Secretariat (41 page)

1:34
1
/
5
.

It is an incredible fraction, far faster than any horse has ever run the first mile in the Belmont Stakes. Goldstein stands awed by it. O’Brien wonders how Secretariat will be able to stand up at the end. Penny clenches her hands. Lucien remains quiet, still looking solemnly at the racetrack, across the hedge and the lakes and lawns to the far turn, where Turcotte rocks on across the back of Secretariat, listens to the beat of Secretariat’s hooves on the racetrack and the sound of the 70,000 people screaming and moiling and echoing 600 yards away. Finney is boggled.

“He can’t stand up to this!” he yells to Firestone.

In the announcer’s booth, announcer Chick Anderson’s voice is rising at the sight of it. Beneath him the crowd has grown deafening, loud and rich, and Anderson gropes to articulate what he is witnessing.

“Secretariat is blazing along! The first three-quarters of a mile in 1:09
4
/
5
. Secretariat is widening now. He is moving like a tremendous machine!”

The colt is in front by eight and by ten and now he is opening twelve over Sham, who is beginning to come back to My Gallant and Twice a Prince. Feeling the hopelessness, Pincay has decided not to persevere with Sham. He feels the Sommer colt is in distress and so he coasts rearward. Turcotte wheels Secretariat around the turn. All Turcotte hears is the sound of Secretariat walloping the earth and taking deep breaths of air and then, to the right, the lone voice of a man calling to him from the hedge by the fence.

“You got it, Ronnie! Stay there.”

The poles flash by, one after another, and Secretariat continues widening his lead—to fourteen and then fifteen lengths midway of the turn. Then sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. He does not back off. He never slows a moment as he sweeps the turn and races to an ever-widening lead.

Finney and Laurin and all the others are watching for some sign that Secretariat is weakening, for some evidence that the pace is beginning to hurt, for the stride to shorten or the tail to slash or the ears to lay back fast to the skull. But there are no signs of weariness. Racing past the three-eighths pole—midway of the turn for home, with 660 yards to go—Secretariat is racing faster than he was past the half-mile pole on the turn. He flashes by the pole one and one eighth miles into the race—1:46
1
/
5
!

Secretariat has just tied the world record for nine furlongs. He is running now as if in contempt of the clock. Those watching him are only beginning to fathom the magnitude of the effort. He is moving beyond the standard by which the running horse has been traditionally judged, not tiring, not leg weary, not backing up a stroke, dimensionless in scope, and all the time Turcotte asking nothing of him. The crowds continue to erupt. Looking, Turcotte sees the hands shoot up in the grandstand, the thousands on their feet, hundreds lining the rail of the homestretch with the programs waving and the hands clapping and the legs jumping.

He is still galloping to the beat of twelve. Aglide, he turns for home in full flight. He opens twenty-one lengths. He increases that to twenty-two. He is running easily. Nor is the form deteriorating. There remains the pendulumlike stride of the forelegs and the drive of the hindlegs, the pumping of the shoulders and the neck, the rise and dip of the head. He makes sense of all the mystical pageant rites of blood through which he has evolved as distillate, a climactic act in a triumph of the breed, one horse combining all the noblest qualities of his species and his ancestry—of the unbeaten Nearco through Nasrullah and Bold Ruler, of the iron horse Discovery through Outdone and Miss Disco, of the dashing St. Simon through Prince Rose and Princequillo, and of the staying Brown Bud through Imperatrice by way of Somethingroyal. He defines the blooded horse in his own terms.

He sweeps into the stretch through a tenth furlong in 0:12
4
/
5
, the slowest eighth yet, and Turcotte is still holding him together—his black boots pressed against the upper back, moving with the rocky motion of the legs, his hands feeling the mane blown back against the fingers and the knuckles pressed white against the rubber-thick reins. The teletimer flashes 1:59 for the mile and a quarter, two-fifths faster than his Derby, faster than the Belmont ten-furlong record by a full second.

He is twenty-three lengths in front. He lengthens that to twenty-four. And then to twenty-five, the record victory margin held by Count Fleet since 1943.

He is not backing up yet.

Once again he picks up the tempo in the upper stretch, racing the eleventh furlong in 0:12
1
/
5
, as fast as he has run the opening 220 yards of the race. That furlong gives him a mile and three-eighths in 2:11
1
/
5
, three seconds faster than Man o’ War’s world record set in the Belmont Stakes fifty-three years before. Obliterating Count Fleet’s record, Secretariat opens twenty-six lengths. He widens that to twenty-seven and twenty-eight. He comes to the eighth pole in midstretch, and the whole of Belmont Park is roaring full-throatedly. The television camera sweeps the stands and hands are shooting in the air. No one can remember anything quite like it, not even the oldest veteran. No one applauds during the running of a race, but now the crowds in the box seats and the grandstand are standing as one and clapping as Secretariat races alone through the homestretch. They’ve come to see a coronation, America’s ninth Triple Crown winner, but many are beginning to realize that they are witnessing the greatest single performance in the history of the sport. Veteran horsemen are incredulous. Eyes have turned to and from the teletimer and the horse in disbelief, looking for some signs of stress and seeing nothing but the methodical rock of the form and the reach and snap of the forelegs. For a moment in midstretch, as the sounds envelop him, even Turcotte is caught off guard by the scope of the accomplishment. Passing the eighth pole, he looks to the left at the infield tote and the teletimer, and the first number he sees is 1:09
4
/
5
for the first three-quarters. He sees these numbers but they fail to register. So he looks ahead again. Then they register and he looks back again, in a delayed double take.

By now he has passed the sixteenth pole, with only seventy-five yards to run, and the crowd senses the record, too. Turcotte looks at the teletimer blinking excitedly and sees 2:19, 2:20. The record is 2:26
3
/
5
. The colt has a chance to break the record in all three classics—an unprecedented feat. So, keeping his whip uncocked, Turcotte pumps his arm and hand-rides Secretariat through the final yards. Sham fades back to last, and Twice a Prince and My Gallant are head and head battling for the place—Cordero and Baeza are riding all out to the wire—but Secretariat continues widening on them.

To twenty-nine lengths.

Turcotte scrubs and pushes on Secretariat and he lengthens the margin to thirty lengths. The wire looms. The teletimer flashes crazily. All eyes are on it and on the horse. Many horsemen have seen Turcotte looking at the timer and now they’re looking at it, too. He is racing the clock, his only competitor, and he is beating it badly as he rushes the red horse through the final yards. At the end, the colt dives for the wire. The teletimer blinks the last time and then it stops, as though it has been caught in midair—2:24.

He hits the wire thirty-one lengths in front of Twice a Prince, with Sham finishing last, forty-five lengths behind.

The sounds of the crowd have gathered in the run through the straight and now they burst forth in one stentorian howl. Secretariat has just shattered three records in the Triple Crown, this mile-and-a-half record by two and two-fifths seconds, and Turcotte stands up at the wire and lets him gallop out an extra eighth to the turn. Even easing up he eclipses records through his momentum. Clocker Sonny Taylor catches him going the final eighth in 0:13
3
/
5
, giving the colt a mile and five-eighths in an unofficial 2:37
3
/
5
, time that would shatter Swaps’s world mark by three-fifths of a second. He has strung together a phenomenal run of eighths—0:12
1
/
5
, 0:11
2
/
5
, 0:11
2
/
5
, 0:11
1
/
5
, 0:12, 0:11
3
/
5
, 0:12
1
/
5
, 0:12
1
/
5
, 0:12, 0:12
4
/
5
, 0:12
1
/
5
, 0:12
4
/
5
. Incredibly, none of them is slower than 0:12
4
/
5
.

Turcotte pulls him to a halt on the turn. Jim Dailey, the outrider who met Gaffney on the colt a year before, meets him now on the bend. He has not seen the teletimer.

“How fast you go?”

“Two twenty-four flat,” Turcotte yells back to him.

“You’re crazy.”

“I’m telling you!” says Turcotte.

“Can’t be.”

Turcotte turns the horse around at the bend. With Dailey riding a pony beside him, he begins a slow gallop past the stands and the clubhouse. Ovations ripple and accompany him home. Acknowledging them, Turcotte doffs his helmet as he did at the Derby and brings down the house, prompting even more thunderous cheering and applause.

On the racetrack, Hollis Chenery greets Secretariat and Turcotte outside the winner’s circle, and Chenery takes hold of the lead shank and brings them into the circle. The reception of the crowd is electric.

They lean over the flower boxes down the victory lane; long, braceleted arms reach out for him. Hands slap his glistening coat. Hands shoot up in fists. Hands are cupped over faces. Hands are holding hands and gesturing elation and awe. The clapping and the shouts of encouragement—to Turcotte and Laurin, to Penny and Secretariat—come in endless waves, and they follow them all through the winner’s circle ceremony. Eddie Sweat takes the colt and walks him home, passing the crowds that line the winner’s circle, the governors and racing officials, and heading back to the mouth of the tunnel. Thousands of people line the tunnel and send up cheers as Sweat and Secretariat pass. Men and women of all ages holler boisterously to Sweat and clap their hands. Sweat nods his head and smiles and raises his fist in the air. As he makes his way home through the paddock, the crowds are waiting for him everywhere. The colt is sweating heavily as he slants around the walking ring of the paddock, his nostrils moist and warm and flaring. Beads of sweat trickle down his head and neck, his eyes dart left and right. The crowds shout his name over and over as he walks past them.

As Sweat leads the colt around the paddock, he passes trainer Elliott Burch, who is waiting to saddle a horse in the race following the Belmont. His patron, Paul Mellon, owns a share in Secretariat. Burch’s face is flushed with excitement. His arms are folded and he turns to follow Secretariat as he goes by. He has never seen such a performance, and he calls out, “Spectacular! Just sensational!”

Burch is one of many horsemen, young and old, who would claim that they had witnessed, on a sultry afternoon in June, the greatest single performance ever by a running horse, an unprecedented feat of power, grace, and speed. The chorus is large and vocal in their claims of that, and among them are Alfred Vanderbilt and Woody Stephens, Buddy Hirsch and Sherrill Ward, P. G. Johnson and Arthur Kennedy. Charles Hatton is calling Secretariat the greatest horse he has ever seen, in sixty years of covering and observing the American turf, greater even than Man o’ War.

“His only point of reference is himself,” Hatton says.

That evening they all leave the racetrack rethinking their old notions and beliefs on the standards of greatness in the thoroughbred. The impact of the victory is felt everywhere. The effect of the Belmont on the value of the colt is instantaneous. As much as $500,000 is offered for a single share. Vanderbilt sells half his share to his friends, the Whitneys of Greentree—John Hay Whitney and Mrs. Charles Shipman Payson, who were offered but turned down a share originally—for the $190,000 purchase price, but only because he is their friend. All others hold on to their entire shares in the immediate wake of the Belmont, knowing that a foal by Secretariat out of a stakes-winning mare could bring $500,000 at auction. Secretariat, like his sire, is virtually not for sale.

The victors raise a thousand toasts that night. Penny and Lucien and the Meadow Stable party meet at the barn. As the colt is being cooled out following the triumph, Lucien comes through the gate into the stable paddock and is cheered lustily by the stable grooms and hot walkers who have stayed behind to greet and congratulate him. Turcotte arrives and he is cheered, too, and so is Penny Tweedy.

At Fasig-Tipton’s central office, across the street from the racetrack, the company’s clients are gathered over a case of champagne. They are toasting the victors. Among them is Howard Gilman, whose paper company owns a share of Secretariat only because John Galbreath turned his share down. Howard Gilman offers a toast to Fasig-Tipton for having encouraged the company to buy the share, and so the glasses are raised and the clientele sip a salute to the company for its wisdom and sagacity. And then John Finney offers a countertoast. He raises his glass and says, “The toast should properly be to John Galbreath. If he had not declined his share, you would not have gotten it.”

They all agree and drink a toast to him.

“Thanks to John Galbreath.”

Epilogue

The L-188 Electra banked in over Lexington, its four turboprop engines whining and vibrating loudly as it slowed for landing, and Elizabeth Ham stood dressed in her Persian lamb coat and fur hat, holding to Secretariat’s stall in the center aisle of the plane. Strapped into a narrow stall directly behind Riva Ridge, Secretariat was nibbling hay.

It was November 12, 1973, and Secretariat was returning home to Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky, where he had been conceived almost five years before. He may have been born to be a racehorse, the culmination and coming together of the richest and most prepotent thoroughbred bloodlines in America, but already the best years of his life lay behind him. At the age of three, he was being consumed by the industry that had raised and made him worth ten times his weight in gold. Composed and collected to the point of indifference, Secretariat waited quietly in the stall.

“It’s a shame Mr. Chenery isn’t here to see him,” said Elizabeth Ham. “But if Mr. Chenery
were
here to see him, Secretariat wouldn’t be here. He wouldn’t be going to the farm. He would be racing again next year.”

That was the shame of it. The Belmont Stakes, ultimately viewed by more than 50 million people during the live telecast and on countless news accounts of it that evening, had made Secretariat the most celebrated and popular racehorse of all time. He became the client of the William Morris Agency, joining all the other sex symbols of the era, and a valuable commercial property to Penny Tweedy and the estate of C. T. Chenery. He began receiving hundreds of letters, many from young girls and old men wishing him well and thanking him for the memories. And there were offers to do photos of the colt and books and statues and lithographs, records and posters and public appearances on television. Sonny and Cher, for instance, made an offer for Secretariat to appear on their show. But that would have made it necessary to van him to Manhattan and then lead him into a studio and onto an open stage.

The idea was rejected as too risky and not in keeping with his image as a racehorse. Penny was also offered $25,000 by a Las Vegas gambling casino and nightclub for Secretariat to appear twice a day, fifteen minutes each time, in front of a nightclub audience. But that was rejected, too. Then Hazel Park Racetrack, a small oval outside Detroit, offered $25,000 if Secretariat would parade in front of the stands on a weekend—not in a race, just in a walk. But that, also, was turned down as inappropriate. There were many bizarre offers, too, such as the one to merchandise his manure by encapsulating it in transparent plastic discs three inches long and selling the discs as conversation pieces. That was also turned down.

Most of all, though, the nation’s racetracks coveted him as a drawing card. His appeal was tremendous and nationwide, not only among horseplayers but among the laymen who had never seen a race. Hazel Park was but one who wanted to bring him to their grounds. There were others, and among them was Arlington Park in Arlington Heights, Illinois. Secretariat was supposed to rest until the opening of Saratoga in August, according to Penny and Lucien immediately following the Belmont, and in fact was being pointed for the Jim Dandy Stakes for three-year-olds and then the Summer Derby, the one-and-a-quarter-mile Travers Stakes. But the Arlington offer, as it would turn out, was too lucrative to pass up. So Penny opted to take him there.

Arlington offered to put up $125,000 and arrange a match race between Secretariat and Linda’s Chief, Secretariat’s old Sanford rival, who had been running extremely well while avoiding the red horse. It fell through when Linda’s Chief was withdrawn—his trainer, Al Scotti, later said he never wanted to run Linda’s Chief against Secretariat—so Arlington Park hastily rounded up three other spear carriers to meet him going a mile and an eighth on June 30, three weeks after the Belmont Stakes. In a way, it was a symbolic beginning of his career following the Belmont Stakes, a career in which his power as a celebrity and drawing card grew strong enough to affect the course of his career and fortunes as a racehorse.

For the Arlington exhibition, Lucien brought him out of easy training, jammed two quick drills into him, and then shipped him to the Windy City track outside Chicago. Thousands turned out to see him gallop, the day before the race, and more came out to see him run. They were not disappointed. Secretariat, staying twenty feet off the racetrack rail around two turns, casually galloped to a nine-length victory while just missing Damascus’s track record by a fifth of a second. The red horse ran the distance in 1:47. Returned to New York, Secretariat was kept in serious training through July, in preparation for the Whitney Stakes at Saratoga. But he failed to train sharply for it. Then the Phillip Morris Company announced that Secretariat and Riva Ridge would be meeting in a match race September 15, called the Marlboro Cup. The company was putting up the purse of $250,000. Secretariat’s Belmont Stakes was beginning to draw big money to the sport. But all through Secretariat’s training in July, Turcotte kept telling friends privately that the colt was not himself—his workouts through July, in fact, were the least impressive of his entire career. In the week leading to the Whitney, August 4, he was running a slight temperature and his bowels were loose and watery. Then, on July 27, he raced a mile in training in a sensational 1:34 seconds. That day, Turcotte and Frank Tours drove back to Long Island together in Tours’s Cadillac. Turcotte was plainly worried.

“You’re going to think I’m crazy, Frank, but I don’t believe that work,” Turcotte told Tours. “There’s something wrong with that colt. He’s just not himself.”

The pressure was on Laurin and Penny to run Secretariat in the Whitney Stakes. Network television and the New York Racing Association had agreed to televise four races—the $50,000 Whitney, the $250,000 Marlboro Cup, the $100,000 Woodward Stakes, and the $100,000 two-mile Jockey Club Gold Cup—in the hopes that Secretariat would take them one at a time. In anticipation of Secretariat’s arrival, Saratoga draped Main Street in blue and white bunting. It was Secretariat Month in upstate New York. Tourist trade was lively. Four days before the Whitney, Laurin had Turcotte work the colt a half mile, and 5000 persons showed up early in the morning at the racetrack to watch him. Never had so many people come to see a horse work out. Penny was getting letters from New Englanders saying that they were planning their vacations around seeing him in the Whitney. The race itself looked like a soft touch, but it wasn’t. Trainer H. Allen Jerkens had his chestnut Onion ready to run the race of his life, and that was all that was needed to defeat an ailing Secretariat.

Running well out from the rail for most of the trip, Secretariat tracked the pacesetters to the far turn. When Turcotte set him down, he never fired—certainly not as he had fired in the Triple Crown races that spring. He appeared dull, and he ran dully, without the punch he had at Pimlico and Churchill Downs. He and Onion hooked in the stretch, with Secretariat on the rail, but the red horse couldn’t get by him in the drive, and in the final yards Onion pulled away to beat him by a length. The next day Secretariat was running a temperature. He was in and out of training for the rest of August. Secretariat’s veterinarian, Mark Girard, said that he was probably incubating a virus prior to the race.

Laurin had him walk for several days at a time. He began to recover slowly at the end of August, and Laurin worked him for the first time on August 30, sending him five-eighths of a mile in 1:00
3
/
5
. He was not training well.

Time was running out for the Marlboro Cup. Secretariat was to face the finest racehorses in America. The match race had been expanded since the Phillip Morris Company had announced it in July. Not only had Secretariat lost in the Whitney, Riva Ridge had also lost in a turf race at Saratoga. That meant a match race would be between two horses who had both finished second in their last starts. So the two-horse match race was abandoned, and the field was thrown open to all. Now it included Riva Ridge and Key to the Mint, champions Cougar II and Kennedy Road and the winner of the Travers Stakes, Annihilate ’Em, as well as Onion and Secretariat.

Laurin worked Secretariat seven-eighths in 1:24
4
/
5
, an unsatisfactory work at Belmont Park on September 3, and then sent him a mile in 1:37 four days later, still unsatisfactory. Riva Ridge was training more sharply for the Marlboro, and for a while it seemed that Secretariat wouldn’t make it. His last major drill was scheduled for September 12, the Wednesday before the Saturday of the race. There, Laurin put the zinger into him, the sharpener on which he always thrived. With Turcotte aboard, the colt raced five-eighths in 0:57, one of the fastest workouts in New York all year, and galloped out six furlongs in 1:08
4
/
5
, just a fifth of a second off the track record for that distance. That was all Lucien needed.

“I think he’s back,” Lucien said. He returned dancing to the barn. Though elated with the move, Laurin also wished publicly that he had just one more week to get him ready. He had been forced to drive four workouts into him in two weeks. They would have ruined an ordinary horse, but Secretariat improved off of each one and came to the Marlboro almost as fit as he was for the Kentucky Derby. Turcotte knew Secretariat was back, and it was only a question of how far away he was from his peak. Given the choice of riding either Secretariat or Riva Ridge, he chose the red horse.

“I think you picked the wrong horse,” said Penny.

“No. I might have picked the wrong day, but not the wrong horse,” Turcotte replied.

He was the old Secretariat on the day of the Marlboro Cup, though Andrew Beyer would maintain he was not as sharp as he was for any of the Triple Crown races. With Turcotte snugging down the backstretch, with Onion racing on the lead through a quarter mile in 0:22
3
/
5
and a half mile in 0:45
3
/
5
, jockey Eddie Maple on Riva Ridge just outside of him, Secretariat was bounding along with his neck bowed. As they came to the pole midway of the turn, Riva Ridge drove to the front through six furlongs in a sparkling 1:09
1
/
5
. Onion was still on the rail, Riva Ridge outside of him. Turcotte let out a notch on the reins, and Secretariat rushed to Riva Ridge’s side. Turcotte was ecstatic with the move.

“They were a field of champions and he was just toying with them,” said Turcotte.

Turning for home, ranging on the outside, Turcotte let the red horse roll. Riva Ridge could not resist. Secretariat went by him quickly and pulled away through the lane, opening two lanes at the eighth pole through a mile in a sensational 1:33, by three-fifths of a second the fastest mile ever run at Belmont Park. He opened three and a half lengths at the wire, racing the mile and a eighth in 1:45
2
/
5
, lowering the world’s record by four-fifths of a second.

Riva Ridge was second, two lengths in front of Cougar II.

On went the campaign. Laurin pointed Riva Ridge for the one-and-a-half-mile Woodward Stakes September 29, two weeks later, and he aimed Secretariat for the Man o’ War Stakes at a mile and a half on the turf course at Belmont Park. Obviously preparing Secretariat for the grass race, he sent him over the turf at Belmont Park on September 21 in a leisurely 0:48
3
/
5
for a half mile, just to let him get used to it. Four days later, still aiming for the Man o’ War on October 8, Laurin let Secretariat go a mile on the grass, this time in 1:38, for Secretariat a casual mile compared with that drill for the Belmont Stakes last June in 1:34
4
/
5
. Then, three days later, Laurin entered both Secretariat and Riva Ridge in the Woodward. The intent was to run Riva Ridge if the track was fast, Secretariat if the track came up sloppy. Riva Ridge could not handle an off track. As fate would have it, it rained the night before the race, and the track was a sea of mud. Laurin then scratched Riva Ridge, and he sent a more vulnerable Secretariat in his place. Secretariat had not been training seriously for the Woodward—he had just gone that easy half mile and an easy mile, both on the grass. More, he was not given the zinger that was a prelude to all his greatest races as a three-year-old. Laurin had broken the pattern. Secretariat had been thrown into the breach to substitute for his stablemate. Trainer Allen Jerkens, who had brought Onion to the Whitney Stakes and was regarded as the most brilliant of all trainers of America, had the four-year-old colt Prove Out ready to run the greatest race of his life.

Secretariat set the pace for most of the way, racing through a half mile in 0:50 and the three-quarters in a casual 1:13
2
/
5
. Jockey Jorge Velasquez, riding Prove Out, stalked Secretariat to the turn for home and then drove to him with a burst of speed that swept them into the lead through the straight. Tiring through the stretch, Secretariat couldn’t catch him, and Prove Out opened a length and a half at the eighth pole and almost five lengths at the wire in 2:25
4
/
5
for the mile and a half, almost two seconds slower than Secretariat’s track record for the distance.

Secretariat was blowing heavily when he came back to the unsaddling area. “He just got a little tired,” said Turcotte, as he dismounted.

It was the last time the colt would ever lose. Lucien went back to the old pattern for the Man o’ War Stakes. Six days after the Woodward, on the Friday before the Monday of the race, he boosted Turcotte aboard for the zinger. It was one of the fastest workouts ever seen on any turf course.

The splits were startling. He went the opening eighth in 0:11 and the second eighth in 0:11
2
/
5
, giving Secretariat a quarter in 0:22
2
/
5
. They drove another eighth in 0:11
4
/
5
and another in a sensational 0:10
4
/
5
, giving him a half mile in 0:45, and a final eighth in 0:11
4
/
5
for five-eighths in 0:56
4
/
5
, only four-fifths off the world’s record for the distance on the grass. He went out the last eighth in 0:12
1
/
5
, giving him three-quarters in 1:09. So Secretariat was ready once again, and this time to race the best grass horse in America at a mile and a half, the four-year-old handicap star Tentam. Secretariat carried 121 pounds, 5 pounds less than the older Tentam.