All his life, award-winning journalist and author Andrew Rule has watched the heroes and villains of racing: dreamers and schemers, winners and losers, horses and riders.

In Chance, he distils the daring, the desperation and danger of the track into a bravura account of some of Australian racing’s most famous and infamous moments, its celebrations and its secrets, the grittiness of the gambling life behind the glitz and glamour.

With an ear for the colloquial, the humorous and the absurd, and an eye for physical bravery and financial folly, Rule shows how racing still defines part of the Australian character.

Here are stories of those who set the odds and those who take them, of miraculous wins, ‘plunges’ planned more carefully than bank robberies, of tricky trainers, reckless jockeys and bold bookmaking dynasties. From the master farrier who fixes a lame horse’s feet and lands a fortune, to the broke punter who turns loose change into the price of a house in a few crowded hours, to the tycoon who takes down the Waterhouses for a million bucks.