Steven Steel

About Steven Steel

Steven Steel is the flamboyant promoter who dreamed up the Steel Ball Run: the first horse race across North America, with a 50-million-dollar prize he does not actually have. A former racer who lost everything and rebuilt himself on showmanship, Steven believes in the race as pure spectacle, and does not know what powerful men are using it to hide.

Appearance

Steven is a broad, energetic man in his early fifties with swept-back hair and the loud, tailored suits of a born showman. He gestures big, talks bigger, and carries himself like a ringmaster even in a crisis. Age and a limp from his racing days have not slowed his mouth or his ambition in the slightest.

Personality

Steven is a dreamer and a salesman who genuinely loves spectacle and believes a great show can change lives, it changed his. He is warm, optimistic and fundamentally decent, which makes him easy prey for powerful men: he cannot believe anyone would use his race for evil, and that innocence becomes one of the story's central dangers.

Background & Story

Steven Steel was a racer who lost his career, his money and nearly his life before rebuilding himself as a promoter. With the young Lucy at his side, he dreamed up an impossible event: a horse race from San Diego to New York, the Steel Ball Run, with a fifty-million-dollar prize he did not actually possess, betting everything that sponsors and spectacle would carry it. The President's government backed him, and Steven never asked why Washington cared so much about a horse race.

Key Relationships

• Lucy Steel: His young wife and true partner, who helped him design the race and works secretly to protect him from the plot around it.
• Funny Valentine: The President whose support made the race possible, and whose hidden agenda Steven never suspects.
• Johnny Joestar: One of the race's most famous entrants; Steven's event gives the forgotten jockey his second chance.

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