Northern Dancer

In every sport there are a select few competitors that come to define the excellencethat all others must forever aspire to. In ',the sport of kings,' there is onethat stands alone. Northern Dancer is not only a Canadian legend, but thecornerstone of his breed. It has been estimated that 70 percent of the thoroughbredsalive today are his descendants, which includes the majority of the horsesrunning in the biggest races around the world. His offspring received recordbreakingprices on the auction floor. While much has been written about Northern Dancer's prepotence as a sire, thisbook is the only one devoted to his 1964 campaign, which saw him win two of theTriple Crown races in the U.S. and Canada's Queen's Plate. In that time, he capturedthe attention of the world and the hearts of all Canadians. InNorthern Dancer,theworld-famous horse comes alive through the people whose lives he touched: E.P. Taylor,the visionary industrialist whose web of business placed him at the end of every consumertransaction for every Canadian and made him the subject of scorn, Horatio Luro, the dapperArgentinean trainer (and tango dancer, pilot, and race car driver) who was notorious forhis affairs with Hollywood starlets and his tender treatment of horses, and Bill Hartack,a wildly successful jockey whose squabbles with the press and his inability to conceal hisunvarnished truth from influential owners and trainers was, by 1964, beginning to affecthis career. Using news clippings from 1964 and interviews, this book offers novelistic detailnot only on the remarkable 1964 Triple Crown and Queen's Plate races, but also revisits,fifty years later, the era in which Canada was struggling to establish an identity, needing,more than anything, a national hero.