Try free for 30 days

  • The Fast Ride

  • Spectacular Bid and the Undoing of a Sure Thing
  • By: Jack Gilden
  • Narrated by: Jack Gilden
  • Length: 11 hrs and 52 mins

1 credit a month to use on any title, yours to keep (you’ll use your first credit on this title).
Stream or download thousands of included titles.
Access to exclusive deals and discounts.
$16.45 a month after 30 day trial. Cancel anytime.
The Fast Ride cover art

The Fast Ride

By: Jack Gilden
Narrated by: Jack Gilden
Try for $0.00

$16.45 per month after 30 days. Cancel anytime.

Buy Now for $27.99

Buy Now for $27.99

Pay using voucher balance (if applicable) then card ending in
By confirming your purchase, you agree to Audible's Conditions Of Use and Privacy Notice and authorise Audible to charge your designated credit card or another available credit card on file.

Publisher's Summary

In an era of spectacular thoroughbreds, Spectacular Bid was perhaps the most exalted racehorse of them all. In 1979, he won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes—and transcended his sport on a run of 12 consecutive stakes victories—but his quest for the Triple Crown was lost with a third-place finish in the Belmont Stakes due to a series of bizarre events that have never been accurately reported.

In The Fast Ride, Jack Gilden tells the story of what really happened that day the Bid lost the biggest race of his life. Along the way, he introduces the listener to a cast of characters from the gilded age of late-20th-century horse racing, from Bid’s owners, the renowned Meyerhoff family, to Grover “Buddy” Delp, the fast-talking trainer, to teenage jockey Ronnie Franklin, whose meteoric rise to fame aboard Spectacular Bid came at the cost of his innocence and well-being. Also present are four of the era’s magnificent Latino riders, Ángel Cordero Jr., Jacinto Vasquez, Georgie Velasquez, and Ruben Hernandez, who all felt the sting of rejection and bigotry during their long careers even as they found their way and raised the level of competition to a feverish pitch.

Underlying Spectacular Bid’s saga was a thin line between hard work and excess, including substance abuse, animal manipulation and doping, and race fixing. Hardly anyone in the horse’s circle made it out unscathed or undamaged.

The Fast Ride is the story of a great racehorse, unfulfilled dreams, the exhilaration and steep price of striving at all costs, and an American era in which getting everything you ever wanted could be the most empty and unfulfilling sensation of all.

©2022 Jack Gilden (P)2022 Jack Gilden

What listeners say about The Fast Ride

Average Customer Ratings

Reviews - Please select the tabs below to change the source of reviews.

In the spirit of reconciliation, Audible acknowledges the Traditional Custodians of country throughout Australia and their connections to land, sea and community. We pay our respect to their elders past and present and extend that respect to all Aboriginal and Torres Strait Islander peoples today.