In The First Kentucky Derby, racing historian Mark Shrager examines the events leading up to the first Run for the Roses, the unsuccessful plot hatched by the winning horse's owner to fix the race, and the prominent role played by African Americans in Gilded Age racing culture--a holdover from pre-emancipation days, when slaves were trained from birth to ride for their wealthy owners and grew up surrounded by the horses that would be their life's work.

Is Man o' War, the legendary champion who revitalized American Thoroughbred racing, truly the greatest racehorse in history, or has time produced an even more extraordinary champion?

Through meticulous research and compelling analysis, award-winning writer Mark Shrager presents the first comprehensive head-to-head comparison between the legendary Big Red and fifteen of history's most extraordinary Thoroughbreds. Moving beyond traditional metrics of wins and speed records, The Greatest Racehorse? examines Man o' War's legacy through dual lenses: his racing excellence against immortals like Secretariat and Citation and his transcendent cultural impact that helped save the sport itself.

Set against the turbulent backdrop of World War I, Prohibition, and baseball's Black Sox scandal, this groundbreaking work reveals how Man o' War became more than just a champion--he was racing's savior when the sport faced potential collapse. Using rare historical records, statistical analysis, and insights from a forty-year career covering Thoroughbred racing, Shrager puts Man o' War's legendary status to the ultimate test.

From dominating victories and record-setting performances to his enduring influence on breeding and American sports culture, The Greatest Racehorse? finally answers whether Man o' War's supreme reign can withstand the test of time and the challenges of racing's modern titans.

In 1877 the members of the United States Senate postponed all business for the day so that they might attend a horse race--the iconic, polarizing post-Civil War event at the center of this story. The nation, still recovering from the depredations of the Civil War and the Reconstruction that followed, recognized it as a North vs. South encounter, pitting New York's powerful thoroughbred Tom Ochiltree and New Jersey's Parole--owned by the ostentatious Northern tycoons Pierre and George Lorrilard--against the already legendary Kentucky crack, Ten Broeck--owned by the teetotaling, plain-living Frank Harper and ridden by black jockey and former slave William Walker--representing a former slave state and its Southern values. The race and the colorful cast of characters involved reflected the still seething America during one of the nation's most difficult and divisive periods. Shrager presents a fascinating and heart-pounding piece of history exposing the racial and economic tensions following the Civil War that culminated in one final race to the end.

In 1968, a few women, mockingly labeled jockettes by a skeptical press, had begun demanding the right to apply for jockey licenses, citing the Civil Rights Act of 1964, which banned discrimination in hiring based on race, religion, sex, or national origin. Most of their applications were rejected by racing's bureaucracy, which alleged that women were unqualified to participate due to physical limitations and emotional instability. Female jockeys who attempted to ride met with boycotts by male jockeys.

Onto this uneven terrain stepped 20-year-old Diane Crump, who had long since demonstrated her riding proficiency during a thousand workout rides on a thousand difficult Thoroughbreds (I basically got on all the horses that no one else wanted to ride). On February 7, 1969, having been granted a permit to ride at Florida's Hialeah Racetrack, Crump, surrounded by a protective phalanx of police officers, walked calmly toward the saddling enclosure as she endured heckles from the crowd. Diane's mount would not earn victory that day, but the young rider had earned a more fundamental prize: the right to compete in her chosen field. Just over a year later, on May 2, 1970, after 95 years and 1,055 all-male entrants, Diane Crump shattered tradition by becoming the first woman to ride in the Kentucky Derby. Over her career she amassed 235 wins.

In Diane Crump: A Life in the Saddle, veteran turf writer Mark Shrager relies on Crump's own narrative, magazine and newspaper coverage, and numerous first-hand interviews to tell the story of an extraordinary athlete's life and career.

Today's Kentucky Derby is a multimillion-dollar spectacle involving corporate sponsorship, worldwide media coverage, and an annual citywide festival in Louisville. Over its nearly century-and-a-half history, the Kentucky Derby has grown to be one of the biggest sporting events of the year, attracting 150,000 spectators at the track and nearly 15 million television viewers on the first Saturday each May.

But 1875, the year of the first Derby, was a different time. The Louisville Jockey Club track, which would one day bear the name Churchill Downs, was a small structure that might, on its best day, provide seating and standing room for 12,000 spectators. The grandstand was plain and functional and included a section reserved for bookmakers, whose trade was legal and who operated in the open. Perhaps most significantly, the majority of jockeys in the race were Black, in stark contrast to the present-day Derby, where participation by African-American jockeys is rare.

In The First Kentucky Derby, racing historian Mark Shrager examines the events leading up to the first Run for the Roses, the unsuccessful effort that the winning owner might have made to rig the race for his preferred horse, and the prominent role played by African Americans in Gilded Age racing culture--a holdover from pre-emancipation days, when slaves were trained from birth to ride for their wealthy owners and grew up surrounded by the horses that would be their life's work.