Wink, Ed Hotaling
Wink, Ed Hotaling
List: $19.99 | Sale: $13.99
Club: $9.99

Wink

Author: Ed Hotaling

Narrator: Ed Hotaling

Unabridged: 4 hr 2 min

Format: Digital Audiobook Download

Published: 10/01/2005


Synopsis

"After a number of up-the-track finishes by authors trying to emulate the success of Laura Hillenbrand's bestselling Seabiscuit: An American Legend, a worthy successor has at last broken out of the pack . . .Winkfield's story is so incredible you'll find yourself wondering why you've never heard it before."
--MSNBC "One of the most extraordinary stories in sports history is also one of its least known. Jimmy Winkfield was a gifted jockey and a remarkably intrepid man, and his life was a singular adventure. His is a story of persistence, hardship, and triumph, and it should be long remembered."—Laura Hillenbrand, author of Seabiscuit: An American Legend "In the entire sweep of American sports, from the days of a roistering John L. Sullivan in the 19th Century through the Tiger Woods phenomenon of the 21st, no figure made a bolder and more original odyssey of his life than Jimmy Winkfield, the poor son of former slaves whose brilliance as a jockey bore him from the winner's circle at the Kentucky Derby to the royal courts of Czarist Russia and the Austro-Hungarian Empire and from Kaiser Wilhelm's Germany to the salons of Paris. In Wink, author Ed Hotaling skilfully reports and chronicles Winkfield's battles against racism in the New World--his courage and daring in escaping that most implacable of foes--and his success and rise to glory as a rider and then a trainer in the Old World. The tale of Wink is an illuminating and inspiring read." —William Nack, author of Secretariat: The Making of a Champion, and My Turf: Horses, Boxers, Blood Money and the Sporting Life "It is phenomenal enough that Jimmy Winkfield became a dominant force in American horse racing half a century before Jackie Robinson took the field for the Brooklyn Dodgers. But this two-time Kentucky Derby–winner's adventures after leaving to race overseas make his story all the more compelling. Ed Hotaling has a marvelous tale to tell. This is the stuff of great nonfiction."—Douglas Brinkley, author of Tour of Duty: John Kerry and the Vietnam War "In this fine book, Ed Hotaling adds the texture of a rich individual life to what his previous work has already told us about the great black jockeys of a century ago."—Henry Louis Gates, Jr., bestselling author, Chair of the Department of African and African American Studies and Director of the W.E.B. Du Bois Institute for African and African American Research at Harvard University

Reviews

Goodreads review by Rena

I read Hotaling's history of black jockies in America about nine years ago and wavered about reading another by him. So many times, I have been let down by an author's other books. However, this was not the case. This was an absolute pleasure of a read. It's not only the biography of an unsung Ameri......more

Goodreads review by Chris

"Wink" is the bittersweet true story of African-American jockey Jimmy Winkfield who, if he had been born white would be considered one of the greatest jockeys ever along with the lines of Bill Shoemaker, Eddie Arcaro, Bill Hartack, and Johnny Longden. In the early 1900s he became the first jockey to......more

Goodreads review by Gary

Books reminds us of the greatness and success of African American jockeys in the late 19th century. The book goes into great detail on Winkfield riding exploits in the US, Western Europe and Eastern Europe. Highly recommended as too many have tried to ignore the fact that black jockeys were top of th......more

Goodreads review by Maura

I didn't know that African-Americans were prominent as owners, trainers, and jockeys in thoroughbred racing into the early 20th century. For example, in the first Kentucky Derby in 1875, all but one jockey was black. When Jim Crow laws forced them out of American racing some traveled overseas to rid......more