Cyclone v. Sun Raider = War Admiral v. Seabiscuit?

Cafe Society
1

If you’re reading this I reckon there’s a decent likeihood you’ve read the Walter Farley series “The Black Stallion”, or at least the eponymous first book in the series, and you know to whom I refer as “Cyclone” and “Sun Raider”.

Given the description of the horses and where they hailed from in the book, and the public furor and choosing up sides and all, do you think it was a thinly fictionalized version of the matchup of War Admiral and Seabiscuit, with the mystery Black Stallion thrown into the fictional mix as a horse who could beat them both?

Or just coincidence?

2

I think it was probably a coincidence.

Walter Farley was born in 1915, and started writing The Black Stallion when he was still in high school. He finished it as an 18-year-old undergrad at Columbia University, which would have meant it was completed in 1933. However, it wasn’t actually published until Farley was 26, in 1941.

If the material was not altered in between, it would have been impossible to model it on Seabiscuit and War Admiral, seeing as how that race took place in 1938.