Graveyard of Champions: Saratoga's Fallen Favorites [Hardcover]

Bill Heller (Author)

Book Description

Publication Date: June 25, 2002

This book explores the phenomenon of Saratoga Racecourse through the stories of the great horses that have fallen victim there, from Man o' War to Secretariat.

Editorial Reviews

From Library Journal

Why do winners famously lose at the Saratoga Racecourse in Saratoga Springs, NY? A freelance writer for The Backstretch, Thoroughbred Times, and Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred and the author of many horse-racing books, Heller offers a well-researched history of the races that are held for six weeks each summer at the racecourse, a venue that goes back to Civil War days. This history suggests not one but several reasons why this track is called the "graveyard of champions" (losers here include Man o' War and Secretariat). This race comes in the middle of the racing year; might the favorites be overworked? Could it be the altitude or the climate, both slightly different from other tracks? Is there a winning strategy for the Saratoga track known only to the trainers whose horses win? Though a bit dry for the average horse lover, this is nevertheless an informative book for the hardcore racing fan and history buff. Recommended for libraries with racing collections. Patsy E. Gray, Huntsville P.L., AL
Copyright 2002 Cahners Business Information, Inc.

About the Author

Bill Heller covers the Saratoga meet every summer and also writes a daily Saratoga Journal on his website. As the handicapper for the Schenectady Daily, he finished as the leading public handicapper for the 2000 Saratoga meet. This is his seventeenth book. He profiled Thoroughbred legends Go for Wand, Personal Ensign, and Forego; wrote Graveyard of Champions; and most recently authored Go For the Green, a handicapping book about turf racing. Heller was born in Liberty, New York, and graduated from the University of Albany.

Product Details

• Hardcover: 256 pages
• Publisher: Eclipse Press; 1 edition (June 25, 2002)
• Language: English
• ISBN-10: 1581500661
• ISBN-13: 978-1581500660
• Product Dimensions: 9.4 x 6.4 x 1 inches
• Shipping Weight: 1.2 pounds
• Average Customer Review: 4.8 out of 5 stars  See all reviews (6 customer reviews)
• Amazon Best Sellers Rank: #1,706,594 in Books (See Top 100 in Books)

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Customer Reviews

Most Helpful Customer Reviews

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

5.0 out of 5 stars Underated book, July 23, 2002

By A Customer

This review is from: Graveyard of Champions: Saratoga's Fallen Favorites (Hardcover)

I found this book a very exciting read for anybody in horse racing. This book is suitable for fans, horseman, and executives. Saratoga has a long history as the place where many great horses have been sent to the "Graveyard". This book is well detailed, filled with facts, and contains quotes from people who have played a strong role at Saratoga. This book is as great as the track itself.

3 of 3 people found the following review helpful:

4.0 out of 5 stars Good, but could have been better., September 17, 2007

By 

Robert P. Beveridge "xterminal" (Lakewood, OH) - See all my reviews
(HALL OF FAME REVIEWER)    (VINE VOICE)    (REAL NAME)   

This review is from: Graveyard of Champions: Saratoga's Fallen Favorites (Hardcover)

Bill Heller, Graveyard of Champions: Saratoga's Fallen Favorites (Eclipse Press, 2002)
There are few things in racing that one can count on. Churchill Downs (and certain other tracks) are notorious horse-for-course tracks, and you can count on a parade of longshots the crowd ignores who have previously raced well over the track. Artificial surfaces and speed biases do not mix. Horse owned by the Sheikhs will be retired at the end of their three-year-old seasons. These things just happen, as regular as clockwork.

There's another one, the oldest of them all: odds-on favorites in graded stakes races will fall at Saratoga. And you know what they say about the bigger and the harder. Hardly a year has gone by (if one ever has) where at least one odds-on favorite hasn't delivered the goods at the Spa. Sometimes they lose by a nose, sometimes they finish dead last, but they all have one thing in common: they don't win. The roster of horses who have dropped the bit, sucked dirt, bid and hung, flattened, fell victim to a cuppy track, whatever your euphemism is, and the roster of America's greatest horses sure does have a lot of overlap in it. The two best horses in the history of American racing both got stomped at Saratoga, both by horses who never did a damned thing otherwise. That's the stuff legends are made of.

Bill Heller attempts to make sense of the legend, applying some research and codification to the track tales. And you know what he found out? There really is some kind of a jinx on top-class horses at Saratoga. He runs a list (how comprehensive it is, I don't know) at the back of this book of odds-on favorites who have failed in stakes races at Saratoga over the years. It's a long, long list, and it looks a lot longer when you remember that Saratoga's meet runs three to five weeks every year. A list this long at someplace like Calder or Thistledown, tracks that run nine months of every year, wouldn't be a big thing. But Saratoga?

The book is more a collection of articles than a book, really; the stories of some of those favorites and the races in which they failed. If you like really good descriptions of races past, there are few better at writing those descriptions than Bill Heller. It's hard to make a description of a harness race pulse-pounding, but Heller's recounting of "the weirdest race in Saratoga Harness history" works, and it works well. (The accompanying photo is terrifying. It's hard to believe anyone, or anything, survived, much less that both horse and driver walked away almost uninjured. Even more so when you realize that harness horses do this sort of thing far more rarely than thoroughbreds.) And, of course, it would be hard to not recount Secretariat's losses to Prove Out and Onion, or Man o' War's to Upset, and not captivate readers.

What seemed to be missing, to me, was a greater sense of unity than just "look at how these horses fared." A couple of summary chapters that took a more statistically-minded approach would have been an excellent addition here, a closer look at the bigger picture before (or after) the individual stories. But this is not to take away from those individual stories, which are classics. *** ½

5.0 out of 5 stars great book, April 3, 2008

By 

M. L. Thornton "horse racing fan" (USA) - See all my reviews
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This review is from: Graveyard of Champions: Saratoga's Fallen Favorites (Hardcover)

this book had me looking foward to reading page to page-didn't want the book to end...