Down to the Wire: The Lives of the Triple Crown Champions Book

This book tells the stories of the Triple Crown winners who preceded American Pharoah. While it contains much that is interesting, it suffers from a lack of good editing.

Probably the most glaring error is the following, directly quoted: "In the Sanford Stakes, one of the important two-year-old races, Secretariat gave Man o' War his only defeat." Naturally, this is nonsense and I'm sure Shoop didn't mean to imply that Secretariat (who raced in 1972-1973) faced Man o' War (who races in 1919-1920) on the track. Presumably, he was trying to emphasize the importance of the race by reminding the reader that it had been run since Man o' War's time. But that's not what made it into print.

The author also writes the Belmont stakes was originally one mile and five furlongs, then later lengthened to 1 1/4 miles. A furlong is 1/8 of a miles, so 1 5/8 miles is longer than the distance the race was "lengthened" to later. I do not know if he meant to say the race was shortened or if one of the distances mentioned was wrong.

Unfortunately there are many similar errors in the book, which leads me to take a cautious approach to everything it says and only accept it if confirmed by other sources.