Charles Howard, Tom Smith And Red Pollard Commitment To Being The Best Produced One Of The World's Best Racehorses.(LEADERS & SUCCESS)

Byline: Dan Moreau

Seabiscuit was an unpromising colt. But Charles Howard, Tom Smith and Red Pollard had vision; they saw that the undisciplined young horse could be the best. And they wanted nothing less.

Together, owner Howard, trainer Smith and jockey Pollard pursued that vision until they made it happen. In the 1930s, they built Seabiscuit into the world's most winning horse.

Between 1936 and 1940, Seabiscuit was America's rags-to-riches hero in the middle of the Depression. He won 33 races and set 13 track records from the shortest of tracks to the longest, wrote Laura Hillenbrand in "Seabiscuit: An American Legend." He won a then-record $473,730 in one year. In 1938, he was cited in more newspaper and radio items than Franklin Roosevelt or Adolf Hitler.

Smith and Pollard worked most closely with the undisciplined horse to tap its racing talent. But Howard's own ride to success proved he was no less a winner.

Howard came West in 1903 with little more than 21 cents in his pocket. He worked in a bicycle repair shop, but kept his eyes open for an opportunity to expand.

The shop was near wealthy San Francisco neighborhoods where the few cars being driven anywhere were housed. Sympathetic to the owners who found it hard to get the cars repaired, Howard was soon in the business of fixing them when they broke.