Hard work equals success

Journalist Laura Hillenbrand describes big legend which was Seabiscuit, a funny-walking male horse and a team of three unbelievable characters. One of the greatest characters was Charles Howard – an automotive salesman and Seabiscuit’s owner. Tom Smith, a unique trainer, and Red Pollard, a jockey, were also very important. These three amazing people made Seabiscuit the greatest race horse in America by preparing him for the one-on-one race with the big champion who was War Admiral. Along with the horse’s story Hillenbrand writes about some extraordinary touching situations such as the hard life of jockeys, which includes terrible injuries.
Jockeys’ life was extremely dangerous. Through the reading I have learned a lot about the dangers that jockeys had to face by horse racing. “Riders didn’t even have to leave the saddle to be badly hurt,” notes Laura Hillenbrand. “Their hands and shins were smashed and their knee ligaments ripped when horses twisted beneath them or banged into rails and walls.”(Hillenbrand 88) Once a rider becomes a jockey, there are no guarantees of a comfortable living. Every jockey had to be lightweight with a small body frame. Therefore riders like Red Pollard resorted to diets of as little as 600 calories a day. In addition, jockeys often became anorexic and bulimic, which made them weak. A jockey’s life was exhausting and dangerous; they didn’t have safety rails, or ambulances following them around the track. (Hillenbrand)
Along the way, when Seabiscuit’s history progresses, there were also a lot of challenging events that touched American society. Some of these events include recovery from the great San Francisco earthquake, the rise of automobile, and the shock after the Great Depression. During that period of time automobiles entered the local picture and Charles Howard, who was the owner of Seabiscuit, also became one of the largest Buick distributors, which brought him fame and a lot of money. Accordingly, his great personality and a lot of energy made that Howard became one of the outstanding men in the American industry. (Smith) But the cars that brought him success and fortune ended up stealing the thing that Howard loved the most. After his son died in a car accident Howard’s life changed. “It was the horses that captured his attention.” (Hillenbrand 16)
In this inspiring horse racing story of Seabiscuit the lives of three men and a horse are blended together to show that their success was determined by their hard work and choices that they made. At the beginning they were losing almost all races but first failures didn’t discourage the main characters or make them give up. They worked very hard which brought them success and fame. Overall this book helped me to understand better that great accomplishments come from hard work. At times, the work is hard and Seabiscuit is a proof that it often pays off. People who work hard and make the right choices will succeed in life.