As we count down to the publication of The Foxes of Belair, I wanted to revive a series I started over at the Sir Barton Project in 2019. Each month, I profiled a book I had on my to-read list and the author behind the words. I am kicking off the 2023 version of this series with The Fast Ride: Spectacular Bid and the Undoing of a Sure Thing by Jack Gilden.

Jack Gilden has worked as a marketing strategist and messaging expert for nearly four decades, recently adding author to his resume. Both of his books, The Fast Ride: Spectacular Bid and the Undoing of a Sure Thing,(2022) and Collision of Wills: Johnny Unitas, Don Shula and the Rise of the Modern NFL (2018), were published by the University of Nebraska Press.

I had the great fortune to ask Gilden a few questions about his new book, his writing process, and more. Enjoy!

You spent much of your career in advertising. What prompted you to turn to writing books?

Advertising is a hard job for very good creative people but at a certain point as a writer, you have to come to the reality that you are usually writing things that people do not want to read. In a sense that is an absurdity and a depressing one if marketing is your whole life. As I got to middle age, I didn’t want to be a disposable writer anymore. I had much bigger ambitions for my career and my legacy. I wanted to write pieces that other people found memorable and valuable. Meanwhile, in my own mind, I was always a literary person. I knew it, but I hadn’t proved it. I wanted to change that.

Both of your books have been on different topics, the first about NFL football and this one about horse racing. Writing a book like this is a long, involved process with much research and wrangling of disparate threads. How do you choose the subjects of your books?

More than any other factor the topics I choose come from stories that I personally want to know in greater detail. I gamble in the belief that if I find something to be interesting then other people will, too. The jury is still out on that one.

Talk about your relationship with racing. Have you always been a fan of the sport? How does writing about it differ from writing about football?

I was a casual fan of racing, nothing more. I never went to the track, and I rarely paid attention to the sport. I never gambled. When I started this project my friend John Eisenberg who also has written excellent books about professional football and horse racing told me something that thrilled me: “The best stories come from the track,” Eisenberg said. He was right about that. The characters and situations, the images and language, all beg to be described on the page. If you’re a writer with the desire to stretch your skills, turning your attention to the track is like walking into a goldmine.  

Where did the idea to write about Ronnie Franklin and Bud Delp come from?

The idea for The Fast Ride came from an old friend of mine from college. He had started to acquire thoroughbreds later in his life and hired Ronnie Franklin to train his first horse. This man admired Franklin and had a great deal of tolerance for Franklin’s many difficult traits and complex personal problems. As I finished my first book this man called me with a question: “Do you remember Ronnie Franklin?” “Sure I do,” I replied. “Well, he’s about to die,” my friend said, “and I was wondering if you would consider writing about him?” I wasn’t interested. By 2018 athletes with drug problems, men who had been given everything but threw it all away, were so common they were a cliche. I agreed to take a preliminary look anyway and the deeper I paddled into the story the more unusual and sinister it became. It was clear that the tale had been reported incorrectly for more than 40 years. When Franklin died and the obituaries came out it was obvious that everyone still had the story tragically wrong. It became my obsession over the next 4 years to rewrite the record so that it was finally correctly told.

How familiar were you with Ronnie Franklin and his story before you started this book?

I grew up in Baltimore just a few minutes from Pimlico and about 20 minutes from Dundalk where Franklin grew up. His fame was known to everyone in this city at that time as he became a national star in 1979. I was 14 that year. As I watched his incredible, almost unbelievable rise and his steep and sad decline I only knew the same wrong story that everyone else did. According to that fairy tale, Franklin was the luckiest guy in the world, taken in by a talented trainer who was more than happy to share his wisdom and teach the kid how to ride. He gave the boy a home and a place in his affections right beside his own sons. And yet the unsophisticated kid from the wrong side of the tracks blew it all. According to the erroneous story Franklin chose drugs and a hard-partying lifestyle over the career that came too easily. Very early in my research I discovered that just about all of these details, accepted as the gospel by Baltimoreans and racing fans everywhere, were a rank lie.

Spectacular Bid already has two books, one by Peter Lee (UPK, 2019) and one from the Thoroughbred Legends series (Eclipse Press, 2001). What does your book add to the pantheon of literature already available about this horse?

I have not read either one of those two books so I can’t speak to them. Nevertheless, I strongly suspect that my story is far different from theirs. Having spent considerable time with members of the horse’s inner circle, especially Ronnie Franklin’s nephew, Tony Cullum, Buddy Delp’s son, Gerald Delp, and former Delp employee, Cathy Rosenberger, I came to learn a different story than that which had ever been told before. While everyone else had debated and speculated for decades that Ronnie Franklin’s ineptitude harmed the horse’s competitive chances and cost it the Triple Crown, no one ever thought to ask how the horse might have harmed the boy. My research showed that Franklin was a victim on many levels. Trainer Buddy Delp taught him a lot more than just how to ride a horse. He introduced the kid to cocaine when he was only about 16 years old. Under Delp’s watch and encouragement, Franklin became an addict who regularly used coke, pills, and alcohol. In addition to that, Delp relieved his young protege of the kid’s riding money taking it to pay for the recreational chemicals, or to place fake horse bets. He also took a lot of the kid’s money in poker pots. Delp also gave his rider the bad advice that led to the loss at the Belmont Stakes. Delp later blamed Franklin for everything that went wrong without taking any responsibility himself. In addition to Franklin’s story, I was also able to show the vast corruption on the backside — the rampant drug use, race fixing, and abuse of the animals. To my knowledge, no one else told that story, let alone in the detail that I provided.

Tell us about the experience of writing this book. What was your process? How long did it take you to write this versus your first book? What were your biggest challenges?

It took me about four years to write The Fast Ride. That was an improvement over my first book, Collision of Wills, which took six years. The two books required a similar research effort and are about the same size. The difference was that I did not know what I was doing when I wrote the first book and I had to teach myself how to do it on the job. The second time I was more prepared and had a better understanding of what the chore would entail. My biggest challenge writing The Fast Ride was finding people who both knew the real story and who were willing to talk about it. Many people avoided me or refused my interview requests simply because they knew the truth and didn’t want to go on the record with it.

Who is your favorite racehorse of all time? Your favorite racing memory?

I’m sure this isn’t a surprise but my favorite racehorse is Spectacular Bid. His story and career gave me the opportunity to write a book that has provided readers with a special literary experience. That has meant the world to me.