Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley door pickup 10am - 7pm 3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611

  • Open Daily: 10am - 10pm
    Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm

    3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
    612-822-4611

Open Daily: 10am - 10pm | Alley-side Pickup: 10am - 7pm
3038 Hennepin Ave Minneapolis, MN
612-822-4611
The Fast Ride: Spectacular Bid and the Undoing of a Sure Thing

The Fast Ride: Spectacular Bid and the Undoing of a Sure Thing

Gilden, Jack

Paperback

20th Century United States HistoryRacing

Publisher Price: $26.95

ISBN10: 149623619X
ISBN13: 9781496236197
Publisher: Univ Of Nebraska Pr
Published: Sep 1 2023
Pages: 336
Weight: 0.60
Height: 1.02 Width: 5.67 Depth: 8.50
Language: English
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 twelve consecutive stakes victories. But he lost his quest for the Triple Crown with a third-place finish in the Belmont Stakes due to a series of bizarre events that have never before been accurately reported.

In The Fast Ride, Jack Gilden tells the story of what really happened the day the Bid lost the biggest race of his life. Along the way, he introduces the reader to a cast of characters from the gilded age of late twentieth-century horse racing, from Bid's owners, the renowned Meyerhoff family, to Grover Buddy Delp, the fast-talking trainer, to teenage jockey Ronnie Franklin, whose meteoric rise to fame with Spectacular Bid came at the cost of his innocence and well-being. Also present are four of the era's magnificent Latino riders, Ángel Cordero Jr., Jacinto Vásquez, Georgie Velásquez, and Ruben Hernandez, who all felt the sting of rejection and bigotry during their long careers even as they raised the level of competition to a feverish pitch.

The Fast Ride is the story of a great racehorse, unfulfilled dreams, the exhilaration and steep price of striving at all costs, and an American era in which getting everything you ever wanted could be the most empty and unfulfilling sensation of all.

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