How to Triumph Like a Girl Summary

The speaker of "How to Triumph Like a Girl" opens by saying she likes female horses the best. She likes that the horses make running fast look fun and easy, and she likes their proud attitude after winning a race. But mostly, the speaker says she likes female horses because they're female like her. The speaker imagines that inside of her human body is a giant, powerful horse's heart, linking her in some way to the animal. She then addresses the reader of the poem directly, asking, don't we want to believe that too? The speaker invites us to imagine lifting her shirt to see that tremendous horse heart, which the speaker says has absolute confidence that she will "come in first"—that she will win as a woman.