Life was never this good when the horse known as I Two Step Too earned his oats running in races as far from the bright lights and big city as a thoroughbred racehorse gets. After all those years in the company of other four-legged broken dreams, reminded each time he would race in places like Boise, Stampede Park and the Montana State Fair that he was, as they say, "not much stock," his luck had taken a sudden turn for the better.
Only last summer, he was slugging it out regularly, running hard, not fast, for small money at Les Bois Park in Idaho, and up for sale each time he ran. Then suddenly, I Two Step Too was a movie star on location, traveling first-class to Kentucky and Hollywood. The dusty backwater tracks were left behind. The food was better. People provided everything a horse could want.
In the words of Rusty Hendrickson, the man responsible for bringing I Two Step Too to the silver screen, "He was our kick-ass Seabiscuit."
I Two Step Two is one of eight horses that portray the legendary Seabiscuit in the new film being released this week.
Seabiscuit was the product of aristocratic bloodlines, born at a time when racing enjoyed enormous popularity and was ruled from the sprawling estates that decorated Long Island's North Shore. His early days were couched in the splendor of the Wheatley Stable, which was owned by Gladys Phipps, who bred and campaigned dozens of champions and built a racing empire that endures to this day.
Of course, not even the most blue-blooded of equine couplings always has the intended result, as was the case with Seabiscuit, a plain-looking specimen blessed with none of the physical attributes of those in his ancestral lineage. His legs were short, the knees misshapen; his tail little more than a wisp.
At rest, he was a study in torpor. Once roused, he walked with an odd motion easily mistaken for lameness and ran with a flailing, eggbeater action.
Nor had he inherited the misanthropic temperament for which his highly strung paternal family was famous. In the early stages of his career, Seabis-cuit was known best for the long stretches that he spent asleep.
Seabiscuit's original trainer, the legendary "Sunny Jim" Fitzsim-mons, judged him unworthy of the high level of competition intended by his breeders and was happy to see him sold for $8,000 to Charles Howard, a California car magnate. Thusly began the unlikely metamorphosis of a homely, sleepy underachiever into a champion for the ages.
