalls his life's milestones, paying particular attention to his bout with alcoholism. Aided by sportswriter Tom Pedulla, Bailey, 47, exposes the risks jockeys face during a race, the corruption rampant at some tracks, the nobility of racehorses, the arrogance and humility of various owners and the thrill of winning. He recalls his boyhood excitement at racing horses against neighborhood friends in his native Texas. Driven by his love of horses and his competitive spirit, he entered the racing world, first as a trainer, and eventually becoming a world-class jockey. Yet early in his career, he drifted into alcoholism; with the help of his wife and an AA counselor, he became sober. Although Bailey was successful as a young jockey, his glory days have come in the last 16 years with his Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes wins and numerous other honors. Of special interest is Bailey's detailed account of his incredible run aboard Cigar, who won 16 straight races and became the richest Thoroughbred in history in the mid-1990s. Bailey weaves interviews with friends and family with his own words to create an often poignant memoir of the triumph of the human spirit.
Price:
9.75 USD
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Assault: Thoroughbred Legend Eva Jolene Boyd
Eclipse Press 2004 1581501072 / 9781581501070 New hardcover
For a nation recovering from years of war, a little chestnut colt named Assault gave people hope and inspiration as he beat the odds to become the 1946 Triple Crown winner. Born in the midst of World War II, the aptly named Assault showed the same courage and fortitude as the American servicemen fighting overseas. As a baby, Assault injured his foot so severely that he was almost destroyed. But Assault managed to recover, and although he forever walked with a limp, when he ran, no trace of his injury existed. Instead he flew with speed and grace, earning the nickname 'the clubfooted comet.' Raised on the vast expanse of King Ranch in South Texas, Assault became the pride and joy of the Lone Star State with his racing heroics. Author Eva Jolene Boyd, a native Texan, remembers seeing Assault at King Ranch when she was young, and she proudly tells the story of this courageous legend.
Price:
15.50 USD
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Betting Thoroughbreds: A Professionals Guide Davidowitz, Steven
Plume 1997 0452270421 / 9780452270428 2nd Revised Edition Softcover New 347 pages
Totally revised and expanded to cover the newest forms of wagering and the latest handicapping theories, with examples of how to apply them, this book proves that the key to winning at the track is not in one all-powerful secret, but involves using the right tools at the right time.
Price:
6.50 USD
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Beyer On Speed - Racetrack Betting Beyer, Andrew
Houghton Mifflin 0395735238 / 9780395735237 Softcover New 239 pages.
Critics and handicappers adore him. The Boston Globe once called him "the manic evangelist, grand guru, and scholarly professor of handicapping." His books espouse strategies and betting philosophies that have shaped the sport. But the true measure of Andrew Beyer's impact on handicapping is that his very name has become part of the horseplayer's terminology. Beyer's speed figures, first introduced almost twenty years ago in Picking Winners, revolutionized racetrack betting. But not until 1992, when the Daily Racing Form included Beyer Speed Figures in past performances, did they become widely available. Now, in Beyer on Speed, the author shows how to make speed figures the focal point of an effective betting strategy. Written in Beyer's clean, rapid-fire prose, Beyer on Speed explains how to relate speed figures to such factors as pace, track bias, and track conditions.
Price:
9.80 USD
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Beyond the Homestretch: Saving Racehorses Lynn Reardon
New World Library 1st Edition 2009 1577316479 / 9781577316473 New Hardcover
In Beyond the Homestretch, Lynn Reardon shares an unlikely story. In 2002, she quit her Washington DC–area office job and moved to rural Texas to open the racehorse adoption ranch LOPE (LoneStar Outreach to Place Ex-Racers). Since then, LOPE has helped transition more than 725 thoroughbreds into new homes. Though now the director of this high-profile organization, Reardon didn’t learn to ride until she was an adult. Here she presents a vivid inside look into the world of horse racing, complete with colorful horses, jockeys, trainers, and gallop girls, depicting the insights horses can offer when we reevaluate our relationship with them.
In this riveting account, Reardon encounters dozens of unruly racehorses, all with special needs, unusual histories, and distinct personalities. As she fumbles to help them find new careers, they return the favor by becoming her most memorable mentors in horsemanship and life philosophy. Horses such as Tawakoni, the son of a Kentucky Derby winner, and Endofthestorm, the speedy bay who required an emergency tracheotomy, give Reardon an apprenticeship in facing fear and finding a new life. Reardon may have saved these horses’ lives, but she points out that they saved hers as well.
Price:
16.95 USD
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Big Horse McGinniss, Joe
Simon & Schuster 2004 0743260791 / 9780743260794 1st dition Hardcover, DJ New, unmarked 263 pages
In Thoroughbred racing, the 'Big Horse' is the talented animal that brings fame and fortune to the trainer and his stable - animals like Seabiscuit, Secretariat and Funny Cide all fall into this category.
McGinniss's new book finds him following P.G. Johnson, an aging trainer, and his "big horse," Volponi, through the 2002 racing season. Johnson, a Hall of Fame trainer, is a tough-as-nails, tell-it-like-it-is horseman, and McGinniss uses him and his 2002 Breeder's Cup Classic-winning horse as the linchpins holding together this varied collection of factoids, trivia and personal observations of the past, present and future of horse racing. Interspersing his own memories of Triple Crown Winners Citation, Seattle Slew and Affirmed with observations about the present state of horse racing and a retelling of Johnson's life story, McGinniss paints a compelling and bittersweet picture of the dying sport of horse racing and the dying breed of old school horse trainers like Johnson.
Price:
8.00 USD
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9 |
Black Maestro The Epic Life of an American Jockey Joe Drape
William Morrow 1st Edition 2006 0060537299 / 9780060537296 New hardcover
In Black Maestro, Joe Drape meticulously brings to life the drama, adventures, romances, and heartbreaks of an unlikely participant in the greatest historical events of the twentieth century. It is a breathtaking narrative that takes you from pastoral Kentucky to Mob-controlled Chicago, from the horse country of Poland to the chaos of Red Square, and from freewheeling Paris to the hard-luck American South of the Depression. It is also a story that returns Jimmy Winkfield to his rightful place as an original American hero. In 1919, at the age of thirty-seven, as Bolshevik cannon fire thundered above, the already epic life of Jimmy Winkfield turned into an odyssey. With a ragtag band of Russian nobility and Polish soldiers, the son of a black sharecropper from Chilesburg, Kentucky, was entrusted with saving more than 250 of the most royal but fragile thoroughbreds left in crumbling Csarist Russia. They trekked 1,100 miles from Odessa to Warsaw for nearly three months amid the bloodiest part of Russian Revolution, surviving gunfire and starvation.
Price:
9.50 USD
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Bold Ruler: Thoroughbred Legends Edward L. Bowen
Eclipse Press 2005 1581501307 / 9781581501308 New hardcover
Bold Ruler was a superstar of the 1950s, ranking as the best of an unforgettable generation of racehorses. His contemporaries included Iron Liege, Round Table, and Gallant Man, and he dueled with them through the 1957 Triple Crown season. Though Bold Ruler lost the Kentucky Derby, he won the Preakness Stakes and then defeated Gallant Man and Round Table in the 1957 Trenton Handicap, considered one of the greatest races of the 20th century. Bold Ruler went on to earn Horse of the Year and champion three-year-old colt honors that year. After an injury forced his retirement at age four, Bold Ruler returned to his birthplace, Claiborne Farm, to begin a new career as a stallion. The Wheatley Stable runner achieved unparalleled success at stud, leading the sire slist for eight years, seven of them consecutively. His eleven champion offspring included the great Secretariat, who won the 1973 Triple Crown in unforgettable fashion.
Price:
15.50 USD
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Breeders' Cup: Thoroughbred Racing's Championship Day Privman, Jay
Triumph Books 2000 1572434139 / 9781572434134 Hardcover, DJ New copy
Through vibrant photography and engaging text, Breeders' Cup captures the history and excitement surrounding the creation and development of one of the World's premier sporting events.
Written by five-time Red Smith Award-winner Jay Privman, Breeders' Cup traces the history of the event to its roots and the perseverance of the visionaries who ensured it's success. Covering the fabled courses, like Belmont, Gulfstream and the legendary Churchill Downs, along with the reflections of the players - the owners , jockeys and breeders who embrace this season-ending championship event.
The most prized and comprehensive writing ever published on the subject, Breeders' Cup is destined to become a treasured collectible for anyone who enjoys the beauty and drama of the "Sport of Kings".
Please note: this is a 'coffee-table' gift book measuring 12" x 10". There is a lots of gold lettering (including the title on the cover) which is not being picked up by the scanner. The black bar across the top of the front cover actually contains the title in gold lettering.
Price:
14.70 USD
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CIGAR: America's Horse Jay Hovdey
Eclipse Press 1999 1581500394 / 9781581500394 Softcover New copy
The fascinating story of the most talked about Thoroughbred since Secretariat. Cigar: America's Horse is an engaging true story of how a champion racehorse is made. Follow Cigar from his early disappointment to his rise from obscurity as he equals the modern-day record for consecutive victories. Travel with author Jay Hovdey as he chronicles this superstar's dominance of North American racetracks and the desert sands of the United Arab Emirates. Witness when Cigar becomes the richest racehorse of all time. The epilogue now includes Cigar's final races, aborted stud career, and retirement to the Kentucky Horse Park.
Winner of the 1997 Benjamin Franklin Award for outstanding Recreation/Sports book from Publishers Marketing Association.
Price:
13.15 USD
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14 |
Crazy Good: True Story of Dan Patch Charles Leerhsen
Simon & Schuster 2008 0743291778 / 9780743291774 New hardcover
A hundred years ago, the most famous athlete in America was a horse. But Dan Patch was more than a sports star; he was a cultural icon in the days before the automobile. Born crippled and unable to stand, he was nearly euthanized. For a while, he pulled the grocer's wagon in his hometown of Oxford, Indiana. But when he was entered in a race at the county fair, he won - and he kept on winning. Harness racing was the top sport in America at the time, and Dan, a pacer, set the world record for the mile. He eventually lowered the mark by four seconds, an unheard-of achievement that would not be surpassed for decades. America loved Dan Patch, who, though kind and gentle, seemed to understand that he was a superstar: he acknowledged applause from the grandstands with a nod or two of his majestic head and stopped as if to pose when he saw a camera. He became the first celebrity sports endorser; his name appeared on breakfast cereals, washing machines, cigars, razors, and sleds. At a time when the highest-paid baseball player, Ty Cobb, was making $12,000 a year, Dan Patch was earning over a million dollars.
But even then horse racing attracted hustlers, cheats, and touts. Drivers and owners bet heavily on races, which were often fixed; horses were drugged with whiskey or cocaine, or switched off with "ringers." Although Dan never lost a race, some of his races were rigged so that large sums of money could change hands. Dan's original owner was intimidated into selling him, and America's favorite horse spent the second half of his career touring the country in a plush private railroad car and putting on speed shows for crowds that sometimes exceeded 100,000 people. But the automobile cooled America's romance with the horse, and by the time he died in 1916, Dan was all but forgotten. His last owner, a Minnesota entrepreneur gone bankrupt, buried him in an unmarked grave. His achievements have faded, but throughout the years, a faithful few kept alive the legend of Dan Patch, and in Crazy Good, Charles Leerhsen travels through their world to bring back to life this fascinating story of triumph and treachery in small-town America and big-city racetracks.
Price:
7.95 USD
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15 |
Damascus: Thoroughbred Legend Lucy Heckman
Eclipse Press 2004 1581501110 / 9781581501117 New Hardcover
Damascus ranked as one of the superstars of the memorable era of horse racing in the late 1960s. He thrilled fans with his trademark sweeping move on the far turn and relentless stretch run that left his opponents floundering. Trained by the legendary Frank Whiteley and ridden regularly by Hall of Famer Bill Shoemaker, Damascus earned his place in history by defeating champions Dr. Fager and Buckpasser in the 1967 Woodward Stakes, known as the Race of the Century.
Price:
14.95 USD
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16 |
Dangerous Outsider Graham Roe
Carroll & Graf 2007 0786719591 / 9780786719594 New Hardcover
Someone has it in for horse trainer Jay Jessup and his highly successful County View training operation, which campaigns jumpers throughout England. First an undisclosed buyer purchases several of the yard's best horses for prices their owners can't refuse and gives them to a rival trainer. Then the stable's top rider is lured away to the same rival's operation, followed in short order by an attempt to frame Jessup for doping horses and a series of fires, poisoned horses, and shootings. But who is behind all these shenanigans, and what do they hope to gain?
Price:
5.75 USD
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17 |
Dark Horses & Underdogs w/DVD Les Krantz
Grand Central Publishing 2005 0446577030 / 9780446577038 New Hardcover with DVD
Perfect for sports fans young and old, here is a terrific, oversize book featuring the 50 greatest sports upsets of all time - including an action-packed DVD of amazing clips that can be enjoyed again and again. Everyone loves an underdog, and in this wonderful collection packed with photos, the most astounding triumphs and comebacks in sports history are presented in one stunning volume.
Featuring the remarkable teams, Olympians, and other athletes who weren't given a chance at victory, DARK HORSES AND UNDERDOGS is about how they overcame impossible odds and triumphed in the face of extraordinary adversity. The accompanying DVD documentary includes newsreels, interviews, and game footage as a perfect complement to all the action featured in the book. Some of the classic matches and events included are Seabiscuit's triumphant Horse of the Year season in 1938; Joe Namath and the New York Jets' historic victory in Super Bowl III; the 1980 USA Olympic Hockey Team's win over the Soviet Union, and many, many more.
Price:
10.75 USD
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18 |
Dead Heat William Murray
Eclipse Press 2005 1581501315 / 9781581501315 Hardcover, DJ New
Dead Heat, the last horse racing novel from popular author William Murray, is a story of obsessions - of people driven to pursue their dreams and their desires at whatever cost.
The haunted young woman who shows up one day outside the horse trainer Jake Fontana's tack room at Santa Anita racetrack is not merely looking for work but has an agenda: She wants to become a great jockey. But Jill Aspen also harbors secrets from her past that eventually catch up with her. She finds a refuge in her vocation and in her talent, but her past refuses to release its grip on her and will not allow her the freedom she needs to find fulfillment.
Sal 'Bones' Righetti, ex-mob enforcer, jock's agent, and wily horseplayer, becomes Jill's friend and ally, determined to help her break free of her past, as he did himself. And at the heart of their personal drama is the potentially great horse that Jake Fontana trains, Tumultuous, who may one day carry all of them to what Bones thinks of as 'rainbow's end.'
Price:
15.75 USD
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19 |
Death at Epsom Downs Paige, Robin
Berkely Prime Crime 0425178072 / 9780425178072 1st edition 2001 Hardcover, DJ New copy 292 pages
It's time for the Derby at Epsom Downs, and Lord Charles Sheridan and his American-born wife, Kate, are on hand because Lord Charles has been asked to photograph the finish of the race for the Jockey Club with his new automatic camera. Disaster strikes when a jockey is killed on the racecourse, and race officials suspect his horse may have been doped. Though the practice of doping horses is not illegal, officials are nevertheless worried about the death's effects on betting and the presence of an American gambling ring with expertise in doping. While Charles is occupied with these matters and, subsequently, the murder of a bookie, Alfred "Badger" Day, Kate is visiting with the glamorous Lillie Langtry, doing research for a new book and puzzling over the theft of the notorious actress's jewels. Can the theft of the Langtry gems somehow be connected to Day's murder? Kate and Charles delve into the mysteries and, as usual, find the answer in another clever, richly detailed whodunit. Readers who like their historical mysteries on the lighter side will find much to enjoy here.
Price:
10.25 USD
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Dynasties: Great Thoroughbred Stallions Bowen, Edward L.
Eclipse Press/The Blood Horse Inc 1581500548 / 9781581500547 1st Edition 2000 Hardcover, DJ
Twenty-six horses that have profoundly influenced the sport of horse racing in the 20th century are profiled in this look at the evolution of the American Thoroughbred. The early part of the century, when horses such as Fair Play and Man o' War had a strong effect on American racing, is covered, as is the golden era of racing in the middle part of the century, when such stallions as Bull Lea, Blenheim II, and Sir Gallahad III helped America become the source of the world's best racehorses. This book also discusses how their descendants, among them Northern Dancer and Native Dancer, have transformed the commercial market for Thoroughbreds in the last three decades.
Also included are stories of the owners and breeders of these great horses.
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9.95 USD
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