Racing History

Millions follow the F1 racing season from March to November, but few realise the enormity and complexity of a sport that encompasses so much more than 20 or so Sunday afternoons in the year. With access to drivers, pit crews, backroom operations, strategists, journalists, PR executives and promoters, journalist Phillip Horton shares his extensive knowledge and experience, and provides an up-close-and-personal insight into the world and workings of Formula One.

Who was the most famous athlete one hundred years ago? A horse. In fact, harness racer Dan Patch was more than a celebrity, he was once the most recognizable figure in American sports. Born with a bad leg and nearly euthanized in 1896, Dan Patch led an ordinary wagon horse existence, pulling the grocer’s cart in Oxford, Indiana. It was when he won a race at the Indiana State Fair that Dan Patch’s fame began to build.

In an era of spectacular thoroughbreds, Spectacular Bid was perhaps the most exalted racehorse of them all. In 1979, he won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes—and transcended his sport on a run of 12 consecutive stakes victories—but his quest for the Triple Crown was lost with a third-place finish in the Belmont Stakes due to a series of bizarre events that have never been accurately reported. In The Fast Ride, Jack Gilden tells the story of what really happened that day the Bid lost the biggest race of his life.

Based on true facts and characters, Woolf Barnato inherited a fortune when his father, Barney Barnato, the diamond millionaire, died mysteriously in 1897 when Woolf was two years old. Woolf left university to serve in the Royal Field Artillery in France, Belgium and Egypt during the First World War, rising to the rank of Captain. Obsessed with racing fast cars, he saved Bentley Motor Cars from bankruptcy in 1926 taking over the company. Woolf became well-known as one of the Bentley Boys, a cadre of young wealthy men who raced Bentley cars. He won the Le Mans 24 Hour Endurance Race, three ...

Family secrets, intrigue, and murder unfold behind the scenes of the horseracing circuit.. When a Kentucky Derby winner is stolen, the descendant of German brothers who fled WWII and her investigator discover an unspeakable family history of greed and revenge.

Joe Farrell, Joe Farley, and Lawrence Knorr have combed New York and Pennsylvania for the gravesites and biographies of some of our most interesting and accomplished sports figures. Included in this volume are: Alan Ameche “The Horse” William “Willie” Law Anderson “Golf’s Forgotten Legend” Paul Arizin “Pitchin’ Paul” Don Richard “Ritchie” Ashburn “His Whiteness” De Bonneville “Bert” Bell “Modern Football’s Founding Father” Billy Conn “The Pittsburgh Kid” James “Jim” Crowley and Harry Stuhldreher “Half the Horsemen” Joe William Frazier “...

Laura Hillenbrand beautifully renders this breathtaking saga of one horse's journey from also-ran to national luminary. Seabiscuit: An American Legend is an inspiring tale of unlikely heroes, a classic story of three embattled individuals overcoming the odds in the Great Depression.

In a mere twelve months, between May 2020 and May 2021, horse racing's most recognizable face—Hall of Fame trainer Bob Baffert—had five horses that failed postrace drug tests. Among those was the 2021 Kentucky Derby winner, Medina Spirit. While the incident was a major scandal in the Thoroughbred racing world, it was only the latest in a series of drug-related infractions among elite athletes. Milton C. Toby addresses the historical and contemporary context of the Thoroughbred industry's most pressing issue.

Kyle Petty chronicles his life on and off the racetrack, presenting his insider’s perspective of growing up throughout the sport’s popular rise in American culture. Filled with NASCAR history, stories of his family’s careers, and anecdotes about some of stock-car racing’s most famous drivers, Kyle’s memoir also tackles the sport’s evolution, discussing how welcoming diverse racers, improving car and track safety features, and integrating green technology will benefit NASCAR’s competitors and fans in the future.

The story of one of racing's earliest dynasties, the historic Belair Stud, began with William Woodward's childhood memories of grand days at the racetrack, inspiring dreams of breeding a champion or two of his own. Woodward turned those dreams into reality, building Belair Stud on his family's Maryland estate, launching what would become the preeminent thoroughbred breeding and racing empire in America and chasing racing's biggest prizes in both the United States and England.

In more than a century of American Thoroughbred racing, only 13 horses have won the Triple Crown (the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes, all won in the same season). Veteran turf writer and racing historian Edward L. Bowen takes us through the rich history of one of the most formidable and exciting challenges in all of sport. Bowen covers the trainers, owners, and jockeys who etched their names into the annals of thoroughbred racing, and the “lucky 13” who captured all three jewels of the Triple Crown, racing’s most prestigious prize.

He was always destined to be a champion. Royally bred, with English and American classic winners in his pedigree, Sir Barton shone from birth, dubbed the "king of them all". But after a winless two-year-old season and a near-fatal illness, uncertainty clouded the start of Sir Barton's three-year-old season. Then his surprise victory in America's signature race, the Kentucky Derby, started him on the road to history, where he would go on to dominate the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes, completing America's first Triple Crown.

Mystery, conspiracy and revenge! The powerful characters of KOENIG'S WONDER and KOENIG'S SPIRIT return with new challenges in the world of Thoroughbred racing. Intrigue and vengeance weave the characters along a new dimension in their lives as their pasts and new beginnings bring the members of these families closer together. KOENIG'S PROMISE is the third novel in the Koenig Triple Crown Series.

Historical novel based in Ireland and Spain during the period from 1640 to 1923. It tells the story of the Moore family who are part of the landed gentry while being Catholic. Follow the trials and tragedies of four generations as they navigate their way through turbulent Irish history, family and religious allegiances, while walking the fine line between sworn loyalty to the King and sympathy to growing Irish Nationalism.

A quarter of a million people braved miserable conditions at Epsom Downs on June 2, 1954, to see the 175th running of the prestigious Derby Stakes. Queen Elizabeth II and Sir Winston Churchill were in attendance, along with thousands of Britons who were all convinced of the unfailing superiority of English bloodstock and eager to see a British colt take the victory. They were shocked when a Kentucky-born chestnut named Never Say Die galloped to a two-length triumph at odds of 33-1.

This is a true story about a man who was passionate about airplanes—flying them, designing them and building them. His innovative designs and creative vision were so much a part of aviation history that his breakthrough biplane design, the Staggerwing, shown on the cover of this book, hangs in the Smithsonian Institution’s National Air and Space Museum in Washington D.C. Ted Wells not only designed the Staggerwing, but also the Bonanza and many other extremely popular and enduring commercial and military aircraft. Beech Aircraft, the company he co-founded with Walter and Olive Ann Beech...

In 2008, Elon Musk's SpaceX became the first private company to build a low-cost rocket that could reach orbit. Suddenly Silicon Valley, not NASA, was the epicentre of the new Space Age. Start-ups and investors began to realise that the heavens - ungoverned and unregulated - were open for business. When the Heavens Went on Sale tells the remarkable, unfolding story of this frenzied race to control access to outer space. Ashlee Vance follows four pioneering companies - Astra, Firefly, Planet Labs and Rocket Lab - as they attempt to launch thousands of low-cost rockets and satellites into orbit.

Isaac Murphy, born enslaved in 1861, still reigns as one of the greatest jockeys in American history. Black jockeys like Murphy were at the top of the most popular sport in America at the end of the nineteenth century. They were internationally famous, the first African American superstar athletes—and with wins in three Kentucky Derbies and countless other prestigious races, Murphy was the greatest of them all.

In his latest investigative book Michael Baigent takes us to the assembly hall of the UN, the boardrooms of major businesses and powerful lobbying groups, the cabinet meetings of world leaders, the ranches of cattle breeders, the churches of the faithful, and the narrow winding streets of modern Jerusalem, revealing to us the many diverse, public, and clandestine figures behind a perilous messianic agenda.

On the morning of the 1979 Belmont Stakes, Spectacular Bid stepped on a safety pin in his stall, injuring his foot. He had impressively won the first two races - the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness - but finished third in the Belmont, most likely due to his injury, making him one win shy of becoming the sport's third straight Triple Crown champion. But that loss did not prevent him from becoming one of horse racing's greatest competitors.