Northern Dancer

The story of Northern Dancer is the stuff of legend. A little horse, dismissed time and again because of his size, Northern Dancer not only won the 1964 Kentucky Derby in record time, today his descendants dominate racing the world over. Best selling author, Muriel Lennox, takes readers on a memorable ride into the sport of kings and queens. Lennox's deep empathy with horses results in dramatic portrayals of the animals themselves. Northern Dancer, his ancestors and descendants - from the eccentric Hyperion to the brilliant Nijinsky - fairly gallop off the pages.

In every sport there are a select few competitors that come to define the excellence that all others must forever aspire to. In “the sport of kings,” there is one that stands alone. Northern Dancer is not only a Canadian legend, but the cornerstone of his breed. It has been estimated that 70 percent of the thoroughbreds alive today are his descendants, which includes the majority of the horses running in the biggest races around the world. His offspring received recordbreaking prices on the auction floor. While much has been written about Northern Dancer’s prepotence as a sire, this book is the only one devoted to his 1964 campaign, which saw him win two of the Triple Crown races in the U.S. and Canada’s Queen’s Plate. In that time, he captured the attention of the world and the hearts of all Canadians. In Northern Dancer, the world-famous horse comes alive through the people whose lives he touched: E.P. Taylor, the visionary industrialist whose web of business placed him at the end of every consumer transaction for every Canadian and made him the subject of scorn; Horatio Luro, the dapper Argentinean trainer (and tango dancer, pilot, and race car driver) who was notorious for his affairs with Hollywood starlets and his tender treatment of horses; and Bill Hartack, a wildly successful jockey whose squabbles with the press and his inability to conceal his unvarnished truth from influential owners and trainers was, by 1964, beginning to affect his career. Using news clippings from 1964 and interviews, this book offers novelistic detail not only on the remarkable 1964 Triple Crown and Queen’s Plate races, but also revisits, fifty years later, the era in which Canada was struggling to establish an identity, needing, more than anything, a national hero.

Designing Speed in the Racehorse is an indispensable reference by Ken McLean, one of the world's foremost bloodstock advisors and pedigree experts. McLean discusses genetic affinities and pedigree patterns, analyzes the pedigrees of important sires and ancestors to isolate elements of speed and stamina, explains what characteristics to look for in a sire, and updates the elite mare list. Breeders will be especially interested in McLean's analysis of the conformation of many of the breed's most illustrious sires and the physical attributes and faults they passed on to their progeny. Best of all, he tells the current sire and dam lines most likely to produce quality racehorses. With his recommendations at hand, today's Thoroughbred breeder has an edge in the competitive world of racing.

Inspired by Lakota traditional dancers from South Dakota, the author presents a brief history, then concentrates on the outfits worn for northern powwows, the materials and techniques for their construction.

In the early 1950s, a rising star flickered across millions of black-and-white TV sets.

With Volume 2 of Legacies of the Turf II Edward Bowen focuses on the men whose horses have dominated racing in the last half of the 20th century and into the 21st. He has woven together a rich tapestry of horse racing lore.