Ruffian: A Race Track Romance

Ruffian: A Race Track Romance
by William Nack

Ruffian: A Race Track Romance
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Book Summary Information

Author: William Nack
Edition: Hardcover
Audio: English (Unknown); English (Original Language); English (Published)
Published: 2007-05-08
ISBN: 1933060301
Number of pages: 112
Publisher: ESPN

Book Reviews of Ruffian: A Race Track Romance

Book Review: Wonderfully Written, Intimate Account of Ruffian and the Horseracing Industry
Summary: 5 Stars

Nack's personal account of his life in the horseracing industry is a perfect backdrop for this intimate, well-written account of Ruffian. Nack's insight and research is top-notch given his perspective as a reporter covering horseracing for Newsday in the early 70's; we meet his friends and experience first-hand the people who surround these wonderful animals - from Alfred Vanderbilt to Frank Whiteley, from Andy Beyer to Jacinto Vasquez. Nack's prose is rich - one of my favorite lines, "I had been around racehorses and racetracks for twenty years, and I had never seen a two-year-old do what she was doing - and with an insouciance that bordered on the downright cavalier, moving as she pleased with a restrained grace and power and at velocities rarely seen in animals so young. She was in my experience sui generis."

This is the best book I have read in the last year. This is the best book I have ever read on horseracing - perhaps even eclipsing Nack's first book, "Secretariat".

Summary of Ruffian: A Race Track Romance

On July 6, 1975, a 3-year-old filly named Ruffian was loaded into the starting gate at Belmont Park for a televised match race against Kentucky Derby winner colt Foolish Pleasure. Since winning her first race a little more than a year earlier, the unbeaten, unflappable Ruffian had literally raced her way into the hearts of a nation. One of those hearts belonged to Newsday turf reporter William Nack.

As a boy in Illinois, Nack had carried in his pocket a trading card of his hero, Swaps, the winner of the 1955 Kentucky Derby. As a young soldier in Vietnam, Nack tuned out the midnight bomb blasts by listening to racetrack broadcasts from Santa Anita. Now, fresh off the publication of his astonishing biography of Secretariat -- described by Seabiscuit author Laura Hillenbrand as "the gold standard of horse books" -- he found himself smitten once again.

But tragedy struck that summer's day at Belmont Park. After charging from the gate, Ruffian stumbled and shattered her right foreleg. She had to be put down. Nack's heartbreaking run with thoroughbred racing's most famous filly will soon be immortalized in a made-for-TV movie to be broadcast on ESPN and ABC. In this moving, lyrical memoir, he relives the afternoon that forever changed his love affair with the track.

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