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My Racing Heart: The Passionate World of Thoroughbreds and the Track – An Honest Memoir for Horse Lovers and Sports Fans
When Nan Mooney was seven years old, she sat in her grandmother May-May's living room to watch her first horse race ... And so began a turbulent romance between a woman and a sport.
Part memoir, part journey into the compelling world of Thoroughbred horse racing, My Racing Heart gallops headlong into the wild culture and fabulous creatures that rise up around a racetrack. Nan Mooney looks at the horses, jockeys, and trainers; the gambling and corruption; and racing's age-old history and forever offbeat society. From the dusty backstretch at a small-town track to the stands at magnificent Churchill Downs, Nan Mooney captures the risks and the glory, the excitement and the passion, for horse lovers, sports fans, and anyone who has ever craved a place to run wild.
Part memoir, part journey into the compelling world of Thoroughbred horse racing, My Racing Heart gallops headlong into the wild culture and fabulous creatures that rise up around a racetrack. Nan Mooney looks at the horses, jockeys, and trainers; the gambling and corruption; and racing's age-old history and forever offbeat society. From the dusty backstretch at a small-town track to the stands at magnificent Churchill Downs, Nan Mooney captures the risks and the glory, the excitement and the passion, for horse lovers, sports fans, and anyone who has ever craved a place to run wild.
320 pages, Paperback
First published January 1, 2002
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About the author
Nan Mooney
3 books13 followersNan Mooney is the author of three books and numerous articles for publications including the Washington Post, The Daily News, Slate.com, the Utne Reader, Women's eNews and Alternet among others. She currently lives in Seattle with her son Leo and lots of rain.
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Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews
December 12, 2025
Dec 11 ~~ review asap.
935pm ~~ I ordered this book a couple of years ago during one of my annual Horse Book Fits, and I cannot believe I let it sit neglected in the bookcase for so long.
Mooney wrote what was for me an enchanting story of how she discovered a passion for Thoroughbreds and racing (thanks to grandmother May-May, a woman I would have loved to meet), how she lost that passion for a time and how she finally found her way back.
Mixed in with her personal details are sections about trainers, jockeys, horses and backstretch characters she has known, as well as a few doses of racing history and a shout out for Damon Runyon. I was inspired to gallop off and order some titles for next year's Horse Book Fit, and I would not be surprised if I read Mooney's book again then too. I'd love to spend a little more time with May-May!
935pm ~~ I ordered this book a couple of years ago during one of my annual Horse Book Fits, and I cannot believe I let it sit neglected in the bookcase for so long.
Mooney wrote what was for me an enchanting story of how she discovered a passion for Thoroughbreds and racing (thanks to grandmother May-May, a woman I would have loved to meet), how she lost that passion for a time and how she finally found her way back.
Mixed in with her personal details are sections about trainers, jockeys, horses and backstretch characters she has known, as well as a few doses of racing history and a shout out for Damon Runyon. I was inspired to gallop off and order some titles for next year's Horse Book Fit, and I would not be surprised if I read Mooney's book again then too. I'd love to spend a little more time with May-May!
January 21, 2008
Nan Mooney, My Racing Heart (Harper, 2002)
Nan Mooney loves horses. Specifically, Thoroughbreds, the ones who hit the track, dust it up with six to twelve of their closest friends, and make humans gape in awe at the process. This odd amalgam of personal-memoir-cum-treatise-on-track-life is not an unfamiliar breed to the horse fan; the measuring stick against which all such books are brought is Bill Barich's stunning Laughing in the Hills. I'm sure one day, another book that good in that genre will arrive. While My Racing Heart has its good points, to be simple about it, this ain't it.
Where Barich succeeds as so many others (Michael Klein, Mooney, Liz Mitchell, and many others) fail is in his ability to take two different things that have inherently different paces and make them merge together into one book whose readability is consistent across chapters on differing subjects (in Barich's case, handicapping the races at Golden Gate while dealing with his mother's cancer). He meshes the two in such a way that, despite being parallel narratives happening a country apart from one another, the whole thing flows. Seamless, like an egg, as Stephen King once said. In Mooney's case the two main threads are a basic nuts-and-bolts look at the Thoroughbred industry from someone with enough clout to get inside the lines but not enough cynicism to keep pumping out the same old platitudes and a memoir about her grandmother, who introduced her to horse racing at an age tender enough that I suspect her parents weren't very happy. Either of these two things on their own would have stood as a book in itself; the slow, meandering passages about her grandmother and how the two of them interacted and the snappy, sometimes sarcastic looks at track life. It is when the two are entwined with one another that things break down to the extent they do, with the reader finding himself transported with no warning from the high of making friends with a Kentucky Derby contender to a lazy meditation on what life must have been like in the early twenties in Alaska.
Not to say it isn't worth reading; that's not it at all. There is some fine stuff here. It just could have used a little tuning. ** ½
Nan Mooney loves horses. Specifically, Thoroughbreds, the ones who hit the track, dust it up with six to twelve of their closest friends, and make humans gape in awe at the process. This odd amalgam of personal-memoir-cum-treatise-on-track-life is not an unfamiliar breed to the horse fan; the measuring stick against which all such books are brought is Bill Barich's stunning Laughing in the Hills. I'm sure one day, another book that good in that genre will arrive. While My Racing Heart has its good points, to be simple about it, this ain't it.
Where Barich succeeds as so many others (Michael Klein, Mooney, Liz Mitchell, and many others) fail is in his ability to take two different things that have inherently different paces and make them merge together into one book whose readability is consistent across chapters on differing subjects (in Barich's case, handicapping the races at Golden Gate while dealing with his mother's cancer). He meshes the two in such a way that, despite being parallel narratives happening a country apart from one another, the whole thing flows. Seamless, like an egg, as Stephen King once said. In Mooney's case the two main threads are a basic nuts-and-bolts look at the Thoroughbred industry from someone with enough clout to get inside the lines but not enough cynicism to keep pumping out the same old platitudes and a memoir about her grandmother, who introduced her to horse racing at an age tender enough that I suspect her parents weren't very happy. Either of these two things on their own would have stood as a book in itself; the slow, meandering passages about her grandmother and how the two of them interacted and the snappy, sometimes sarcastic looks at track life. It is when the two are entwined with one another that things break down to the extent they do, with the reader finding himself transported with no warning from the high of making friends with a Kentucky Derby contender to a lazy meditation on what life must have been like in the early twenties in Alaska.
Not to say it isn't worth reading; that's not it at all. There is some fine stuff here. It just could have used a little tuning. ** ½
February 13, 2016
A book for romantics, not a book for horse lovers. The author researched bloodlines, corruption, and a colorful cast of characters however minimizes the reality of the effects of racing on the young horses themselves. Little was said about the future lives of spent, broken down racehorses, who are not put out to pasture on the clover in Kentucky. The horses deserved a little better balance in her writing.
February 10, 2016
Mooney is definitelly passionate about racing. But this book is also about her love of her grandmother - who taught her all about horses, racing and betting on the ponies.
June 10, 2013
A lovingly written, deeply personal look at thoroughbred horse racing, through the eyes of a genuine horse lover and romantic.
August 29, 2008
I didn't want to put this down! The author tells how she came to love horse racing (from her grandmother) and how that love has changed and adapted over the years. She writes about breeding (which I found really fascinating), the jockeys, the trainers, the owners and, of course, the horses. She also covers some of the negative aspects of racing, including addictions to gambling. I loved horses as a young girl and this type of book just feeds the affection. A fun read.
September 11, 2015
The most exciting thing about this book is the cover photo.
The book could have been pared down about 100 pages, and the time line bounced around too much to make any sense.
The book could have been pared down about 100 pages, and the time line bounced around too much to make any sense.
May 31, 2019
Lots of good horsey info.
August 25, 2024
I actually read this book way back in 2003 when a Derby and Preakness winners named Funny Cide lured me into Horse racing. I thoroughly enjoyed reading it again.
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April 12, 2022🐎🐎🐎🐎
September 17, 2008
Took what should have been great and made it boring.
Displaying 1 - 11 of 11 reviews