Woolf

1 A thirty-pound weight concession to Stagehand might be insurmountable, and Woolf knew it.

2 Woolf made a small motion with his hand.

3 “I hate to beat Kurtsinger,” Woolf said, “the cleverest jockey I ever competed against.”

4 Red Pollard and George Woolf had signed on to a life that used men up.

5 With just a few yards to go, Woolf was frantic.

6 Woolf met him in the paddock, and Smith gave him a leg up.

7 Just before the race, Woolf and Richardson made a deal.

8 Streaking down the homestretch, Woolf was a crimson blur on Seabiscuit’s back, lifting him, holding him together, begging him for more, dropping flat to lie under the wind.

9 Back at Del Mar, officials supported Howard, stating that the accusations that Seabiscuit had been restrained, or that Howard or Smith had told Woolf to do so, were ludicrous.

10 To almost everyone in the jockeys’ room, Woolf’s perpetual sleepiness was just another of his many eccentricities.

11 The sluggers have fallen in love with Kerouac and Keats and Woolf and Shakespeare, and hope I’ll press the button to preserve our literature for other alien races to explore.

12 Richardson was playing every card he had, hollering in Woolf’s ear to try to distract him or provoke him into fouling himself out of the race.

13 Woolf would be on a hookup from a Boston broadcasting studio.

14 This was a problem facing nearly every jockey, but with the onset ofhis diabetes, Woolf’s problems were compounded.

15 Woolf weighed a lot more than the imposts assigned to most of these horses, but somehow he was able to circumvent the rule requiring riders to be within five pounds of the assignment.

16 Ahead of them all, Woolf stood like a titan in the irons.

17 Woolf was deeply grateful for Pollard’s help in getting him the mount.

18 To help some of them conceal their big feet—and their coming growth spurts—Woolf started up a black market in his shoes.

19 Woolf studied the horse’s head, then straightened out.

20 Their hope was that without Woolf, Seabiscuit would lose, enabling wagers on long shots to pay off The frightening thing was that the kidnappers had not been identified.

1 弗吉尼亚

Wade Virginia