Great Horse Racing Mysteries

Author: John McEvoy
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493070134
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 311

Book Description
Great Horse Racing Mysteries digs beneath the surface of some of the sport's most intriguing cases, including the death by poisoning of the great Australian champion Phar Lap; the shooting of William Woodward by his wife Ann, owners of the great horse Nashua; the disqualification of 1960 Derby winner Dancer's Image (was he drugged?); the theft and disappearance in 1983 of Shergar, Europe's best-known racehorse and stallion; and the scandalous financial collapse of Calumet Farm after the death by euthanasia of Alydar, one of the world's most successful sires.John McEvoy researched several unsolved mysteries of the racing world— murder...suicide...arson...fraud—and recounts some of horse racing's strangest, most fascinating tales. In this updated edition, veteran turf writer Lenny Shulman adds to the intrigue by exploring the mysterious death of the troubled jockey Chris Antley, winner of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness aboard Charismatic, and Big Brown's stunning collapse in the Belmont after cruising to winsin the first two legs of the Triple Crown.

The Sure Thing

Author: Nick Townsend
Publisher: Random House
ISBN: 1448136148
Category : Biography & Autobiography
Languages : en
Pages : 434

Book Description
__________________ The bookies always win. But one man has been proving them wrong for four decades. In the summer of 1975 Barney Curley, a fearless and renowned gambler, masterminded one of the most spectacular gambles of all time with a racehorse called Yellow Sam. With a meticulous, entirely legal plan involving dozens of people, perfectly timed phone calls, sealed orders and months of preparation, Curley and Yellow Sam beat the bookmakers and cost them millions. They said that it could never happen again. But in May 2010, thirty-five years after his first coup, Curley staged the ultimate multi-million-pound-winning sequel. The Sure Thing tells the complete story of how he managed to organise the biggest gamble in racing history - and how he then followed up with yet another audacious scheme in January 2014.

Tales from the Triple Crown

Author: Steve Haskin
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493078429
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 248

Book Description
In Tales from the Triple Crown, award-winning racing writer Steve Haskin takes readers behind the scenes to introduce them to the trainers, jockeys, and horses seeking the world’s most elusive sports prize. Feel the keen disappointment of trainer Bud Delp after Spectacular Bid loses his Triple Crown bid because of a stray safety pin. Witness Angel Cordero’s frustration after winning the Kentucky Derby aboard Spend a Buck, only to encounter a series of misadventures on his way home. Mourn the untimely loss of Barbaro in a Preakness that shook the racing world. Their stories are among the twenty-four—including three that are new to this paperback edition—that bring a new dimension to the repertoire of Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes reporting. Horse racing is no stranger to triumph and tragedy, and in Tales from the Triple Crown Haskin shares both the adrenaline charge of victory and the disappointment of close losses. Haskin’s personal involvement, keen eye for a good story, and engaging writing style make readers feel like they are living the moments with him.

Phar Lap

Author: Geoff Armstrong
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 9781865089942
Category : History
Languages : en
Pages : 216

Book Description
The book studies the many mysteries of Phar Lap's career, including the infamous shooting that occurred just days before his great triumph in the 1930 Melbourne Cup. The book examines the way an emerging media played its part in building the legend. The authors provide an analysis of his previously unexplained death in North America and explain why Phar Lap is much more than a racehorse.

Taking Shergar

Author: Milton C. Toby
Publisher: University Press of Kentucky
ISBN: 0813176360
Category : True Crime
Languages : en
Pages : 272

Book Description
It was a cold and foggy February night in 1983 when a group of armed thieves crept onto Ballymany Stud, near The Curragh in County Kildare, Ireland, to steal Shergar, one of the Thoroughbred industry's most renowned stallions. Bred and raced by the Aga Khan IV and trained in England by Sir Michael Stoute, Shergar achieved international prominence in 1981 when he won the 202nd Epsom Derby by ten lengths -- the longest winning margin in the race's history. The thieves demanded a hefty ransom for the safe return of one of the most valuable Thoroughbreds in the world, but the ransom was never paid and Shergar's remains have never been found. In Taking Shergar: Thoroughbred Racing's Most Famous Cold Case, Milton C. Toby presents an engaging narrative that is as thrilling as any mystery novel. The book provides new analysis of the body of evidence related to the stallion's disappearance, delves into the conspiracy theories that surround the inconclusive investigation, and presents a profile of the man who might be the last person able to help solve part of the mystery. Toby examines the extensive cast of suspects and their alleged motives, including the Irish Republican Army and their need for new weapons, a French bloodstock agent who died in Central Kentucky, and even the Libyan dictator, Muammar al-Qadhafi. This riveting account of the most notorious unsolved crime in the history of horse racing will captivate serious racing fans and aficionados as well as entertain a new generation of horse racing enthusiasts.

I Got the Horse Right Here

Author: Joseph James Reisler
Publisher: Rowman & Littlefield
ISBN: 1493052217
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 449

Book Description
Burned out by working the baseball beat for years, in the summer of 1922 Damon Runyon was looking for a new sport to cover for The New York American as a change of pace. Having pilloried golf just a few years before, he went to Saratoga that August to sample horse racing and found that “There, right in front of him, were so many of the characters he so loved from his time covering the comings and goings of the Manhattan night crowd.” This was just the tonic Runyon needed to emerge from his malaise. Runyon didn’t just cover the great races and which horse won: he would get to the track days before and roam along the backstretch, speaking with the trainers, the gamblers, the rich owners, and the wise guys, many of which became model characters in his fiction and in the musical Guys and Dolls. This book collects the best of Runyon’s horse racing columns to 1936, when he moved on to other beats.

Reining in Murder

Author: Leigh Hearon
Publisher: Kensington Cozies
ISBN: 1496700341
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 352

Book Description
This debut of a mystery series starring a sleuthing horse trainer is “a winner right out of the gate” (Fern Michaels, #1 New York Times–bestselling author). When horse trainer Annie Carson rescues a beautiful thoroughbred from a roadside rollover, she knows the horse is lucky to be alive . . . unlike the driver. After rehabilitating the injured animal at her Carson Stables ranch, Annie delivers the horse to Hilda Colbert—the thoroughbred’s neurotic and controlling owner—only to find she’s been permanently put out to pasture. Two deaths in three days is unheard of in the small Olympic Peninsula county, and Annie decides to start sniffing around. She’s confident she can track down a killer . . . but she may not know how ruthless this killer really is . . .

The Sport of Kings

Author: C. E. Morgan
Publisher: Farrar, Straus and Giroux
ISBN: 0374715173
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 561

Book Description
A Finalist for the Pulitzer Prize Winner of the Kirkus Prize for Fiction • A Recipient of the Windham-Campbell Prize for Fiction • A Finalist for the James Tait Black Prize for Fiction • A Finalist for the Baileys Women's Prize for Fiction • A Finalist for the Rathbones Folio Prize • Longlisted for an Andrew Carnegie Medal for Excellence • One of New York Times Book Review 100 Notable Book Named a Best Book of the Year by Entertainment Weekly • GQ • The New York Times (Selected by Dwight Garner) • NPR • The Wall Street Journal • San Francisco Chronicle • Refinery29 • Booklist • Kirkus Reviews • Commonweal Magazine "In its poetic splendor and moral seriousness, The Sport of Kings bears the traces of Faulkner, Morrison, and McCarthy. . . . It is a contemporary masterpiece."—San Francisco Chronicle Hailed by The New Yorker for its “remarkable achievements,” The Sport of Kings is an American tale centered on a horse and two families: one white, a Southern dynasty whose forefathers were among the founders of Kentucky; the other African-American, the descendants of their slaves. It is a dauntless narrative that stretches from the fields of the Virginia piedmont to the abundant pastures of the Bluegrass, and across the dark waters of the Ohio River; from the final shots of the Revolutionary War to the resounding clang of the starting bell at Churchill Downs. As C. E. Morgan unspools a fabric of shared histories, past and present converge in a Thoroughbred named Hellsmouth, heir to Secretariat and a contender for the Triple Crown. Newly confronted with one another in the quest for victory, the two families must face the consequences of their ambitions, as each is driven---and haunted---by the same, enduring question: How far away from your father can you run? A sweeping narrative of wealth and poverty, racism and rage, The Sport of Kings is an unflinching portrait of lives cast in the shadow of slavery and a moral epic for our time.

Melbourne Cup 1930

Author: Geoff Armstrong
Publisher: Allen & Unwin
ISBN: 1741158648
Category : Sports & Recreation
Languages : en
Pages : 229

Book Description
Phar Lap's assault on the Melbourne Cup generated unprecedented excitement across the country. At the same time, it filled many bookmakers with dread a victory for the favourite would cost them plenty. He'd have to be stopped, whatever the cost. For the newspapers, the twin stories of sporting greatness and seedy corruption were a sensational cocktail. Readers lapped it up, while for the poor punters, suffering during the Great Depression, a Phar Lap triumph was their best hope of turning one quid into two. Melbourne Cup 1930 is the story of four days in November that became at the same time the most famous and infamous in Cup history. It began with a gunman, like something out of a Chicago gangster movie, apparently trying to kill Phar Lap on a quiet suburban street. With his life in danger and those closest to him terrified, the champion was spirited away to a secret location, while one of the city's most celebrated detectives searched for the culprits. Meanwhile, the other horses, owners, trainers and jockeys were preparing for the biggest race of their lives. Their many diverse stories and the memories they invoke of Cups gone by are an integral part of this unique tale. An hour before the jump, Phar Lap's whereabouts remained a mystery. Finally, he arrived at Flemington, to go almost immediately to the start as a huge crowd cheered him on. The police had been told to put men down the back of the track, in case the gunman tried one last time, but they now believed that the original assassination attempt might not have been all that it seemed. Nothing it appears could stop Phar Lap now

The Danger

Author: Dick Francis
Publisher: G.P. Putnam's Sons
ISBN: 9780425236321
Category : Fiction
Languages : en
Pages : 290

Book Description
Giuseppe, sometimes called Peter, Europe's most elusive and cold-blooded kidnapper, who preys on the world of racing, and Andrew Douglas, the Continent's toughest, most successful anti-kidnapping operative, match wits.