The Horse that God Built

As a rule, animal books fall into one of three categories:

-Informational ones, like care or breed books
-Gift books that feature photos and essays, frequently using words like "bond" or "miracle"
-Biographies of specific animals like Seabiscuit or Marley

Now, as an animal lover who can go on and on about how when my cat puts her paw on my shoulder while I'm writing it feels like a benediction, I've got nothing personal againest any of these it just seems like an author has to pick one and stick with it. It's a rare author, like Jon Katz (who counterintitutively writes about dogs) who can combine two successfully.

Not so with the new Secretariat book, The Horse God Built by Lawrence Scanlan. Scanlan, who has written other horse books both gift (Wild About Horses) and biography (Big Ben, about the Canadian show jumping champion) was approached by his publisher with a proposal to revisit the Secretariat story 30 years out. A racing novice, Scanlan found that when he delved into the story he became more facinated by the relationship of the great horse and his groom during his racing years, Eddie 'Shorty' Sweat than of the overall success story. The original and changed ideas seem to work at cross purposes. Nowhere is this more obvious than the cover which, though it bears the bold subtitle The Untold Story of Secretariat The World's Greatest Racehorse, has no mention of Eddie Sweat at all. And while I realize most authors probably don't have a lot of say in the art on their book, since this cover features Secretariat on the track being ridden by someone else it looks like the message about the change in focus didn't get to the art department either. How ironic that a book hoping to give some credit where it sees it belatedly due gets it so wrong from the get go.

Unfortunately, that is just one glaring example of the myraid of inconsistancies in this book. If we are truly telling the untold story it would seem that we would be taking on the other biographies out there-correcting what they got wrong, putting in what they left out-but instead Scanlan worked closely with the two authors of the two definative Secretariat bios, William Nack (who Scanlan cites 21 times) and Raymond Woolfe (whose photos are used and who is cited 15 times) and gives them lavish praise for their assistance. Since both men cited Sweat as a key player in the Meadow Stable team in their books, calling his story "untold" seems a bit of a stretch. Even the Thoroughbred Legends series, which are prefunctory histories at best, has a photo and multiple cititions for Sweat in it's Secretariat book.

Scanlan also meanders terribly. He talks to many of the key players who are still alive (Sweat died in 1998) but fails to draw any conclusions from those conversations. (Some say Sweat died penniless because was overgenerous with family and friends, some say he was ill used by the owners and trainers he worked for.) In the chapter "Eulogy for a Horse" Scalan goes into great detail about the deaths of Man O' War and Ruffian which have little to do with Secretariat. It seems he felt compelled to include every fact he learned, pertinant or not.

All these details make me wonder who the audience for this book is. Racing fans would of course be interested in any untold story but they don't need an explanation of what a furlong is (just one example of the author's expositionary zeal). Scanlan doesn't write charmingly enough as a novice to keep experts interested and the book lacks the narrative punch to interest nonracing fans. (Beware of any new racing book that does not have a blurb by Laura Hilledebrant, who wrote a book for both novices and fans in Seabiscuit.)

And if it seems like Scanlan thought he was blowing the lid off the hardscrabble lives of grooms that theory is blown too when he alludes to William Nack's Sports Illustrated article "Nobody Knows Their Names" published in 1991 which called for higher wages and better accommodations for backstretch workers.

So did Eddie Sweat get his proper due? I can't say I know from this mess of a book. I hope so. Everytime the Triple Crown in mentioned in the next few weeks Secretariat's name will come up and one could make a compelling arguement that he would have been less great without Sweat behind him. Hopefully owners of any new superstars will make sure to amply reward all the members of their team and not repeat any possible mistakes from the past.