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With Red's coaching and insights in how to handle Seabiscuit, they defeat the favored War Admiral, but Seabiscuit suffers injury at Santa Anita some time later. Red recommends an old friend, George Woolf (Gary Stevens), as a replacement. Smith finally contrives a match race between Seabiscuit and War Admiral, the top race horse in the country, but Red breaks a leg during training and is told he will never be able to jockey again. While there are some teething troubles, Smith is ultimately proven correct, and Seabiscuit quickly becomes a favored underdog for the millions suffering in the Depression. Smith, in turn, convinces Howard to buy Seabiscuit, a troubled horse past trainers have labeled a lost cause but whose lineage suggests that, in the right hands, he could become something great.įollowing a fight between Red and other stablehands, Smith hires Red as Seabiscuit's jockey, figuring their matching attitudes and tempers would complement one another. Seeking a new focus for his life, he finds horses and, using his existing fortune, acquires a stable and horses, hiring itinerant horse trainer Tom Smith ( Chris Cooper). Since he can only obtain a divorce in Mexico, Howard travels across the border where he meets Marcela ( Elizabeth Banks), whom he ultimately marries.

Howard is unable to cope, sinking into depression to the point that his wife Annie (Valerie Mahaffey) leaves him and life as he knows it comes apart. His charmed life is visited by fate again, however, when his son Frankie (Dyllan Christopher) dies in a car accident. Applying his new skills and no small amount of talent, Howard becomes an expert in cars in general, earning a living first modifying cars and then selling them, rapidly rising to be one of the largest and most successful car dealers in California. After a happenstance involving a broken-down car, Howard finds automobiles fascinating, learning as much as he can about being a mechanic. Meanwhile, Charles Howard ( Jeff Bridges), an office clerk for a bicycle company, is handed a new life by fate. While learning the ropes of being a jockey, Red earns additional income in underground boxing matches, leading to a severe head injury during a fight that blinds him in one eye - potentially ending his jockeying career almost before it's begun. Written and directed by Gary Ross and based on Laura Hillenbrand's 1999 nonfiction book Seabiscuit: An American Legend, it charts the collision of four entities - three humans, one horse - in the creation of that legend.ĭuring The Great Depression, John 'Red' Pollard ( Tobey Maguire), the child of a Canadian family, is left in the care of a race horse trainer. Seabiscuit is a 2003 American sports drama film about the racehorse of the same name.

Sea biscuit book