Remembering Secretariat

As Disney releases the new movie Secretariat, CBCSports.ca senior writer Malcolm Kelly remembers his personal favourite athlete of all time.

When I close my eyes, I can still see him in all his chestnut glory. In split-screen.  

On the left, for some reason in black and white, he's pounding down the dirt stretch at Belmont Park in New York, June 9, 1973, long away from the field, running all but one quarter faster than the one before, shattering the track record for a mile and a half and becoming the first American Triple Crown winner since Citation in 1948.

On the right, in colour, but in drab, dreary hues as befits the day itself, he's on the grass at Toronto's Woodbine Racetrack, Oct. 28, 1973, coming home for the last time ever, so powerfully in control of the pack in the Canadian International that famed announcer Daryl Wells (best ever) was speechless (almost, that is).

He is Secretariat. And for those of us watching back then, he was — and remains — one of the most magnificent athletes the world has seen.

Some would say he was merely an animal. But he was an animal that made grown men wax lyrical, cynical old punters revel and exclaim, and young women, called "co-eds" in that distant time, weep with joy.

Hyperbole, you say? Oh, if you had been alive at such a time …

The year

So much has been written about 1968 — about Bobby and Dr. King, student sit-ins and riots, of a world turned upside down — that 1973 has received short shrift when it comes to chronicling darkness and deception, argument and confusion.

This was the year of Watergate, Roe v. Wade, the Paris Peace Accords that ended the Vietnam War for everyone but the Vietnamese, of Wounded Knee and IRA bombings. 

For our family, it was a difficult time, one of alcohol and violence, sadness and mental illness, of being split apart by circumstance of birth and life. A 14-year-old boy, whose sister tried her best to protect, was looking for something to take him away from all of it. If only for a while.

Into it all came a horse. A huge beauty of a horse. With three white socks (supposedly bad luck and the sign of weak ankles), a pretty star, a long mane, the kind of forelock you'd find on movie star Paul Newman, fetlocks of iron and an estimated pre-metric 22-pound heart that no one knew about yet.

Secretariat officially stood 16.2 hands high — five foot six at the shoulders, but when he put his head up, his ears towered almost eight feet above the ground — and lost just once as a two-year-old. A season so good he was voted overall horse of the year, beating all his seniors.

The horse, with Ron Turcotte up (he was from Drummond, New Brunswick), was still learning how to run. Mostly, Big Red seemed to be discovering he didn't like to be told what to do and was darn well going to do it his way — if they'd only let him.

Secretariat and famed Canadian trainer Lucien Lauren, from Joliette, Que., worked their way through that 1973 spring, breezing to victory in the Bay Shore Stakes, wire-to-wire at the Gotham Stakes in a track record, finishing third in the Wood Memorial in a final prep for the Kentucky Derby.

The Derby

"In the spring of his three-year-old year, Secretariat began making up his own mind. He seemed to really understand racing and he seemed to want to dictate his own strategy." —Owner Penny Chenery, to ESPN.

When Big Red came to Churchill Downs to prepare for Derby Day that first week of May, he trailed rumours he had hurt himself at the Wood. It wasn't true.

He also wasn't the only horse that arrived carrying a large heart no one knew about yet. So did Sham (18 pounds), a colt that in most other years might well have won the Triple.

Both animals combined fine breeding and constitution, excellent training and a good jockey to complement the terrific ticker, and both bombed the field.

Secretariat broke last, as he always did, trailed into the first turn, gradually moved up and then blew by Sham in the final two furlongs to win by 2 ½ lengths.

He shattered the track record for a mile and a quarter, registering in 1:59 and 2/5 (in horse parlance pronounced "one fifty nine and two" — a mark that still stands after 37 years). People were stunned. The horse had actually accelerated the entire way, each quarter faster than the one before. 

Lost in the tumult was that Sham, under Laffit Pincay Jr., had also beaten the track mark.

The Preakness

"He was the only honest thing in the country at the time. This huge, magnificent animal that wasn't tied up in scandal and wasn't tied up in money, he just ran because he loved running."  — George Plimpton.

Off to Pimlico two weeks later for the Preakness Stakes, a fortnight that included the launching of Skylab, which didn't work quite right, and the start of the Watergate hearings, broadcast live from the U.S. Senate.

Secretariat broke last again, as though giving his challengers a fair head start, passed the entire field, including Sham, in about 180 yards around the first of the tight Pimlico turns after a nice tactical move by Turcotte and breezed to another 2 ½-length win.

Suddenly this big, red, movie-star gorgeous horse with the happy personality was an international celebrity.

It was as though the press had lost its collective mind. They put Secretariat on the cover of Time ("Super Horse") and Newsweek in the middle of the biggest political crisis to face the country in 100 years, for gosh sakes.

This animal had become a reason for hope in a year of anger and depression.

In our house, he was something to think about when distractions were needed more than ever. The 14-year-old boy determined to ride that pony all the way through the spring.

The Belmont

"The fittest I have ever seen a horse. His eyes were as big as saucers, his nostrils were flared, he was nickering, his ears were playing, his muscles were rippling and he's walking around on his hind legs and I remember thinking to myself, 'Boy, what are we going to see today?' " — William Nack, award-winning Sports Illustrated racing writer and Secretariat's biographer, to ESPN.

Over the three-week break to the Belmont, a call-girl scandal broke out in Britain's Parliament, and the Greek military abolished the country's monarchy. 

In New York, tens of thousands crowded around all week — school kids, veteran horsemen, normally cynical sports writers, television folks who'd never been to a race in their lives. And the horse loved it. Smiling for the cameras. Playing up to the fans. And he was ready.

Seven horses since 1948, including Canada's Northern Dancer, had come into the Belmont with two wins behind them and couldn't finish the Triple. Not this time.

Off they went, Big Red (at 1-10) broke to the lead right away with Sham on the front. Down the backstretch they galloped together with that beauty of a dark seal-brown contender slightly ahead until, as though his competitor for seven weeks whispered, "I've had enough, you go," Secretariat changed gears and went.

Turcotte let the colt do what he wanted, and what he wanted was to run. To run like no horse had ever run. To pump the blood from his big heart all through the four pistons in the way God, or Mother Nature, or some distant deity meant for it to happen.

And the splits, but for a little rest along the backstretch, were all faster than the one before, and he powered all the way to the line. Thirty-one lengths in front. Poor Sham, who had pushed Secretariat so far, so fast, was done for the day, trailing last. People were screaming. Co-eds lining the rail, Plimpton reported, in tears.

The boy himself was screaming and crying and laughing. Perfection. In the flesh. In colour, on television.

That time was 2:24 flat — busting the race record by two full seconds.

The International

Secretariat, as was the style in the days before stud fees, jumped astronomically (his fault), raced again, but more carefully now.

A win, a second, a victory at the Marlboro Cup against an all-star field of older horses in a world record for a mile-and-an-eighth, and then a track record at Belmont in his first try on turf.

It was time for Penny Chenery Tweedy to decide where Big Red's swan song would be, and she chose Canada, so her trainer and jockey could get their due. But the horse was still the star, from the time he arrived at Toronto International to a throng of journalists and photographers, through that week of working out and then to the morning of the race.

It would be the longest he'd ever gone — 1 and 5/8 miles — against all older horses. Turcotte did not ride because he had picked up a suspension earlier in the week that precluded him, so Eddie Maple of Ohio got in the irons.

That day the temperature rose to just 35 degrees Fahrenheit, with mist and snow in the air, and you could just see the starting gate away out to the southwest, where the magnificent (and now altered) Martial Turf course at Woodbine began.

Secretariat played with Kennedy Road, two years his elder and the 1971 Queen's Plate champ, down the backstretch the second time before bursting away as they came around the final turn.

A last image — those pistons pumping, a bit of snow coming down, his nostrils blowing tendrils into the freezing air. And the story was done, winner by 12 lengths.

Epilogue

Secretariat would retire to stud, where his first few years were not very productive, though General Assembly was terrific.

As a damsire, however, he would find his mark, sending out daughter Weekend Surprise to match with 1977 Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew and drop A.P. Indy, who is one of today's best stud horses, and other fine stallions and mares. 

Living at Claiborne Farm in Kentucky, Secretariat would greet visitors with a show, racing right at them, pulling up short as though to say "Look at me … look at my magnificence" and then he'd race around his paddock just to show them what it must have looked like back then. Back THEN!

William Nack, speaking with bloodhorse.com, said of Secretariat years after the Triple Crown that he was "a chivalrous prince of a colt who was playful and mischievous … A kid could have ridden him. The older he got, it seemed, the more of a ham he became, and throughout his life he used to stop and pose whenever he heard the click of a camera."

Secretariat died at the age of 19 on Oct. 4, 1989, of the hoof condition laminitis, and how that must have felt for a stallion such as he, to be felled by a bad foot, the only thing that could check his speed.

The boy, now a man who should be beyond such things, went to a very private place and cried.