The real stories behind the people who gave racing some of its greatest names include the man who bred Secretariat yet was too ill to see him race; the owner of the Pittsburgh Pirates who honored his greatest player by bestowing the name Roberto on a regal colt; a Canadian industrialist who couldn’t sell a horse that become the century’s greatest stallion; and a Mormon cowboy derided by the East Coast establishment he beat at its own game.

Brash upstarts, old money, and savvy titans of industry color the pages of Legacies of the Turf (Vol. 2). Their persistence, hard work, genetics theories, and good old-fashioned luck resulted in the greatest racehorses of the second half of the century.