Customer Reviews

Speed and the Thoroughbred: The Complete History

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3 star:		(1)
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I was dreadfully sad to read a review of this book which thought that it was too difficult and not well edited. I'm only 21 and found this book to be fascinating, with much knowledge and information that captivated my interest. It is a text that has to be thought over and studied, making it much more valuable than simply a child-view of such a distinct history of the Thoroughbred horse. It was well written and planned out. I found this to be a brilliant construct of the details of such a beloved tradition as these creatures.

I enjoyed reading this book. It is full of interesting information. Most books about the history of thoroughbred breeding tell all about those magical three eastern stallions. But this one tells the whole story. Mackay-Smith has offered proof that the Irish hobby- and English running-horse strains were thriving in England in the sixteenth and seventeenth centuries, and that it is the "taproot mares" which offer the thoroughbred its speed. The addition of the blood of the eastern stallions provided middle distance stamina to the breed. He also talks a lot about the various personalities surrounding the early breeding of thoroughbreds. Until I read this book, I wasn't aware of the connection between the English civil war, the Restoration, and the development of the thoroughbred.
BUT.... this book is far from perfect. As an earlier reviewer pointed out, it is very poorly edited. The illustrations are very good, but the style is a bit jarring and disjointed; it does seem like a bunch of author's notes thrown together under sketchy headings, and the same facts are repeated over and over. There are punctuation errors, and at one point the book refers to "Kentucky Derby winner Native Dancer", a grievous mistake that I think highly unlikely to have been the fault of Alexander Mackay-Smith. In my experience of books published by the Derrydale Press, this book is not quite up to their usual high quality of production. However, even with its faults, I thought this was a unique book, and for racing fans it's definitely worth reading.

I loved reading this book. I read it at home, at work, while driving... It is the best history of the origin of the thoroughbred I've read. Everything imaginable is compiled into one book. All racing nuts have heard "The" story of the origin of the thoroughbred: in the 17th and 18th centuries, English nobility imported a handful of Barb, Turk, and Arabian stallions, crossed them on non-descript local mares, and found that because of the enormous "prepotence" of these fabulous foreign studs, the offspring were stamped with their sires great speed and beauty. Mackay-Smith's great contribution is telling the history of these local mares, showing that they were not just empty vessels waiting to be filled, but were powerful sources of speed themselves, having been bred for racing for generations in England and Ireland. Indeed, they may have been faster than the imported stallions, with the Arab/Barb/Turk sires adding conformation and endurance, more than speed itself. The sires are the source of "speed that can carry", not speed per se. Fun book -like a little trip to a museum everytime you flip through it.

This book is not a good read but full of interesting bits of information. It is drastically in need of editing. Published posthumously, the format gives the sense that the author's notes were simply printed as they were found with information oddly organized or repeated.