Somebeachsomewhere A Harness Racing Legend From A One Horse Stable

It's November 2006 and Brent MacGrath, a car salesman from Nova Scotia, has just had his first glimpse of a gorgeous yearling at the Lexington Yearling Sale--and his heart skips a beat. He takes another look. Even this young, the bay stallion has size and "presence." Against all odds, and with limited funds, MacGrath makes a successful bid for the colt. Somebeachsomewhere: The Harness Racing Legend from a One-Horse Stable is a work of narrative non-fiction that follows the life and career of the Ohio-born, Canadian-sired superstar pacer known as "Beach" who belonged to a syndicate of six owners from Canada's East Coast. From a relatively humble lineage, Somebeachsomewhere turned out to be a horse of a lifetime: a world-champion Hall of Famer, smashing records and setting a single-season earning record as a three-year-old. Many consider Beach, who died unexpectedly in 2018, the greatest pacer and Standardbred sire of all time. Canadian and American racing fans loved the friendly stallion with "an extra gear," and threw "Beach Parties" whenever he raced. This is the first-ever complete, generously illustrated account of "the Beach," a horse who captivated the world with his speed, courage and near-flawless gait. It is also a story of improbabilities and magic, featuring dozens of interviews with top American and Canadian horsemen and women, the owners of Empire Stallions, and harness racing industry professionals.

Since the eager stallion Messenger trotted off a boat from Europe in 1788, harness racing in America has been a popular sport, and nowhere is this truer than New York State. In the nineteenth century, harness racing attracted spectators from all walks of life. An 1823 race was so popular that businesses adjourned for the day to watch it. The sport reached its peak when the spectacular Roosevelt Raceway opened in 1957. Dean Hoffman offers an in-depth history of the sport's evolution in the Empire State, from the drivers and breeding to betting, legislation and accounts of the most exciting races. Join Hoffman as he sheds light on one of New York's most venerable sports traditions.

His winning percentage was well above Jordan’s shooting average or Woods’s domination of golf tournaments. And he sold products and drew spectators like no one had ever done. He was hands-down the most famous athlete in America’s most popular spectator sport, and exactly one hundred years ago you would have been hard pressed to find anybody in the country who didn’t know his name. He was Dan Patch, and he was a racehorse. At the turn of the last century, harness racing drew larger crowds and offered bigger paychecks than any other sport. Its stars were household names, and Dan Patch was both the most celebrated and the richest. As successful as he was on the track, Dan Patch was also America’s first “marketing machine”: the horse who could sell cigars, washing machines, stoves, automobiles, and animal feed, just by the presence of his name and photograph. The Best There Ever Was examines the evolution of sports marketing through the lives of Dan Patch and the three men who owned him: an Indiana breeder, Dan Messner; M. E. Sturgis, who sold the horse for $20,000 (a fortune in those days) and spent the rest of his life trying to buy him back; and Marion W. Savage of Minneapolis, whose entrepreneurial skills presaged today’s sports marketing geniuses. Any athlete who can draw a 90,000-person crowd, offer up world records, and then sell a coal stove with his name on it may well be the best by anybody’s standards. A fun and fascinating read for sports lovers.

Documents the life story of a record-breaking champion horse whose disabilities nearly caused his euthanasia at birth, in an account that also describes the contributions of his shopkeeper owner and alcoholic driver. 50,000 first printing.

Gentle ways to improve the horse’s core fitness while relieving pain related to conditions such as kissing spine. Every equestrian wants to know: what is the difference between the horse that “dances” when you are on him, and the one that doesn’t? According to Visconte Simon Cocozza, Trainer and Examiner for the La Fédération Française d'Equitation (FFE), it all comes down to the horse’s posture. The horse’s ability to use the powerful mechanisms already built into his body relies not upon the strength we can see on the outside but the strength on the inside. This invisible and complex arrangement of internal “core” muscles control the horse’s posture, suppleness, and agility. Their good condition is the key to the dance. Equine core muscles are very difficult to isolate with the traditional training techniques common to horse sports. However, by examining what we do with the human body when faced with a weak core, we can find new methods for conditioning these areas of the equine body. Cocozza has taken principles of the human practice of yoga and used them to develop novel ways of reaching deep within the horse’s body and: Gently “unlock” areas that may be a little “rusty.” Improve core fitness. And even relieve pain related to conditions such as kissing spine. In this highly illustrated book, he provides step-by-step instruction explaining easy mounted exercises that enhance the horse’s posture, and boost his confidence in his body and movement, making him easier to ride, and ultimately, the dance partner you’ve always imagined.

When Stephen Davison first met Martin Finnegan in 2003, it marked the beginning of an enduring friendship. Together, they produced some of the best action shots in the sport's history and created an extraordinary record of a road racing life that was tragically cut short when Martin was killed at the Tandragee 100 in May 2008.

This is an unabashed love story - a tale of two coasts, east and west, two writers, Marjorie Simmins and Silver Donald Cameron, and many definitions of home, evolving and complex. Among these, dogs and horses abound. You'll probably cry and you'll certainly laugh. Perhaps most of all, you'll cheer them on. She was a single and sad freelance fisheries reporter and writer living in Vancouver, on the West Coast of Canada. He was a widowed and heartbroken journalist and author, living in a small village on Isle Madame, Cape Breton. They met in Vancouver on a brilliant spring morning at a coffee shop. He was on a book tour and she was the reporter sent to interview him. "Hi, I'm Don," he said; "Hi, I'm Marjorie," she replied - and their lives changed forever. It took 800 e-mails, countless phone calls and three PFO letters, but in the end, she, age 37, agreed to start seeing him, age 59. But there was no way she was going to leave her beloved West Coast, and her family, friends, horses and dogs. That just wasn't going to happen. Or was it? Silver Donald Cameron was one "cussedly stubborn man," as she once called him. This is a tale of love and resistance written with humour and candour. There are times of overwhelming happiness and flattening grief. Simmins writes of these times and the gentler ones as well, all against the backdrop of an East Coast Canadian world so new to her, she said she'd found a trip to Turkey less foreign. After all, she had thought the two coastal worlds would be similar. To her surprise, the two coasts had little in common. Food, fish, music, language, history and cultures were all different. Even the ocean smelled different, the saltier Atlantic so much more pungent. To her greater surprise, she came to fiercely love those differences, in ways both expected and surprising. She also fiercely loves the man who told her she was brave enough to "jump off a cliff - and tell a damn fine story at the other end."

An eye-opening game-changer of a book that sheds new light on how horses learn, think, perceive, and perform, and explains how to work with the horse’s brain instead of against it. In this illuminating book, brain scientist and horsewoman Janet Jones describes human and equine brains working together. Using plain language, she explores the differences and similarities between equine and human ways of negotiating the world. Mental abilities—like seeing, learning, fearing, trusting, and focusing—are discussed from both human and horse perspectives. Throughout, true stories of horses and handlers attempting to understand each other—sometimes successfully, sometimes not—help to illustrate the principles. Horsemanship of every kind depends on mutual interaction between equine and human brains. When we understand the function of both, we can learn to communicate with horses on their terms instead of ours. By meeting horses halfway, we achieve many goals. We improve performance. We save valuable training time. We develop much deeper bonds with our horses. We handle them with insight and kindness instead of force or command. We comprehend their misbehavior in ways that allow solutions. We reduce the human mistakes we often make while working with them. Instead of working against the horse’s brain, expecting him to function in unnatural and counterproductive ways, this book provides the information needed to ride with the horse’s brain. Each principle is applied to real everyday issues in the arena or on the trail, often illustrated with true stories from the author’s horse training experience. Horse Brain, Human Brain offers revolutionary ideas that should be considered by anyone who works with horses.