Horse Sense: An Inside Look at the Sport of Kings (Hardbound - 2003)

About the Book
A behind-the-scenes look at the business and pleasure of horse racing

Horse racing may be known as "the sport of kings," but it's big fun for everyone and even bigger business. A perfect mixture of beauty and excitement, action and refinement, it's a booming business that peaks annually when the Kentucky Derby turns Churchill Downs into the center of the gambling universe. In Horse Sense, legendary sportswriter and commentator Bert Sugar goes behind the scenes to interview owners, breeders, trainers, jockeys, and track operators to uncover the world of horse racing with the humor and wit only he can bring to the subject. Packed with insight and anecdotes, Horse Sense shows us why we love the sport enough to make it a $100 billion industry.

Bert Randolph Sugar is one of the most recognizable personalities in sports, with his trademark fedora and cigar, he is a fixture at race tracks and boxing matches. A former advertising executive at McCann-Erickson and J. Walter Thompson, Sugar left the world of advertising after a brawl with a fellow ad exec landed him in the pages of the NY Times and Advertising Age. Sugar became a sportswriter, and a damn good one at that. Bert was the editor of Ring Magazine and founder of Boxing Illustrated. Bert has been the Kentucky Derby announcer for Fox TV and has attended the races in the triple crown the last 25 years. Bert is a graduate of Harvard and University of Michigan Law School. Bert lives in Chappaqua, NY.

Cornell Richardson is the former chief lending officer at Chemical Bank where he was the primary lending officer to the entertainment and sports industries-including many of those in the horse racing industry. Currently, he is working with Bud Greenspan on a documentary for ESPN entitled, "The Ladies Wore Silks- The History of Women in Thoroughbred Racing." Cornell lives in New York City.