Horses as Heroes

Last week while channel surfing, I happened upon a rebroadcast of the PBS series, The American Experience, featuring Seabiscuit. Not the movie version, but the newsreel one in which Laura Hillenbrand, Red Pollard's daughter and Gene Smith, among others provide commentary.

Although I have seen this show a few times, and actually used quite a bit of the materials they quote from for my thesis, I never fail to be moved by the many dimensions of the story. It remains fascinating to me that Seabiscuit became the cult hero that he truly was, not only inspiring his jockey to recover from devastating injuries, but further rallying an entire nation to believe in itself during the depths of the Depression.

Seabiscuit, as it has been pointed out here and in many other forums, made the leap from the sports pages to the front pages, becoming one of very few horses to do so, and in the process became a national figure, worthy of emulation and adoration. Secretariat did the same thing as did Barbaro.

What is equally fascinating is the fact that despite all the hoopla surrounding Rachel Alexandra and Zenyatta, neither of these horses have done likewise. Proof is the simple fact that you never read about them on the front pages--only the sports pages and neither has appeared on the cover of Time or Newsweek magazine. Interesting isn't it. The two horses that could potentially inspire a legion of women, young and old, remain heroes only to those well versed in the sport.

So what does it take to galvanize a horse into national prominence? More than a successful racing career, that's for sure. There has to be that elusive "something" that captures the public's fancy and catapults them into the public eye.

I speculate that it is also more than the zeitgest of the era in which they race. We could certainly use a hero right about now, given our financial climate, and nobody seems to have draped that mantle over either of the two great horses currently vying for Horse of the Year.

I know there were fewer distractions in Seabiscuit's day--he truly was the only game in town in many places--but Secretariat managed to overcome competition from all sorts of "big" stories including Watergate and the Vietnam War.

If Rachel and Zenyatta are truly as great as they are, why are they not capturing the public's imagination the way Seabiscuit, Secretariat and Barbaro did? What do you think?