Man O' War on the heels of Seabiscuit

by Thomas Dimopoulos

SARATOGA SPRINGS - When 'Seabiscuit' was topping the bestseller charts and drawing millions of moviegoers to theaters across the nation, author Laura Hillenbrand was asked if she had any interest in applying her lyrical magic to the great horse Man O' War.

'I'll need to look elsewhere,' Hillenbrand responded. 'A wonderful writer named Dorothy Ours is now completing 'Chained Lightning,' the first truly comprehensive biography of Man O' War.'

'We became e-mail pen pals several years ago,' says Ours, sitting at a desk in her office at the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.

A computer sits on top of a table nearby and a neatly lined row of CDs depict her musical style, which includes the bands R.E.M., Green Day and U2.

'I ran an ad in Blood Horse magazine about Man O' War asking: Do you know anything about this horse? Would you like to talk about him? One of the people who answered was Laura Hillenbrand. She said, 'Oh, it sounds like you're working on a book. I'm (also) working on a book. We should stay in touch while we're doing this. I've been a lot slower in the process,'"' Ours confesses with a laugh.

The two would-be authors sought each other's help in researching equine history and found common ground in characters like Sam Riddle, who bought Man O' War for $5,000 in 1918 and also factored in the story of Seabiscuit.

'It developed into a friendship through that process,' Ours says.

Developing the Man O' War story has been a lifelong companion for the kid who grew up watching 'Let's Go to the Races' on TV when she was 5 or 6 years old. She pestered her parents to take her for horse riding lessons until they finally relented.

'When I was in grade school, Secretariat won the Triple Crown and to me, he was the greatest, like little kids who have their sports hero.

I also got to hear people who are experts in the sport saying, 'Wow! This is the best horse since Man O' War, or he might even be better than Man O' War.' So you start to go 'Oh, what does this Man O' War do anyway?' Secretariat really inspired me to dig deeper. To see what Man O' War was about,' Ours says.

'We lived in Morgantown, W.Va., up in the northern panhandle between Ohio and Pennsylvania,' Ours says, remembering her first in-person visit to the races. 'There's this racetrack that used to be called Waterford Park - now it's called Mountaineer Park - and my dad was a journalist and doing a story about a female jockey who was riding there. That was the first time I was actually at the track. I was 16 or 17 years old.'

Her father has since retired as a professor of journalism. Ours' maternal grandfather had a background as a historian, and the two careers made an impression from an early age.

'I grew up with a lot of that interest. We would be driving down the road in the car and it would be like 'Oh yeah, over in that field 300 years ago this happened.'

There were a lot of those kinds of discussions,' she says.

'I used to joke about it when I was in high school. My friend, just to get my goat, would say, 'You know, Man O' War was a lot better than Secretariat.' We'd have these arguments and I would say, 'Well I'll write a book about Man O' War and show you," she laughs.

'Now, I'm not doing this book to tear Man O' War down and put Secretariat up,' she offers. '
"The more you find out, the more you appreciate each horse for their own strengths. On any given day any of the ones that have that phenomenal talent might come out first. So I don't think you can say absolutely that Man O' War was the greatest ever, or Secretariat or Seattle Slew. We don't know.
But Man O' War was definitely one of those phenomenal athletes that you don't see often. He honestly was one of the great horses of all time,' Ours says.

Through years of research, Ours has built up a fairly extensive collection of materials dating back to the time of Man O' War, including old newspapers and advertisements, as well as things she has bought at auction. There have also been visits to rare manuscript libraries, always looking to learn more about the big red colt and the people and the times they existed, how they lived and what they said.

'Man O' War was such a legend, there is so much information that over time if people were writing about him they would go over previous articles and things end up smooshing it together. They end up repeating things that aren't necessarily accurate. So I really wanted to go back and look at the original newspaper stories and things that were printed at the time he was running,' Ours says. 'Every little bit of it underlines your understanding of what was going on at the time. The more research I do, the deeper you get into the story. There are so many pieces that are just lost in time. I'm making my best effort to be truthful and complete.'

Ours made her way north from West Virginia to Boston, where she worked at the Berklee College of Music for more than 10 years. There she was known, she says, 'as the person who loves horse racing.'

All the while, Man O' War was on the back burner, and Ours was conducting 'reconnaissance' missions to Saratoga. In early 1998, she was ready for the big move, landing a job at the racing museum a few yards away from where Man O' War made six of his 21 total starts between 1919 and 1920. It is also where the grandsire to Seabiscuit has his been recognized with his very own spring - 'Big Red.'

Saratoga is the track where the champion suffered the only loss of his career to a horse ironically named Upset. Friday the 13th marks the 85th anniversary of the race.

Living in Saratoga, and working at the museum allowed Ours to better focus on putting together the Man O' War story.

'I finally reached the point that I better finish this book. This spring I finished the book proposal and got it out there, and St. Martin's Press is going to publish it,' Ours says.

The completed manuscript will be delivered to the publisher next summer and the scheduled date for release of the book is spring 2006 -- a few years later than her 'Seabiscuit' scribe friend delivered her debut perhaps, but Ours is keeping things in perspective.

'I don't have any illusions that this will be the same (reaction). To be one-tenth as successful as 'Seabiscuit' would be wonderful,' she says.

And when she does give herself a moment or two to consider where the book's publication could lead, she hopes that it would garner sufficient interest to do some book signings and inspire reading and discussion at racetracks around the country.

While she puts the finishing touches on the project that has been a longtime companion, she continues to be amazed by the rich history of the sport and the people and things she is able to observe firsthand at the museum.

'Something like a saddle that was used on Seabiscuit can just show up in the mail. If you're a racing fan, seeing some of these things up close is just amazing. You grow up hearing the stories and seeing things on TV, but when some of the leading people come here, and objects that were involved in some of the great moments in the sport, you just feel like, 'Wow - how lucky am I?'"

published in The Saratogian