
the human team members, not the horse in its title.

3 While I concur with Sullivan's assessment of what attracted so many to the Seabiscuit story, I fi nd abundant instances in the racing industry of fans "identifying" with horses (as fully as they do with human athletes) without placing a bet. 2004 Kentucky Derby winner Smarty Jones was constructed, by the media and his team members, as the protagonist in an underdog, against-all-odds fairy tale, and it inspired American adults as well as children, who sent hordes of letters and emails to the horse. In 2005 no one could get enough of the story of Preakness and Belmont Stakes winner Afl eet Alex, known as "the little colt that could"-a dramatic tale emphasizing how he survived being born to a mother that produced no milk and was named aft er a little girl who died of cancer. Th e story of Barbaro, the 2006 Kentucky Derby winner who broke an ankle in the Preakness Stakes, overshadowed all other sports news as daily reports of his life-threatening condition proliferated on television and the internet. Letters were sent to Seattle Slew and Secretariat, and aft er the legendary horses retired, people made pilgrimages to see them, not the trainers or the owners. 4 When racing legend Man O' War died in 1947, he was the fi rst horse to be embalmed; he lay in state for three days while two thousand people fi led by the coffi n.
5
Such horses are protagonists, central characters in narratives of confl ict, created by people inside and outside the racing industry who are inspired by the athletic prowess the horses display. By constructing the horses in terms usually reserved for humans, we reduce the animals to mere personalities instead of recognizing them as individuals we cannot fully comprehend. I argue that while anthropomorphizing horses attributes agency to them as constructed characters, the act of interpreting animal behavior as if it is human does not empower animals; rather, it undermines their diff erences.
5
Following the lead of other performance studies scholars, here I present the sports fi eld as a theatrical playing area. Th e nature of the race, the track conditions, and the fi eld of horses are just some of what contribute to the mise en scène of the performance. But it is the narrative that completes the drama of the race event. Th e narratives that concern me are those in which the horse plays the part of protagonist

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