if wishes were horses beggars would ride

I don't know anything about horse racing. And the closest I've come to the turf is enduring the horrific traffic jams along Bukit Timah and Dunearn Roads every weekend when the turf club was still located there. (Now it's the horrific decaying mess called Turf City).

But I do know that I quite liked watching the movie Seabiscuit, starring Tobey Maguire, Jeff Bridges and Chris Cooper. It was a fun, dramatic, underdog-emerges-victorious type of movie, based on the true tale of probably America's best racehorse ever. And I thought that was that.

Until I read Laura Hillenbrand's book, Seabiscuit: The True Story of Three Men and a Racehorse, on which the movie was based.

It's a book on horseracing, but somehow it is able to transcend that genre - it's a great book, not just a great sports book.

This ugly duckling of a horse went on to capture the hearts of a nation that was downtrodded in the Great Depression, a time when a hero, an inspiration, was needed to once again stir up the people.

I suppose the true tale itself is fodder for a great story. It's serious underdog material.

*A man who travels out west to set up a bicycle repair shop that fails miserably, becomes a self-made millionaire, raking in the big bucks with his cars.

*A trainer who hardly says a word.

*A rider who is half-blind.

*A horse that's too small.

Hillenbrand not only brings to life the story of this runty horse and his people, but also sets the scene for the reader - what the racing world was like back then. The horrific accidents the jockeys faced, the desperate ways they fought to keep the weight off for eg resorting to diarrhoea pills just before weigh-in time and avoiding liquids as much as possible.

It's well-paced, much like a race, pausing at the right moments and speeding on at other moments. The last few chapters are especially gripping, when Red Pollard and Seabiscuit are riding out the last race of the horse's career.

I knew I couldn't put it down before I was done, despite having to head off to the office, I just had to finish the book so I stayed put in my room and devoured it before racing off to work.

Listening to Jayhawks' Save It For A Rainy Day