About the Author

Bill Christine won nine national writing awards and shared in a Pulitzer Prize during his 25 years with the Los Angeles Times. His books include Roberto!, a biography about baseball great Roberto Clemente. He lives in Torrance, California.

Reviews

“Christine’s recount of thoroughbred racing’s past is a must”—Price Horse Central; “Thankfully--for both Hartack’s legacy and as a way for us to understand an era that too often gets glossed over by the sport’s historians--we have author Bill Christine to set the story straight. His new book, reads as both an overdue homage and a cautionary tale about what it’s like for a dark, brooding athlete to try and maintain a firm grip on the pinnacle of his profession at the expense of driving off almost everybody who cared about him”—Thoroughbred Daily News; “This book is a nearly perfect pairing of author and subject. Bill Christine is among the very few writers who fully understand the emotional history of horse racing in America over the last half century. Bill Hartack was a living example of the chasm between the sport’s towering highs and punishing lows. Christine takes us inside Hartack’s improbable rise from poverty to his five Kentucky Derby victories to the struggles of his final years. It’s a ride as wild as any horse race and a book that belongs alongside the best ever written about the Sport of Kings.”—Tim Layden, senior writer, Sports Illustrated; “This is a brilliant writer writing about a complex guy. It makes for a very enjoyable read.”—Composer Burt Bacharach, an Eclipse Award winner as a horse owner and a winner of multiple Grammy, Tony and Academy Awards; “A great collection of interesting facts about one of the greatest Kentucky Derby jockeys of all time. I’ve been in the game over forty years and there are a lot of stories about Hartack that even I didn’t know.”—Jerry Bailey, Racing Hall of Fame jockey and horse racing analyst for NBC-TV.