patrick smithwick

Praise for Racing My Father

BITTERSWEET MEMOIR

Trophy“Patrick Smithwick’s bittersweet memoir wonderfully captures a racetrack culture that he was born to and loved. But he also shows, with such wrenching emotion, how he struggled, in the parlance of his sport, to change leads in his own life. The portrait he draws of his father, Paddy — a man both lovely and tough — is absolutely endearing. We can see it wasn’t easy for the author to be Little Paddy. But it was glorious, too.”
- Frank Deford, author, commentator, and sportswriter

GREAT BOOK FOR ALL

Patrick Smithwick, a horseman and journalist, writes with real feeling about memories of growing up with his late father, Hall of Fame steeplechase jockey A. Patrick “Paddy” Smithwick. Believe me, this is great reading, whether or not you’re into steeplechase racing.”
- Peter Winants, author of Steeplechasing: The Complete History of the Sport in North America

POIGNANT FATHER-SON PORTRAIT

Patrick Smithwick brings steeplechasing to life with this poignant memoir. His journey delivers every bump, bruise, and cheer that goes along with a racing family. You’ll never see your father the same way. Or your son.”
– Sean Clancy, author of Barbaro; co-publisher of The Steeplechase Times

A STORY THAT WILL STAY WITH YOU

Full of heart, humor, and hazards of this risky thing called life. This is a book that has soul!
- Dorothy Ours, author of Man o’War

FASCINATING STORY

Racing My Father jumped right onto my list of best-loved books. It’s a fascinating story by a truly gifted writer.”
- Lucy Acton, editor, MMid-Atlantic Thoroughbred

LIFE ON THE EDGE; FAST AND FULL

You don’t have to be a horse person to enjoy this book for it is basically a very human story about – as the subtitle tells us – growing up in the shadow of a famous father and what happens when that father is no longer around to dote on. What the title doesn’t tell you is that the father dotes on his son and sees in him a replica of himself and the expectation that the son must step in for his father. Whether intentional or note, the title, “Racing My Father” is appropriately ambiguous. Racing against father, racing to keep up with father, racing away from father – it could mean any of those because that’s what the story is all about…
– David Yeats-Thomas, editor, MMid-Atlantic Horse

BOOK IS A JEWEL

... The son young Paddy Smithwick, might be almost as good a writer as his father was as a rider. I can guarantee that you can't finish the book without getting teary-eyed or at least emotionally strung out. It's a shame that everyone didn't have the book by Patrick Smithwick to read on Father's Day.. There are tons of stories about the youngster struggling through the tough academic regimen of the Gilman School in Baltimore, only to find delight at Saratoga, Belmont Park and Aqueduct. He was too young to have a driver's license, but old enough to get on horses in the morning, meet an older woman or two and have an imported beer at Esposito's, where his father and virtually the entire bunch of jocks, grooms and helpers gathered after training hours. After getting a degree from Johns Hopkins, trying school teaching and a solid stint in the newspaper business, the author seems to have settled on things he knows about best. This book is a jewel.
– Dale Austin, racing correspondent for the Baltimore Sun, the Annapolis Capital

FAULKNERIAN NARRATIVE IS A MASTERPIECE

Suppose you are a young boy in ancient Rome. Suppose your father is a gladiator, the preeminent gladiator of his time, known and adulated everywhere you and he go. His steely nerve, his unwavering sublimation of all creature comforts to the task of winning, his stoic self discipline, the sublime artistry with which he practices his craft – all these things distinguish him from his fellow gladiators, render him much larger than life in your eyes, and the eyes of the whole world.

In his relationship to you, it comes naturally to him to treat you as his equal. You are his friend, his partner, even though you are only 12, 14, 16 years old. One day you will inherit his heroic mantle. He is gently preparing you.You show much promise. Others look on, understanding this will happen. It is spoken of openly.

But you see and nurse him through the terrible injuries which are part and parcel of the gladiator's life. You see the strains the long separations, which being a gladiator necessitates, put on family life. You see his health waning from it all. Because you are a thoughtful person, you see that, however glorious a life his may be, it is a life sacrificed – sacrificed to something you are not sure you understand. And, inside, you are torn and tormented.

Patrick Smithwick is the only son of legendary steeplechase jockey Paddy Smithwick, who died in 1973 – at age 46. RACING MY FATHER is, on its broadest level, a story of the author’s coming to grips with and resolving such torments. But on another level it is an engrossing portrayal of the life of steeplechase jockeys and the world they inhabit, a world aptly described by a critic on the book’s dust jacket as Faulknerian.  It can be read with pleasure on either level. Taken together, it is a masterpiece.
- Turney McKnight, Columnist

WRITER LETS US FEEL LOVE BETWEEN FATHER AND SON

What makes a story interesting? Depth, heart, character and truth are all the ingredients within Patrick Smithwick’s memoir, “Racing My Father.” This reader was captivated by the sounds and textures chosen by the writer to describe the world of steeplechase and the horse racing industry as told by the perspective of a child who was raised within this culture. Inspired by and in awe of his father, steeplechase great Paddy Smithwick, young Paddy, the author, is a formidable student and merciful companion to his father’s lively hood who struggles with his own life’s wishes and goals and truly wins all of our hearts in the end.

True depth and dedication describe the sometimes cruel and bitterly physical world of training and racing horses and the writer takes us to where we feel the cold, hunger, heat and the losses. We feel the dirt on the tracks and see the beautiful snow covered hills of Monkton but, mostly the writer lets us feel the love between father and son, and what it’s like to have a father who is a legend and knowing how special a place that really is. As a bonus, the double message in the story is about how this young man finds his own way in the world and chooses to become a writer with the very vigor and determination his father had all his life. This book is Patrick Smithwick’s finish line.
- Julie P. Wittelsberger, book reviewer, Allegro Communications

WHITE-GOWNED HOSTESS JUMPING OVER DINNER TABLES

…Along with celebrities – Winston Churchhill, Jackie Kennedy and Jack Dempsey make cameo appearances – Smithwick loves the entire social life among horseman and horsewomen. The parties his parents attended were fun and included the occasional white-gowned hostess jumping her horse over two dinner tables in the backyard, crowded with champagne-drinking guests. With moments like these, why would anyone want to leave hunt country and stand on line at some snooty club like Studie 54?…
- John Rowen, reviewer, The Sunday Gazette

MAGICAL RIDE FROM START TO FINISH

…From start to finish, the reader takes a magical ride through steeplechase history, meeting the horses and rugged individuals of an unforgettable era. Young Patrick tells his stories with charming innocence: he niether pulls his punches nor reduces to melodrama the realities of the racing life. His writing style can best be described as deceptively simple, because of the ease with which he conjures verbal images for the reader. Granted, he has a treasure trove of experiences that ignites his imagination….

The pages burst with glory, triumph, heartache, grief, and moments of sheer joy as they race after their heart’s desires. The amount of fascinating detail has a simple, serendipitous explanation. “I have all these little diaries,” says Patrick…
– Lauren Giannini, reviewer, In and Around Horse Country

 TERRIFYING IN SHEER RAW ENERGY

"Yesterday I finished reading i>Racing My Father.. Life lived at such breakneck speed is terrifying in the sheer raw energy and tough stamina demanded race after race, "schooling after schooling", getting a leg up on horse after horse. The amazing thing is that Patrick is able to give us a ride that is remembered in all distinctive and thrilling detail page after page. No mount, no race is like any other. We see why and how one must become addicted to the life, to the racing challenge, to the wonder of the horse. And the mystery of human character and human life."
- Jo Trueschler, professor of English literature, Notre Dam College

A CLASSIC OF RACING LITERATURE

The book is filled with salty language, colorful anecdotes, and the real challenges and dilemmas of working horseman and women. It is a candid, poignant, often hilarious, sometimes heartbreaking meditation on life, love, and loss on and off the rack.

The most compelling character in the book is Emmett Grayson, an African-American horseman of the old school. After Big Paddy’s accident, Emmett comes to visit him at New York Hospital and tells him, “Boss, as soon as you get out of here, and start back training, you’ll have the best foreman on the track.”

Many people promised many things to Pop when he was in the hospital,” Patrick writes of his father, who was famous for being the softest touch on the backstretch. “Emmett delivered.”

Many people start out to write a great book as well but never quite get it done. In Racing My Father,, Patrick Smithwick, now 55 and still training and riding the occasional jumper, has put generations of his family’s hard-won wisdom about horses and racing onto 374 beautifully written pages. It is the book he has been preparing for and practicing to write for over thirty years, and it is destined to become an immediate classic of racing literature. Like Emmett Grayson, Patrick, too, has delivered.
- Audax, racing correspondent/book reviewer, New York’s Quest

A PENCHANT FOR ANYTHING FAST

Unsentimental and unsparring, and told in smithwick’s kindly voice, Racing My Father unfolds as the coming-of-age of a boy who grows up both too fast and too slow…. Smithwick has a penchant for anything fast-racehorses, motorcycles, small planes, and smart women-and brings the reader along for the ride.
- Jane Macauley Seegar, Hollins Magazine

AUTHOR PUTS YOU IN THE ACTION

The beauty of the story is that the author puts you right in the middle of the action, in a way you would never be, unless you were lucky enough to be the son of a world class athlete (with your wits about you), watching your father at the peak of his career, training for one more prize fight, one more season of major league baseball, one more spring of riding jump races:

"As the spring lengthened, the sweat-soaked clothes would appear more often, signaling the beginning of another steeplechase season. The carefree having-my-father-at-home of the winter, the watching him slice the lamb and ladle out the potatoes at dinner, the playing checkers with him by the fire at night while Mom played the piano, the joking around and bring the miniature pony my sister Sue Sue was riding and training into the house or into the back seat of the car would be over…All of us, Mom and Pop and Sue Sue and me lying in the big bed, watching the Untouchables and 77 Sunset Strip and Route 66 together, each trying to out-guess the other about what was going on, about who-done-it, would be over. His full Irish face would begin to narrow as he stoked the fires deep inside that drove him. He'd stop eating. He'd work in layers of clothes, melting the muscle off his neck, shoulders, thighs and calves, honing the 165 pound body of a middleweight fighter down to 155, 150, 145, 140 – to his limit, 136."

"By late March my father would be off early Monday morning at eighty miles an hour for the week. And everything in our lives got hotter, sharper, and more brilliant, as Pop fought his weight, as his nerves got touchier, as we read about him on the front pages of the sports section of the New York Times and the Herald Tribune, saw his picture in the Morning Telegraph and The Chronicle of the Horse, as he drifted away from us to his other love, to his gift, race-riding."
- John Eagan, Louisville attorney, equestrian, race horse owner

FINE ATTENTION TO DETAIL

The story’s fine attention to detail, and clear and concise writing, brings the reader so close to the action, you can almost hear Emmett Grayon “buckling a halter behind a horse’s ear,”see Elmer Delmer, the fat, jocular bookmaker, compile odds at the races on a chalkboard, and feel the warm, embracing family environment at Esposito’s Bar…. Smithwick explains the language of Thoroughbred racing to the readers in easily understandable terms, while not insulting horseman or those who are no strangers to life on the backside of the racetrack.
– Ben Baugh, reviewer, Aiken Standard

COULDN’T PUT IT DOWN

Knowing some of the real-life characters peripherally, living in the area, and having been an avid Dick Francis reader, I thought I knew what to expect- a testosterone heavy, adrenaline rush, winning at all costs type of sports-hero book, set in a familiar location. I found, instead, an honest, open, gentle, yet exciting and riveting story of a boy's relationship with his famous father, and how his father's career, successes, injury, and death affected his son and the extended family. The writing was understated and unaffected, and the subject completely compelling and spellbinding. I look forward to more from Mr. Smithwick in the future- fiction or nonfiction.
- C. E. Copeland, Amazon Review

EXHILIRATING, SCARY, DRAMATIC AND EUPHORIC

II have never ridden a horse or seen a steeplechase race. But, I thoroughly enjoyed Patrick Smithwick's Racing My Father. It is several poignant stories well told. It is about a boy coming of age, a father-son relationship, the world of steeplechase racing and character as well as characters.

The book is written with a subtle beauty. Smithwick shares his memories with readers in a vivid, vibrant and engaging style. A couple times early in the book I had to stop and check to make sure I was reading about something that happened more than 40 years ago. It seemed as if it was yesterday. I assume Smithwick relied on journals and some of his earlier creative writings. And, of course, he's a masterful writer.

I felt like I was right in the saddle with Smithwick. It was exhilarating, scary, dramatic and euphoric. He, however, writes as skillfully about his relationships, particularly with his famous father Paddy, and the other parts of his life as he does the races. Racing My Father is an impressive winner.
- Barry Sparks, freelance writer, Amazon Review

ABOUT SO MUCH MORE THAN HORSES

One of the rare books that I savored so I could read one enthralling chapter a night before bed. In anecdote after incident Paddy Smithwick emerges as such an extraordinary person that one is left convinced that what made him a sporting legend with the unique stature he is still accorded was a character as exceptional as his riding skills. The text is carefully crafted so that almost every aspect of riding, and specifically, steeplechase riding, is touched upon, and what was interesting to this dressage-oriented reader was how many of the truths, objectives, and techniques are commonly shared by the two branches of the sport. Also thought-provoking to those familiar with the contemporary horse show world's emphasis on winning, often even over riding well and sportsmanship, was the era the author evokes when a competitive drive could still accommodate true horsemanship and sportsmanship. And in the generosity of spirit with which the author relates tales of events and people that probably, in actuality, had less flattering aspects, it is clear that the legacy of Paddy Smithwick lives on.
- Ellen D. Reeder, museum curator, Amazon Review

AUTHOR HAS A WONDERFUL VOICE

I purchased this book because I have an interest in horse racing. I did not expect much other than the usual memoir.

NO! The book author has a wonderful voice. A wonderful, fascinating book.
– Ewing S. Walker, Amazon Review

WELL-WRITTEN AND MOVING

A fine memoir of a life in and around horse racing, especially steeplechasing. Well-written and moving.
– Peter A. Jay, Baltimore SUN columnist, Amazon Review

HARD-CHARGING, STRAIGHT FROM THE HEART

"Racing My Father" so very elegantly captures the blood bond between the steeplechase titan and his son. Not incidentally, it's the poignant coming-of-age story of a gifted young man who struggles, often recklessly, to find his way. The story is so gripping that I blew through it as I would a thriller novel, eagerly turning page after page. Patrick Smithwick has done a wonderful job bringing to life the steeplechase world of 40 years ago. Since Patrick's uncle Mikey Smithwick died just last spring, after the book was published, it's a timely tribute to him as well. There were so many delightful sub-stories. For instance, I laughed aloud at the description of riding Limbo, the monstrous 18.1-hand Thoroughbred. I hadn't heard that name in decades. My only regret is that my late dad, who chronicled and celebrated the Maryland breeding/racing scene for 40 years, was not here to read this gem. I can hear him right now summing up Paddy Smithwick: "Helluva good guy, and dead game." No higher compliment possible.
– George R. Carter, Amazon Review

WRITING STYLE HAS A POETIC FREEDOM

"Racing My Father" by Patrick Smithwick is a book I loved. His writing style has what I experience as a kind of poetic freedom where he leaps forward by a slight change in subject in mid paragraph, a style I felt excited by. Equally as important I love the depth and breath of the content that so vividly brings out the character of the individuals and the unique culture of the steeplechase community. Most moving is the hero worship of a child being carried in the wake of a living legend, a child lost in the limelight always wanting more love and less light. This book speaks to the struggle of so many young boys and girls whose parent is made a legend whether in a large arena or a small village. It is so hard to feel OK when the bar is set at a mythological level. Frequently this book moved me to tears.

My brother died at a young age, and I'm sending a copy of this beautiful book to each of his two sons.
– Thomas Twomey, Amazon Review

"Patrick Smithwick's bittersweet memoir wonderfully captures a racetrack culture that he was born to and loved. But he also shows, with such wrenching emotion, how he struggled, in the parlance of his sport, to change leads in his own life. The portrait he draws of his father, Paddy - a man both lovely and tough- is absolutely endearing. We can see: it wasn't easy for the author to be Little Paddy. But it was glorious, too."
- FRANK DEFORD, author, commentator, and sportswriter
 

"Racing My Father jumped right onto my list of best-loved books. It's a fascinating story by a truly gifted wriiter."
- LUCY ACTON, editor, Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred
 

"Patrick Smithwick, a horseman and journalist, writes with real feeling about memories of growing up with his late father, Hall of Fame steeplechase jockey A. Patrick "Paddy" Smithwick. Believe me, this is great reading, whether or not you're into steeplechase racing."
- PETER WINANTS, author of Steeplechasing: The Complete History of the Sport in North America

Riding It Out

Writing About His Famous Jockey Father Got Patrick Smithwick Back Into Horse Racing In His 50s

By J. Bowers, City Paper, 6/7/06

Patrick Smithwick still has his father’s saddle. It’s a feather-light slab of caramel-colored leather, barely recognizable from years of hard use. He’s got Pop’s “cheatin’ boots,” too, thin footwear worn to “make weight” and ride in the steeplechase races held at Pimlico, Belmont, and other famous tracks during the 1950s and ’60s.

“If you ride in your father’s saddle, it’s an important thing,” says Smithwick, gently replacing the worn bit of leather on a shelf in his cowshed-turned-writing studio. “It’s not some plastic thing you throw away.”

As the only son and lone apprentice of National Thoroughbred Racing Hall of Fame steeplechase jockey A.P. “Paddy” Smithwick, the man once known as “Little Paddy” was his father’s nigh-constant companion. He spent his childhood learning to gallop 1,300-pound thoroughbred horses at breakneck speeds over brush and timber fences, slamming down shots of alcohol at turfside bars, and watching his father hobnob with the likes of Jacqueline Kennedy and Eddie Arcaro in winner’s circles and jockey’s rooms all along the East Coast. Dubbed “the Master” by newspapers, the elder Smithwick led the country in steeplechase wins four times, enchanting bettors with his gentlemanly Irish-American demeanor, and overcoming fall-induced paralysis to train and ride horses until lung cancer claimed his life in 1973. He was only 46.

Today, after a few decades spent raising his two sons and daughter, the Master’s son is paying tribute to his late father’s memory in several ways. A few years ago, Smithwick moved to the 18th-century Monkton homestead at My Lady’s Manor where he was raised, christened “Prospect Farm” by his father. Soon after that, a young racehorse moved into the barn, just a thin wall away from his writing room. And a small horse-oriented press, Eclipse Books, is about to publish Racing My Father, a moving firsthand account of what it’s like to grow up in Maryland’s horse country and apprentice to one of steeplechasing’s all-time greats. The book—Smithwick’s first, apart from commissioned histories for Union Memorial Hospital and Gilman School—was a long time coming.

“I’ve been thinking about writing it for more than 20 years,” says Smithwick, sitting at his writing desk while Warfield, one of his three horses, mills around in the pasture outside, just beneath the tree where he built his childhood fort. “The first magazine piece I ever published was based on the whole first part of the book, Pop’s fall. I wrote it as a short story in college. Through the years, I’ve written bits and pieces. I’ve been thinking about it for a long time, in between writing all these other pieces for magazines and teaching, to keep making money. But I’ve been a student of the memoir for many years.”

An affable, welcoming man who seems, at first, too tall and lanky to be a jockey, Smithwick possesses the aura of quiet decisiveness seen in most horsemen. Trained in creative writing at Johns Hopkins University and Roanoke, Va.’s Hollins University, and steeped in nonfiction writing through years of freelancing for Style, Baltimore, Warfield’s, and other magazines, Smithwick is every bit as passionate about writing as he is about steeplechasing. Despite its confrontational-sounding title, Racing My Father is not about growing up overshadowed by a riding legend. It’s about flourishing in the light of a parent’s legacy and becoming an expert at a sport that one has to experience in order to learn—a spirit of ancestral tradition that Smithwick thinks is lacking today, even in the heart of Maryland horse country.

“There’s a great sort of feeling of history, and serving an apprenticeship with one’s father,” he says. “For centuries, people had been brought up like that, whether in farming, or in trades, or actually pretty much up until the industrial revolution. Parents handed down things to their children, and that’s kind of been obliterated. I wanted to show that in the book, this continuity that doesn’t exist anymore, of the father and this sort of apprenticeship, handing down his love and passion for something to his son. We had one horse, Crag—my father used to ride him, and then I was riding him. And his stall was right there, on the other side of the wall. I don’t think you have anything like that in the 21st century. I wanted to show that sense of sacredness.”

A self-confessed proponent of “the cow-prod theory of writing”—a just do it mentality inspired by a morning when the senior Smithwick jokingly shocked him out of bed with a cattle prod—Smithwick finally buckled down to write his memoir after moving back to Prospect Farm following his mother’s death. The place is rich with memories—his very first pony, Nappie, lies buried under a tree in the yard, and he’s quick to point out the window where he used to sit, waiting to hear his father’s car rumble down the crusher-run driveway.

“When we first moved back here, all I did was work on this place day and night, 5:30 in the morning until 10 at night, and I’ve never been so tired in my life,” Smithwick remembers. “We had a cold winter, and I was here for about 10 or 12 days by myself, while my family was down in Florida. That’s when I really started to think about the book again, and think of these things.”

Memories, present in every bale of hay hurled out of the loft and every leisurely afternoon spent riding through the countryside, spurred Smithwick to revisit the idea of writing a memoir—and with his kids grown, the horseman began joining his friend and fellow former steeplechaser Tom Voss on fox-hunting rides, exercising two future Maryland Hunt Cup starters, Welter Weight and Florida Law.

“That was kind of fun, because we had some really good hunting on Saturdays, and that starts getting you pretty fit and leads into the steeplechase races,” Smithwick says. “Most of the time, I was on one horse and Tom was on the other, and it was like being on two Maseratis or something.”

Soon after, Smithwick started riding both horses in a few steeplechase races, getting back in shape by galloping additional horses at the tracks and hunt clubs that he and his father both knew so well, helping trainers keep their charges fit for racing season.

“I turned 47 and a half, and I was up at Saratoga Springs galloping horses,” he says. “And galloping, all the kids are 20, 25 years old. I was thinking, I don’t know if I can still do this, I’m sweating a lot more than that guy. But then it started feeling pretty good. I was galloping three or four [horses] a day. And when I went back to riding races, it brought back all the memories and everything, and that was the catalyst that made this book happen.”

These days, Smithwick divides his time between promoting Racing My Father and training Riderwood, a 7-year-old novice steeplechase horse. Originally meant to be a pleasure horse for Smithwick’s wife and kids, Riderwood deftly tricked his master back into the steeplechase game—and into writing a second memoir, tentatively titled Racing Through the Midlife Crisis. Riderwood has placed second in all of his starts thus far, all with Smithwick in the saddle. In addition to borrowing Pop’s “cheatin’ boots” on occasion, the son maintains a strict diet and exercise plan to make weight, as opposed to the senior Smithwick’s usual prescription—sweating sessions in layers of clothing and “hot cars,” and a steak and salad for dinner every night.

“I actually went and bought Riderwood one day and didn’t tell my wife,” laughs Smithwick, currently 10 to 15 pounds underweight for race season. “I got him to be a sleepy hunter for her and the kids to ride. And at first they could. Now, they wouldn’t be able to. I was riding him one day, and he spooked at something. And then another time he took a little bite out of me. I said, ‘You son of a bitch, what is this?’ So I started hunting him, and he started feeling better and better, so last spring I rode him in this flat race, just for fun. He’s a real quiet, sleepy kind of horse, and I was thinking, What am I doing? But then he almost won that race. I asked him to run at the end and he was flying. So then I thought, Well, maybe I’ll run him in a few more races.”

While talking about his rejuvenated racing career, Smithwick excitedly roots around in briefcases for race programs and DVDs of Riderwood’s latest starts, mostly three-mile races over timber fences. It’s plain to see that the soft-spoken writer is still just as enamored with steeplechasing as the eager teenager he describes in Racing My Father.

At 55, he’s one of the eldest riders on the course, often riding against the sons of men he rode with in his 20s. Smithwick readily admits that it’s fairly rare for a man of his age to be careening headlong over fences at 40 miles per hour. But listening to him describe exercising his horse, on the tract of land where he first experienced the euphoria of galloping full-tilt, you get the feeling that his father would be damn proud.

 “I gallop Riderwood on the hunter trial course over the hill, and I think about my father when I’m there, because we used to bring the racehorses over there and gallop them, that sort of thing,” he says. “One time Riderwood and I were over at the hunter trial course and all the stars were out. The moon wasn’t out, so it wasn’t that kind of brightness, I couldn’t gallop him, but we trotted and trotted, and it was so beautiful. It was sort of like we were floating through the dark.”