It’s that time of the year again, folks: time to think about holiday gifts. Whether you light a menorah, put out a nativity scene, or simply enjoy celebrating with family, these final weeks of 2021 give us a chance to talk about fun items for any horse racing fan.
This particular list of gifty items is one that is close to my heart: books! The sport is awash in great books on the personalities, both human and equine, that make up its history and the holidays are a fantastic time to share those stories that are new to bookstores this year.
Roll Cyrus Roll: The Adventures of Cyrus the Colt by Chris Brown and Ben Fidler
This viral tweet started a yearling named Cyrus on a journey that his owner Chris Brown and family could never have imagined.
This charming story about a colt who won’t roll and what happens when he does things his own way is a great gift for any kid on your list, whether they are 9 months, 9 years, or 99 years old! The rich color illustrations bring Cyrus’s story to life and the lessons about the value of friendship and the joy in finding your own way are universal ones. A portion of the proceeds from the book’s sales go to the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation as well, giving you a chance to give two gifts whenever you buy one book!
How can you beat that as a gift this holiday season?
You can purchase Roll Cyrus Roll on Amazon.
Racing for America: The Horse Race of the Century and the Redemption of a Sport
Three years after the match race between Sir Barton and Man o’ War, another match race made headlines as the “Race of the Century.” The competitors: Zev, that year’s Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes winner, and Papyrus, the Epsom Derby victor. The prize, though, was more than the $100,000 purse: it was the show that the sport put on. A decade after racing nearly died at the hands of the same forces that brought us Prohibition, the spectacle that was Zev versus Papyrus not only showed that the sport was back, but that American racing had influence beyond the country’s borders.
Yet the story of this match race is not only of the race between two classic-winning horses, but also of the people behind them: Harry Sinclair, the mercurial owner of Rancocas Stable that had ties to a scandal that could have brought down a sitting President; Sam Hildreth, the Hall of Fame trainer who left an indelible mark on the sport; and Earl Sande, the famed jockey who would become as famous as Babe Ruth for a time. And that was just the Americans!
In Racing for America, author Jamie Nicholson weaves together seemingly disparate threads into a portrait of American racing in the 1920s, a time when post-World War I America sought prosperity and diversion after hard years of war and pandemic. With the match race as the backdrop, he covers everything from the anti-gambling movement that almost ended racing to the Teapot Dome scandal that almost ended Harry Sinclair. In the hands of a writer like Nicholson, one comes away both entertained and informed about a moment in racing’s past that still influences its present.
You can purchase Racing for America: The Horse Race of the Century and the Redemption of a Sport from the University Press of Kentucky, Amazon, and other booksellers.
Head to Head: Conversations with a Generation of Horse Racing Legends
Lenny Shulman’s career has taken him from the bright lights of Hollywood to the backside of racetracks across America and from those varied roots comes a writer and interviewer who gets at the heart of every story. His new collection of interviews, Head to Head: Conversations with a Generation of Horse Racing Legends, shares conversations Shulman has had with some of racing’s biggest names, from Chenery to Whitney to Hancock and more. With each name comes new information, new insights into moments in racing’s history that inform our perspectives on racing’s present.
The beauty of a collection like this is that each interview stands alone. Readers can pick up the book at any point, find any name that jogs their interest, and then set the book down to come back to another time. The conversations sparkle on the page, bringing the reader into the moment, familiar names sharing moments from their own experiences that remind us of past thrills while also inspiring searches for unfamiliar names. Shulman’s collection, published by the University Press of Kentucky, comes on the heels of his 2019 book on Justify, another recommended read, which demonstrates his aplomb with the sport and its many personalities, reaching a depth with these figures that we may not get in other contexts.
If you know of a racing fan with a wide and varied collection of books on horse racing, pick this one up to add to their bookshelf. The insights and stories contained within make this an essential complement to other great books on the sport, especially given the recent passing of icons like Penny Chenery and Marylou Whitney. Treasure these excerpts from some of Shulman’s best interviews with people from racing’s recent history as you appreciate the new names on our collective horizons in 2022.
Don’t Forget These Great Titles Too!
While these books may not be new in 2021, they certainly merit mentioning in any holiday gift guide. Mark Shrager’s portrait of racing pioneer Diane Crump, part of the generation of women determined to bring gender equality into the jockey’s room. Published in 2020, Diane Crump: A Horse-Racing Pioneer’s Life in the Saddle won the 2021 Tony Ryan Book Award, the highest honor a book on Thoroughbred racing can achieve. Diane’s story of overcoming the obstacles facing her and other women trying to break into riding during this era is an inspirational one, bringing a new perspective on how far women in the sport have come and how much we still have to achieve.
New in paperback this year are Lucky Thirteen, a new book on the thirteen Triple Crown winners by the prolific and essential Ed Bowen, racing historian and former editor-in-chief of The Blood-Horse; and The Vapors: A Southern Family, the New York Mob, and the Rise and Fall of Hot Springs, America’s Forgotten Capital of Vice by Dave Hill, who draws a vivid and eye-opening portrait of Hot Springs, Arkansas, also known as the home of Oaklawn, and its rocky and explosive era as a pre-Las Vegas destination for gin, gambling, and more.
There you go, racing fans, SIX books for you to slip into stockings or wrap up under the tree for yourself or your favorite horsey person. As always, if you know of a great book on horses and horse racing that merits a mention here, drop me a note at @thesirbarton or @foxesofbelair on Twitter or Instagram.
Happy Holidays!