Here are some of the film's inaccuracies. While some are glaring errors or fabrications, I don't think they take anything away from the movie. After all, it is not a documentary.
The movie: Jockey Red Pollard and Seabiscuit return from injuries in the 1940 Santa Anita Handicap.
History: Seabiscuit prepared for the Big 'Cap by running three races, winning the San Antonio Handicap, and Pollard rode him in all three.
The movie: Pollard seriously injures his right leg during the week leading up to the famed match race with War Admiral.
History: Pollard injured the leg more than four months earlier, on June 23, 1938, just before the Massachusetts Handicap, where Seabiscuit would have taken on War Admiral but, because of injury, was a late scratch.
The movie: Seabiscuit rallies from a distant planet to win the Santa Anita Handicap.
History: he raced close to the pace and assumed the lead before reaching the second turn.
The movie: Charles Howard bought Seabiscuit after his trainer, Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons, and just about everybody else had given up on the headstrong colt.
History prior to his sale, Seabiscuit won consecutive races at Saratoga.
The movie: Pollard rationalizes a poor ride by saying another jockey came in on him, nearly putting him over the fence.
History:The other ride came out and bumped him.
The Movie:Early in the film, there is some discussion about Seabiscuit's attempt to win a record seven consecutive stakes.
History in 1907-08, Colin won 15 consecutive races, including 14 stakes.
The movie:Woolf, who rode Seabiscuit 10 times, was nicknamed "The Iceman." And in talking about Woolf's riding Seabiscuit in the famed match race, radio personality "Tick-Tock" McGlaughlin alludes to the Eugene O'Neill play "The Iceman Cometh."
History:the play wouldn't appear on the stage for another seven years.
The movie: Woolf, drags his mount back to last, presumably with the thought that in doing so he'll provide Seabiscuit, who's lagging, a competitive incentive.
History:If any jockey rode a horse as Woolf does in the film, he'd be suspended for the duration of the season.
Seabiscuit, who raced for a claiming price of $2,500 as a 2-year-old, indeed overcame injury, many injuries in fact, to become one of the most accomplished horses of the era. He won 33 races and retired with $437,730 in earnings, a record for the time. Pollard, too, had an inspiring career. When he shattered his right leg, he was even then coming back from injuries suffered in a spill that had shoved him into death's anteroom.
In another scene, War Admiral is described as being nearly 18 hands tall and the diminutive Seabiscuit as weighing about 1,200 pounds. Not accurate.
At one point, Pollard and jockey George Woolf greet each other as their horses are being loaded into the starting gate, as if the riders hadn't seen each other for weeks and until that very moment. Not accurate.
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