Seabiscuit

Seabiscuit beat a younger horse - and the reigning Triple Crown winner, War Admiral - by four lengths in the Pimlico Special of 1938. (Follow the link to see, and hear, the actual race which was called by Clem McCarthy.) Many people still regard that event as the greatest horse race of all time.

Reports of the race in the Baltimore Sun included these observations by the popular sportscaster, Grantland Rice:

The race, they say, isn’t to the swift. But it is always to the swift and to the game. It so happened that Seabiscuit had these two important qualities in deep abundance. War Admiral could match neither flying feet nor fighting heart. Man O’War’s brilliant son hung on with all he had until it came to the big showdown - to the point when the hard-way thoroughbred, the horse from the wrong side of the tracks, began really to run.

The unbelievable victory helped Seabiscuit to be named 1938's Horse of the Year. It wasn’t long before a wide array of merchandisers used Seabiscuit as a marketing tool to sell all kinds of products.

But Red Pollard was not atop Seabiscuit on the day of this great victory. He was recovering from injuries that could have ended his career. Instead, the jockey who rode Seabiscuit into the history books was Pollard’s good friend, George Woolf.