Native Dancer, the Grey Ghost: Hero of a Golden Age

Native Dancer's story is well written and reminded me of the Seabiscuit movie. The writer goes into the people around Dancer as much as he does the horse. Horse people will find enough horse fact and "normal" people will enjoy learning a little more about a fascinating species. As an owner of a Thoroughbred stallion, Charlie Rudolphi, who was a decendent of BOTH Polynesian AND Dark Star, we felt our Charlie was a neatly bred boy. One other very odd fact was we named our farm Dark Star Farm,(back in 1973), as I had always had an admiration for the one horse who kept a nose in front of Native Dancer... We acquired Charlie a decade later as a boarder then as our own horse. This book shed light on a great horse and the remarkable folks who knew and loved him.

Native Dancer was a monstrous animal with a light grey, almost white coat. He had a mind of this own and some thought that it was almost human. In his heyday, only losing one race, was at the birth of American TV so everyone knew the Dancer. Thousands loved him. He had the popularity of the Beatles but in the early 50's. This book is a must read for anyone mildly interested in horses or horse racing. I am so inspired that I am going to make a trip to see his burial sight this summer just north of Baltimore. Man. What a horse!!!!!

Eisnberg takes you back, all the way back to Native Dancer himself's stall and tells you this story as if you were there, watching it all happen. I don't know about anyone else, but this book was very real to me. Maybe some need to re-read it to get the vivid picture that is immediately put into your mind, from start to finish with this book. This horse was a great horse. A once-defeated and ran more than Man o' War did. You only need to win by enough to win, and don't over-exert or you lose some horse. Native Dancer comes to me as a horse ahead of his time. The colt is strikingly intelligent and is humbled with a #7 ranking of all time. I clearly enjoy this book. Highly reccomended for horse racing historians.

Wow. This horse was an amzing grey. Native Dancer was a superb racehorse that did the things that went beyond people's expectations at the time. I was fully intrigued while reading this book. Just as many people would later argue that Riva Ridge should have been the ninth triple crown winner, that arguement should have sparked up that Native Dancer almost got the title. Losing the derby by a nose his only defeat. An amazing book on this speedy grey thoroughbred.

With the success of the book "Seabiscuit" by Laura Hillenbrand, more books are being issued of some of the great thoroughbred race horses of the 20th century. John Eisenberg, a newspaper journalist from Baltimore, has written a very good biography of Native Dancer, who was the first horse racing hero in the television age. Native Dancer was a huge gray colt who won all but one race in his career, but the race he lost was the biggest one of all, the Kentucky Derby in 1953.Eisenberg tells the story of Native Dancer similarly to the way Hillenbrand told her story, focusing on the owner, trainer and jockey while weaving it with the personality of the horse and tying it in with the theme of the era (depression in Hillenbrand's case, the discovery of television in the Dancer's case). The only criticisms are minor. His focus on Native Dancer's loss to Dark Star in the '53 Derby happens in the middle of the book and is so well written that the rest of the book basically pales in comparison. Whether it is fair or not, Native Dancer is famous because of his one loss, so the victories he had after that (including the final two jewels of the Triple Crown) just don't come off as very important.But this book gave me a great appreciation of Native Dancer. I don't think we'll see a movie of his life like we will with Seabiscuit, but I do hope we'll see more horse racing books from Mr. Eisenberg in the future (he has another that is even better called "The Longest Shot" about 1992 Derby winner Lil E. Tee).