Customer Reviews

Three Strides Before the Wire: The Dark and Beautiful World of Horse Racing

5 star:		(16)
4 star:		(8)
3 star:		(4)
2 star:		(10)
1 star:		(9)

 

 

This book is a disappointment to say the least. The author's account of Chris Antley and the 1999 Triple Crown lacks focus and is poorly researched. This book has many factual mistakes that even the most causal horse racing fan will catch. This book does not even come close to Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit. The author's own story of a dying boyfriend is not as effective as it should be. There are several horse racing books out right now that are much better: Jockey Gary Stevens manages to give readers a more compelling and touching portrait of Chris Antley in just one chapter of his
autobiography The Perfect Ride, then Mitchell does in her whole book!

This book is poorly written, over-footnoted, shoddily edited and totally inane. The author and publisher obviously foisted this travesty upon the public in an attempt to capitalize on the fascination with thoroughbred racing generated by the wonderful "Seabiscuit". If you don't know a thing about horse racing, this pap isn't going to help the learning curve. In one instance, the author has one jockey on a horse at the start of the race and a different jockey astoundingly riding him toward the finish line. Did I miss some incaculable feat of magic? The dialogue, which features more than 400 footnoted quotes, carries on as if the characters speak in semi-literate grunts. My goodness. If you were to base your assessment of jockeys and trainers and owners and agents on this sad mess, you'd believe the entire thoroughbred industry is populated with dolts with the collective IQ of a Venus Fly Trap.This book tries to spin the tragic tale of deceased jockey Chris Antley, his Kentucky Derby-winning mount Charismatic, and the relationship of the writer with a cancer victim. Kind of like "Love Story" meets "Mr. Ed" in a collision of runaway brain cells.At some point in this rambling bit of lunacy, the history of gambling is breeched with unimaginable bits of misinformation. Thoughts jump around and sentences ramble indicating somebody slept a lot during the editing process. It is obvious that this gatherer of quotes knew very little about the "Dark and Beautiful World of Horse Racing" when she decided to try and make money with what should have been a very compelling story. The horse racing is still beautiful,the dark part is the way the story is told.

I was excited at the potential of this book, and continued to the end with the hopes that it would eventually redeem itself and get past being a sappy, rambling, humorless and heavy-handed account. Unfortunately, it didn't.

If you're looking for the next Seabiscuit, look elsewhere. This book isn't even remotely in the same league. As a horse racing, history, and literature buff, I was hoping this would be an informative and entertaining read. Instead I trudged through a schmaltzy, unremarkable memoir/biography. Most of the book is obvious and boring. There are redeeming parts, but I'd really only recommend it to die-hard Charismatic fans. There are much better tales out there for those looking for a good slice of horse history, some humor, and beautiful language (e.g. Seabiscuit, Stud, Horse of a Different Color).

The title is also inappropriate. The book should have simply been called "Charismatic."

I read this book not long after reading Laura Hillenbrand's Seabiscuit, and at first it seemed that the author intended to give Charismatic's story the same treatment. Not so--if you are looking for an inspirational story, this book is NOT for you. Like Seabiscuit, Mitchell weaves together the stories of horse, owner, trainer, and jockey leading up to a climactic championship race. But unlike Seabiscuit, this story ends tragically for everyone. Along the way, we glimpse the dark underworld of thoroughbred racing, which you may find disillusioning, if not downright disturbing, filled with addiction, crime, desperation and violence. Even so, this could have been a really good book, with rich characters and an exciting although ultimately tragic story; but insufficient editing has left it a jumbled mishmash that will only hold the attention of dedicated horse fans. The story line, which *could* have been riveting, loses its energy because the author jumps around so much chronologically, actually beginning the book with the high point of the story, when we don't yet know the characters well enough to care about them. A dry, rambling chapter on the history of gambling, that reads like a term paper, interrupts the story at a critical point, for no apparent reason, dispersing our attention. You never are allowed to develop the desire to turn the page to find out what happens next; the author has no sense of drama. The characters (the horse Charismatic, jockey Chris Antley, trainer D. Wayne Lukas, owners Bob and Beverly Lewis, the author, and her lover) at least are drawn reasonably well if somewhat unevenly. If you are a devoted thoroughbred horse racing fan, you will want to read this book for the inside dirt on this "dark and beautiful world". But if you aren't already a horse racing fan, this book won't make you one (if you even manage to finish it). People new to the sport will enjoy Seabiscuit a lot more.

I did what no responsible reader should do - I judged a book by its cover. I give the designer of this cover five stars for the artistry that made me plunge into what I thought would be a genuinely dark and beautiful glimpse into the world of horse racing.

Unfortunately, this book's flaws are rampant. Most noticeably, the style is stilted, juvenile, and just plain hokey. It alternates between reading like a sixth grade textbook and a young-adult sports biography. The passages about the history of man and horses and the biology of breeding are so incredibly tedious that I nearly fell asleep until I decided to skim right past them. The other potentially more promising narrative bits felt like some kind of poorly edited and overly extended elementary school presentation on horses - like some kids reading off of index cards filled with information they carefully collected over many months time. I found the bits about the narrator's dying boyfriend to be cloying and out of place.

They say non-fiction writing is 80% research, 20% writing. I felt like this was 95% research and 5% writing. Most of the book feels like a clumsy compilation of facts, rather than a skillfully written, contiguous narrative. Some passages also seem to preach a bizarre and irritating superstitious-ness, where the narrator reads into every coincidence as some sign that she has psychic abilities. This was very strange to me and made me distrust many of her observations.

What confuses me most is who the intended audience for this book is. Adults with some passing curiosity about horseracing? I just didn't get it. The reading level and style felt geared more toward young teenagers, while the subject-matter seemed geared toward adults. Whatever the intended audience, this was an overall clunky read narrated by someone who might believe in magic, but unfortunately hasn't the slightest clue how to generate it.

If you hang out on the backside of the racetrack, you have extra bits of time to just sit on an overturned bucket and read. You would think of all of the stories that happen on the racetrack just in one day, there would be a lot more books on the subject. The connections for the 70+ horses that race each day at any given track are worth at least one novel each.

Three Strides Before the Wire. by Elizabeth Mitchell is a compelling read about the backside of racing in this century. It is the book to read after you've read Seabiscuit for the umteenth time. The book tells the story behind the scenes of Charismatic's run for the 1999 Roses. It also tells a bit about trainer D. Wayne Lucas, jockey Chris Antley, and the Ramsey's owners of Charismatic.
The book is authentic. It is a compelling read.

This book is poorly written, disjointed and a deliberate tear-jerker that only soap opera fans might appreciate. It's clearly trying to appeal to the masses in the way Seabiscuit did-it pretty much copies Seabiscuit's structure-but the storytelling talent just isn't there. The book also has an incredible number of inaccuracies in the middle of historical tirades that do anything but make the past come alive. I'm seriously considering writing the publisher about this book. Chris Antley doesn't deserve the shoddy and self-servicing biography Mitchell's given him. A real shame of a book. Not worth the paper it's printed on.

I can't honestly review this entire book because I only made it half-way through before I decided to give up. It's an excruciating journey, where amateurish writing and dull information and platitudes are forced down the reader's throat like cough medicine. A lot of research obviously went into this book, and in more capable hands I'm convinced could have made for a great story. Mitchell drops the ball, though, and makes a mess of it all, patching her research and her various story-lines together with all the stitches showing.

Two great books I'd recommend instead (if you haven't already read them) are Kevin Conley's Stud, and of course the young Hillenbrand's unbeatable Seabiscuit.

This just doesn't have the spark that good books do. For starters, it's way over-researched. What's more, it isn't particularly well written. The words are all function, and the sentences, paragraphs and chapters are unfocused and poorly organized. Mitchell tends to alternately dart around aimlessly from topic to topic, and then get encumbered by extended and uninteresting digressions that are difficult to get through. I'm someone who appreciates skillful use of language, even in sports books, and unfortunately Mitchell's writing is sterile; perfect for reference books, perhaps, and possibly even some political writing (which she seems to specialize in based on her bio), but incapable of doing justice to the dramatic story of Chris Antley and Charismatic. Mitchell includes her own personal story as well in this book in a way that, in my personal opinion, seems gratuitous. I found Three Strides Before the Wire to be a major disappointment.