SECRETARIAT TRIPLE CROWN FORM BLOODHORSE

1973

SECRETARIAT Resumption of a Legend The Blood-Horse, May 14, 1973

SECRETARIAT Bold Ruler—Somethingroyal,

by Princequillo BREEDER: Meadow Stud (Va) OWNER: Meadow Stable TRAINER: Lucien Laurin Compiled a record of 16-3-1 in 21 starts with earnings of $1,316,808 in two seasons of racing » At 2 won the Sanford, Hopeful, Futu-

rity, Laurel Futurity, and Garden State » At 3 won the Bay Shore (gr. III)

and Gotham (gr. II) before the Triple Crown, and the (Arlington) Invitational, Marlboro Cup, Man o’ War (gr. I), and Canadian International (Can-II) after » Set time records for the Kentucky

Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes » Champion at 2 and 3; Horse of the

Year 1972-73; the first horse to win an Eclipse Award as Horse of the Year at 2 » Nicknamed “Big Red,” the same

name given to Man o’ War, to whom he is often compared

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BY EDWARD L. BOWEN

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en A. Jones won a Kentucky Derby with Lawrin, a horse he brought up to Kentucky after a Florida winter campaign. It was 1938, and the move set a trend. Jones’ winning five more Derby renewals in the next 14 years lent considerable reinforcement to the idea Lawrin had raised, the idea that the way to fit a 3-year-old for 10 first-Saturday-inMay furlongs is to run him in Florida or California during the winter, and run him hard.

When Ben A.’s son Jimmy took over officially for Calumet Farm, he trained like his father had. Jimmy ran Iron Liege nine times at three and Tim Tam 10 times at three before their Derbys, and he won back-to-back renewals.

Trends change hard. Once started, once ingrained, they are apt to sweep over exceptions and remain intact. When Needles won the Derby off three races, and Tomy Lee won it off four, and Chateaugay won it off three, there were no ripples in the stream. After all, each had had at least one start in Florida or California, and it was not always the trainers’ intentions to restrict their racing, so severely; also, Candy Spots, in Chateaugay’s year, came up to the Derby off just three races—unbeaten he was—and he suffered his first loss.

Thus, there were doubts expressed last year when Lucien Laurin mapped out a pre-Derby campaign of only three races for the 1971 champion 2-year-old, Riva Ridge. Some had doubts about the plan, but it worked. There were doubts expressed this year when Laurin announced a change of plans and said the 1972 juvenile champion, Secretariat, probably would have the same number of pre-Derby races at three but that the geography would be different. Whereas Riva Ridge had prepped in Florida and Kentucky, Secretariat would race only in New York before shipping to Churchill Downs. Some had doubts about the plan, but it worked.

Ben A.’s schedules were right for his horses, Jimmy’s were right for his, and Lucien’s have been right for his. As Darrell Royal said when other football coaches started imitating his

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BLOOD-HORSE PHOTO LIBRARY

Secretariat blazed to victory in the Kentucky Derby with the hard-trying Sham in second.

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The final time of 1:592⁄5 cut three-fifths of a second from Northern Dancer’s mark set in 1964.

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TONY LEONARD

SECRETARIAT

Secretariat’s Kentucky Derby captured the public’s imagination during a difficult period in U.S. history.

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Wishbone-T football formation: “It’s not my formation you want. What you want is my fullback.”

to point for the Flamingo. He later announced a change of plans, saying the horse’s return to racing would be put off until mid-March. Although Riva Ridge had won the Derby after spending more than a month in Kentucky, Secretariat was due to arrive at Churchill Downs less than two weeks before the big race.

Secretariat’s first two races, the Bay Shore and the Gotham, went well. He showed his old power, his kick, and even demonstrated a previously unseen versatility, going to the front about midway through the mile of the Gotham. He equaled the track record for a mile in the Gotham, was said to have gone out an additional two furlongs swift enough to complete 11⁄4 miles in less than two minutes, and was hailed as perhaps a superhorse. Even veteran horsemen were so impressed that Secretariat was mentioned in the same sentence as Man o’ War—and no blasphemy was intended.

For Lucien Laurin, however, success does not come smoothly. He has a way of winning out in the end—winning the Derby with Riva Ridge, winning the Belmont after losing the Preakness, winding up with the Horse of the Year even after Riva Ridge lost the 3-year-old championship to Key to

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ucien Laurin is a little white-haired ex-jockey with eyes that give him away. They show virtually uncontainable excitement at winning a major race, and inconsolable sorrow and bewilderment at losing. He is an emotional man, lavish in praise of his horse and rider after a win, likely to criticize the rider after a loss. He has lashed Ron Turcotte several times for his rides on Riva Ridge, when the horse lost, but it was a letting off of steam, an expression of frustration.

A more lasting expression—of confidence—is that he never has taken the rider off Riva Ridge, or Secretariat.

Laurin is not one of the school that says “if you win, act as though you are used to it; if you lose, act as though you enjoy it.” He leaves that to the owner—who can bring it off remarkably well and stays down in the pit, the sweat and blood of competition on his brow. Laurin cares intensely, cares about winning races, cares about winning championships, and he does not hide his feelings.

A native of French Canada, Laurin came around the Paces when he was a school boy—or at least when he was supposed to be. He started betting on horses while working in a drugstore, then went to Delormier Park near Montreal and began working for Rosaire LaCroix. As a rider, mostly on the Quebec and Ontario circuits, he won 161 of 1,445 races from 1930 through 1942.

Weight turned him to training. He won some races at Pascoag, and Wheeling, and Havana, then moved up to the mile tracks of New England. Working hard, Laurin graduated eventually to the New York tracks, and he showed a deft hand with the good horse—something he never had been around much before. He won a 2-year-old filly championship for Reginald Webster with Quill in 1958, won a Belmont for Webster with Amberoid in 1966, and took over the Meadow Stable horses when his son, Roger, left that post to train for the Phipps family in 1971. Laurin trained Riva Ridge to be champion 2-year- old of 1971 and to win the Derby and Belmont Stakes last year. He has trained 31 stakes winners.

As Riva Ridge lost his sharpness and fell back in Horseof-the-Year competition, Meadow Stable’s younger Secretariat surged ahead. A powerful chestnut Bold Ruler colt, he began slowly in his races, made an overland loop on the turn—often losing many lengths—and had such races as the Hopeful, the Futurity, the Champagne, the Garden State sewed up in the upper stretch. Although he was disqualified for interference in the Champagne, he was uncontested as champion 2-year-old, was weighted at 129 pounds on the Experimental Free Handicap, and was Horse of the Year.

Laurin took the colt to Florida, where he was expected

Groom Eddie Sweat cared for Secretariat during his racing career.

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the Mint—but there are tacks sounded like he must be beating thrown in his path. up his help, but he was just The Wood Memorial two talking. He’s got a temper. It weeks before the Derby was to would not take much for him to be Secretariat’s final pre-classic swing, and he’d kill Lucien.” race, at 11⁄8 miles his longest race Martin vowed to run a speed to that time. He was meeting horse, Knightly Dawn, in the Sigmund Sommer’s Sham, Derby, but after the half-brother convincing winner of the Santa to Proud Clarion ran poorly in Anita Derby. Trainer Pancho the Stepping Stone Purse he was Martin had sent Sham to the taken out of the Derby and inEast with the specified purpose stead won the Twin Spires Purse of facing Secretariat in the on Derby Day. Martin and LauWood Memorial, and so good rin agreed on one thing: throw was his colt that he expressed out the Wood Memorial. Sham’s some confidence of winning. trainer was upset with the ride The showdown was obJorge Velasquez had given his scured by an incredible scenario horse. Although he tried not to involving racing journalism and jump too hard on the rider, his Martin’s and Sommer’s reaction disgust showed. Two days before thereto. Daily Racing Form the Kentucky Derby, he went columnist Charles Hatton, one over the race again. of the first to hail Secretariat as “If (Laffit) Pincay had been something super, insinuated in a on the horse (as usual) in the Penny Tweedy basked in her role as Secretariat’s column that the running of two Wood, he’d have been in front owner. stablemates with Sham conat the half-mile pole…I don’t stituted something other than know why the rider ran the race sportsmanship, and he quoted like he did; only he knows that.”

Laurin as saying “the only way they can beat him (SecreWhat had Velasquez said after the race? tariat) is to steal it.”

“He said the colt was trying to lug in. He never lugged Laurin still has his Quebec accent, but he has mastered in before, he used to lug out.” race track talk pretty well, and “steal” means to win by Martin spit out the phrase again, “lugged in,” and opening a long early lead with a false pace. From the condismissed it. text of the article, however, Martin interpreted the remark as accusative in nature, quickly declared his friendship on Turcotte was the natural scapegoat of some with Laurin to have come aground, and scratched Knightpost-Wood criticism—any time a jockey loses on ly Dawn and Beautiful Music. a super-horse it is said to be his fault, even if the Laurin had an entry, too, but the horses were owned jockey is Lester Piggott. He did not think he rode a bad by different stables—Meadow Stable had Secretariat, race, saying repeatedly that the horse simply did not run Edwin Whittaker had Angle Light. With Sham’s speed as he usually does, but he did offer to shoulder the blame. horses out of it, Angle Light stole an early lead, set a slow “A few days before the Wood, I was supposed to work pace, and lasted over Sham. Secretariat did little running him a mile in about 1:38. There was a loose horse on and finished third. the track, and some green horses, and I was very careful.

Excuses, accusations, promises of redemption reverberThe work was much slower than Lucien wanted, 1:42, so ated as the Derby approached. Laurin refused to be drawn maybe I messed it up at the last minute. Then Lucien’s into a verbal combat; probably a wise choice, according to father-in-law died, and he had to go to Florida.”

George Handy, who had intended to start Impecunious in Despite his Wood Memorial loss, Secretariat (Bold the Derby before the Arkansas Derby winner was injured: Ruler–Somethingroyal, by Princequillo) was regarded the “Pancho can be just talking to you, and you think he’s likely favorite for the Derby. He and entrymate Angle shouting. I heard him the other day in the barn, and it Light opened at even money. Secretariat, official winner

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in nine of 12 previous starts and earner of $520,172, had the most impressive record, but the Derby field was a good one: Sham (Pretense–Sequoia, by Princequillo), owned by Sigmund Sommer, had won five of 10 races and earned $149,808. He was purchased last year for $200,000 from the estate of his breeder, A, B. Hancock Jr. Our Native (Exclusive Native–Our Jackie, by Crafty Admiral), had won 11 of 23 races, including the Flamingo Stakes, and had earned $225,462. Owned by Mrs. M. J. Pritchard, Dr. E. W. Thomas, and by trainer Bill Resseguet Jr., Our Native was among the most consistent colts in the race, having failed to place only twice in nine starts at three.

Forego (Forli–Lady Golconda, by Hasty Road), owned

by Mrs. Libbie Rice Farish’s and Mrs. E. H. Gerry’s Lazy F Ranch, had won three of seven starts and earned $44,055.

Standing 16 hands, three inches, the gelding had been unplaced as favorite in the Blue Grass Stakes after being second in the Florida Derby. During Derby week he worked five furlongs in 57 seconds, and trainer Sherrill Ward said, “I never had a horse prepare himself for a race as well as he has. He’s been eating everything, drinks a lot of water, and he wants to run. He may not be enough horse, but I’ll tell you one thing, his only chance for improvement is age.”

Restless Jet (Restless Wind–Sittin’ on Ready, by Endeavour II), owned by Elkwood Farm, had won three of 14 races, including the Everglades Stakes, and earned $70,597. He closed to be second behind Shecky Greene in the Stepping Stone Purse.

Shecky Greene (Noholme II–Lester’s Pride, by Model Cadet), owned by Joseph Kellman, had won nine of 13 races and earned $201,127. Trainer Lou Goldfine considered him a sprinter, or miler, and advised Kellman not to run him, but when the owner said to run, Goldfine predicted the horse would set the pace.

Navajo (Grey Dawn II–Doublene, by Double Jay), owned

by A. J. Stevenson and Ray Stump, had won five of 15 races and earned $52,758. He was second to Leo’s Pisces, ahead of Angle Light, in the nine-furlong Louisiana Derby.

Royal and Regal (Vaguely Noble–Native Street, by Native Dancer), owned by A. I. Savin, had won six of 14 races, including the Florida Derby, and earned $169,205. Trainer Jimmy Croll has used a bar shoe on the colt since he suffered a hoof injury in Florida.

My Gallant (Gallant Man–Predate, by Nashua), owned

by Arthur I. Appleton and also trained by Goldfine, had won four of 12 races and earned $86,496. He appeared to be improving and had won the Blue Grass Stakes in his last start.

Angle Light (Quadrangle–Pilot Light, by Jet Action), owned by Edwin Whittaker, had won four of 14 races,

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including the Wood Memorial, and earned $191,956. On Friday before the Derby, he bled slightly from the nostrils after a work.

Gold Bag (Bagdad–Falling in Love, by Blue Prince), owned by Randy Sechrest and Dr. Milton Gottdank, had won three of 16 starts, including the Coronado Stakes, and had earned $34,680. He was purchased during the winter from Mrs. Laurin, who bred the colt.

Twice a Prince (Prince John–Double Zero II, by Never Say Die), owned by Elmendorf Farm, had won two of six races and earned $17,390. After he reared in the gate and delayed the start, there was some emotional comment that he did not belong in the race, but many Derby starters in the past have had lesser credentials than Twice a Prince. The well-bred colt had won a New York allowance race over nine furlongs and had run second to Shecky Greene in the Fountain of Youth Stakes.

Warbucks (Seaneen–What a Lark, by T. V. Lark), owned

by E. E. Elzemeyer, had won four of 10 races and earned $47,638. Bill Hartack, rider of five Derby winners, was aboard. The colt had dead-heated for third in the Blue Grass in his last start.

Secretariat and Angle Light drifted out to 3-2 by post time. Sham was second choice at 5-2, followed by the Shecky Greene-My Gallant entry at 6-1, and Warbucks at 7-1.

Laurin and Turcotte had expressed confidence that Secretariat would fire in the Derby, that the Wood was a fluke—a bad race thrown in by a good horse—but both admitted that, deep down, the Wood had them worried. Was it a race to throw out, or would he do it again?

Question over the horse’s ability to stay the Derby trip of 10 furlongs generally centered over his being a son of Bold Ruler, but there was a question, too, of conformation.

Horatio Luro, who got the short, blocky Northern Dancer ready to stay 10 furlongs in two minutes in the 1964 Derby, agreed that a horse of Secretariat’s “blocky” build would not be his first choice in selecting a 11⁄4-mile horse, although he expressed confidence that this particular horse could go the distance.

The averages and percentages of the breed, the generalizations of experience, may point one way, but a great horse is in essence a freak, and the real question about Secretariat before the Derby was not whether one of his breeding or build would “figure” to get the distance, but whether that one individual, marvelous looking colt was truly a standout.

He is.

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he start was messy. John Campo, trainer of Twice a Prince, did not want an assistant starter for his colt; Pancho Martin did. An assistant took hold of Twice a

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Secretariat came to the leader, his handsome head held low, heavy muscles grouping and stretching beneath the glistening coat.

Turcotte reached back and hit him three times, but it was probably reflex action—no more necessary than a football coach shouting “Come On,” to a team at the five-yard line with 30 seconds to go.

Prince, and the colt reared, lodging one leg in one starting stall and another leg in another stall.

Don Brumfield, rider of Our Native, in an adjacent stall, later showed marks on his saddle, where Twice a Prince had pawed into his stall. He said Our Native “got upset when Twice a Prince acted up. This was enough to make him harder to settle down, but he did settle down by the turn, and I had no other trouble.”

Our Native had to be led out through the front of the stall, and he is the sort of colt that believes the opening of a gate in front of him means “go.”

Pincay on Sham asked for help before the start, he said, but he got none. The colt banged his head on the gate, loosening two teeth. The blow knocked him off balance and he grabbed a quarter. He also apparently cut Navajo on a leg as he came out.

Shecky Greene and Walter Blum came flying from stall No. 11 and quickly assumed the lead everyone had expected them to. Turcotte let Secretariat run his own race. He came out slowly, as he usually does, from post position 10, cut rather abruptly toward the rail in the opening strides, and settled down in last place in the run by the stands.

Shecky Greene, which had cooked his field with six furlongs in 1:092⁄5 a week earlier in the Stepping Stone, went less torridly in the Derby. He clocked six furlongs in 1:114⁄5, as had Riva Ridge in his wire-to-wire act last year.

Secretariat began to pick up horses, on the outside, on the first turn, and once he straightened for the backstretch the question over whether he would fire was resolved.

He began a long, steady, yet spectacular run that carried him quickly to the middle of the pack. The question then became would he stay.

Pincay had Sham in contention from soon after the start, and he did not let Shecky Greene—dangerous if he stole too long a lead, despite his reputation as a sprinter— get out of touch. Sham was in second position after six

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furlongs and went after Shecky rounding the far turn. Pincay later said, “The only thing I did wrong was to move a little bit sooner than I would have liked.” His horse quickly rushed by Shecky Greene, although the latter hung on gamely and still was third at the eighth-mile pole.

As Sham moved into command easily, Secretariat was continuing his looping run on the outside. He was a running horse, and suddenly as they straightened away for the stretch run it became the two-horse race predicted for the Wood Memorial. Turcotte drove the favorite to the flank of Sham; he felt he could go on by, but was not sure. “Riders like Pincay or Baeza are so cool that they always will have some horse left, so you never know for sure what is going to happen until you challenge them.”

Secretariat came to the leader, his handsome head held low, heavy muscles grouping and stretching beneath the glistening coat. Turcotte reached back and hit him three times, but it was probably reflex action—no more necessary than a football coach shouting “Come On,” to a team at the five-yard line with 30 seconds to go. Secretariat had his blood up, the Wood Memorial was behind him, and he had it in his mind to pass Sham. This was no easy thing.

Sham is a good one, and he justified Martin’s respect for him. He dug in, under the cracking whip which Pincay brandished in his left hand. Despite his mishap at the start, Sham was going to take it to the last, and he probably needed the whip no more than did Secretariat.

In the final furlongs of the 99th Kentucky Derby, two good, big horses met eye to eye. Secretariat was the tougher.

He had his horse measured by about the three-sixteenth pole, and although Sham—the taste of blood in his mouth—held on with courage, Secretariat rather quickly drew out. The power which had carried him wide on the turn held its momentum as he and Sham ran a classic in a

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non-American way—the last part faster than the first part.

Toward the end, with Sham a beaten but fighting colt, Turcotte put the whip away and looked back once over his right shoulder, a token check perhaps to see if someone had run out onto the track, as two boys did prior to the race. There hardly seemed need to wonder if another horse was mounting a challenge against the big red colt hurtling him to the finish line.

The final time of 1:592⁄5 cut three-fifths of a second from Northern Dancer’s Derby mark set in 1964. Secretariat won by 21⁄2 lengths from Sham, which also thus matched or shaded the former record. Sham had eight lengths over the doughty Our Native, which held third by a half-length over Forego. The latter got into tight quarters and smacked the rail at about the half-mile pole, but continued a brief rally that put him in contention nearing the stretch.

Secretariat earned $155,050, a record for the Derby, boosting his earnings to $675,222. He stands 39th among all-time earners.

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inutes after the Kentucky Derby, champagne flowed on one end of Barn 42, blood at the other. Secretariat came out of the race unmarked, but Sham bled profusely from the mouth. One of Martin’s grooms sickened at the sight, grew faint, and was carried to a tackroom.

“I cannot tell if it bothered him,” Martin said. “I know if I lost a tooth, it would bother me. He ran his race, and I make no excuses.

We need no excuses. I beat him once and he beat me once. When he beats me three out of four, I’ll call him great.”

Sham arrived at the barn with two teeth dangling by a thin strip of his gum, and the bleeding was heavy. Martin later said it took “three-quarters of an hour to stop the bleeding and cauterize the wound. He was a very game horse to run as well as he did.”

Martin said he would try Secretariat again in the Preakness, and Bill Resseguet indicated there was a strong chance Our Native also would run in the second race of the Triple

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Crown, although he was vanned to Arlington Park.

Restless Jet suffered a fractured ankle in the right foreleg and probably will be sidelined for the rest of the season, and the trainers of the other runners apparently are headed in some direction other than that of the Preakness.

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inning the Kentucky Derby is accomplished by the few, winning consecutive runnings by virtually no one. Meadow Stable, the Virginia farm founded by the late Christopher T. Chenery and in recent years operated by a daughter, Mrs. John B. Tweedy, became the fourth breeder and third owner with consecutive Derby winners.

Among breeders, Daniel Swigert bred the 1881 and 1882 winners, Hindoo and Apollo, respectively; Col. E. R. Bradley bred the 1932 winner, Burgoo King, in partnership with H. N. Davis and bred the 1933 winner, Brokers Tip, alone; Calumet Farm twice turned out back-to-back winners, breeding and owning the 1948 and 1949 winners, Citation and Ponder, plus the 1957 and 1958 winners, Iron Liege and Tim Tam. Among owners, Col. Bradley and Calumet Farm raced their winning couplets mentioned above.

Laurin followed Ben A. Jones (Citation and Ponder), Jimmy Jones (Iron Liege and Tim Tam), and H. J. Thompson (Burgoo King and Brokers Tip) as the fourth trainer to saddle consecutive winners.

Ron Turcotte, the New Brunswick native and former lumberjack, became the first jockey in 71 years to score official back-to-back victories.

Isaac Murphy was the first consecutive winner, piloting the 1890 and 1891 winners, Riley and Kingman. The second, and only other before Turcotte, was Jimmy Winkfield, who won in 1901 and 1902 on His Eminence and Alan-a-Dale. Bobby Ussery had the thrill of riding back-to-back winners, piloting Proud Clarion in 1967 and Dancer’s Image in 1968, but the latter winner eventually was disqualified.

Turcotte’s first experience in the Derby was far from a double victory. He finished third on Tom Rolfe and was criticized for his ride, but he came back to win the Preakness with that colt. His other mounts have included Shuvee, Damascus, Northern Dancer, Summer Guest, and Fort Marcy, in addition to Riva Ridge and Secretariat. Ironically, he was aboard Riva Ridge’s rival, Key to the Mint, when the 1972 champion 3-year-old won the Excelsior Handicap in his first start of 1973.

The horse that completed the doubles for breeder-owner, trainer, and rider—and for groom Eddie Sweat and exercise rider Charlie Davis—now becomes 1973’s hope for a Triple Crown. Like Riva Ridge before him, he has a knack for the superlative. He was assigned the highest Experimental weight in eight years, he was named Horse of the Year at two, he matched the Aqueduct mile record in the Gotham, and followed his stablemate as the second 2-year-old champion since Needles (1956) and second Experimental topweight since Middleground (1950) to fulfill their juvenile promise by winning a Kentucky Derby. In the 99th running, he mowed down a genuine Derby horse, drew out and somehow left the impression at the finish that it was not that tough, that he had done a record 10 furlongs and was finishing in hand.

Some horse, Secretariat.

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The Fastest Closing Half-Mile The Blood-Horse, May 14, 1973

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ime is of essence, Colonel Elsworth observed, in construction contracts and of scant significance in racing matters.

Now, Colonel, if you have come in here to put down Secretariat’s record performance in the Kentucky Derby, you are confronting an adverse witness who will help your case not one whit.

“Oh, my no,” responded Colonel Elsworth, “there is no deprecating Secretariat’s smashing race. He put in a run beginning at the six-furlong pole the like of which I had never seen before, picked up his horses easy as pie, raced wide on the last turn and, save for three taps there entering the stretch, did it all on his own in magnificent fashion, completely devastating a genuinely good horse in Sham.

“Nothing anyone says can take anything away from such a

Time was one of several magazines to put Secretariat on the cover.

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performance. I take issue, however with people who would measure the greatness of this performance in fractions of a second.”

Well, Secretariat did cut three-fifths of a second off Northern Dancer’s two-minute record for the Kentucky Derby. And he did it with the fastest final half-mile in 99 runnings of the race, :462⁄5, shading :231⁄5 for the last quarter-mile.

Only three previous winners of the Kentucky Derby ever shaded 24 seconds for the last quarter: Whirlaway, Ponder, and Proud Clarion.

“Lessee now. I suppose you figure that by counting a length as equal to one-fifth of a second, add the number of lengths the winner is behind the pace at the quarter pole, and subtract that number—in fifths of a second—from the pace time for the final quarter.”

Exactly.

“That is what I contest,” responded the Colonel. “The exactness. For one thing, a length does not equal a fifth of a second: If in fact all horses measured from nose to tail root 10 feet—which of course is not the case with Forego nor Northern Dancer—we could figure there were 132 “lengths” in a quarter-mile. For a 10-foot length to equal one-fifth of a second, the quarter-mile would have to be run in :262⁄5, a half-mile in :524⁄5, the mile in 1:453⁄5—which is the kind of race-horse time in which nobody wins a mile race.

In Dr. Fager’s 1:321⁄5 mile, one-fifth of a second equaled 1.15 lengths, or a length equaled 11.5 feet, whichever you prefer.

“So when you suggest that a length may be equated with a fifth of a second, I must protest the exactness of the suggestion. But let it pass. I will presume for the moment that a length does equal one-fifth of a second, and ask you if you really believe the chart caller can ascertain with accuracy the relative margins of horses turning the last corner at Churchill Downs from his position a quarter-mile down the stretch.”

Well, it is the best estimate available.

“In that case, I suppose we can estimate that if Secretariat were indeed a half-length behind Sham when he passed the quarter pole, and the time elapsed between Sham’s nose reaching the quarterpole and Secretariat’s nose reaching the finish line was :231⁄5, that Secretariat shaded that time by a half·length or 1⁄10th of a second.”

That is the conclusion we have reached. By

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the same means, we have estimated that Whirlaway, two lengths and a head back of the pace at the quarter pole, raced the last quarter in less than :233⁄5; Ponder, 91⁄2 lengths off the pace, closed with a quarter shading :234⁄5; Proud Clarion, 31⁄2 lengths and a head back of the pace, shaded 24 seconds; while Northern Dancer, which had the lead at the quarter pole, set the previous 2:00 Derby record with a flat 24-second last-quarter run.

“These were the fastest final quarters run in the Kentucky Derby?” No, Sham had to shave :234⁄5 to stay within 2½ lengths of Secretariat, and Hill Rise also came up with a :234⁄5 run which got him to within a neck of Northern Dancer at the end.

“Well, if you are going to consider losers, you must include Dike. Using your five lengths to a second, you can figure Dike’s final quarter as shading :234⁄5 when he finished a neck and half-length behind Majestic Prince and Arts and Letters.”

Dapper Dan in 1965 turned in the most spectacular finish prior to Secretariat’s. He was dead last at the half-mile pole, 12 lengths off the pace, and turned in a final half-mile in 47 seconds, a final quarter shading :232⁄5, and missed Lucky Debonair by a neck.

About this time, Edward Bowen, a packrat of memorabilia, stuck his head in the door. “You guys asking about the fastest final quarter-mile in the Kentucky Derby?” Not really.

“Gay Bit,” Bowen announced and immediately retreated.

Gay Bit! What is that? “Oh, yes, Col. Phil Chinn bred that horse, by Gay Monarch out of a Ladkin mare, about 30 years ago,” Colonel Elsworth recalled. “Sold him to Bryant Ott, who won a bunch of races at two and then resold him to Bruce Livie, the Maryland racing commissioner. Gay Bit beat Armed at Havre de Grace just after the war, but I don’t remember his ever having run in the Kentucky Derby.”

A check of Kentucky Derby charts revealed that Gay Bit did in fact run in the Kentucky Derby. He finished sixth behind Pensive in 1944, which in itself does not suggest a whirlwind finish.

The chart of the race, however, indicates that Gay Bit was in last place at the quarter pole, 24 lengths behind Broadcloth, Stir Up, and Pensive, each heads apart after a mile in 1:381⁄5. Coming from 16th to sixth, Gay Bit made up 171⁄2 lengths, which would mean that he had to run the final quarter in less than :223⁄5!

“I’ll make a deal with you,” Colonel Elsworth said.

“You take Gay Bit’s record finish, and all the length-second equations, and all other time records you want—and I’ll take Secretariat coming down that stretch under a handride, with no watch on him.

“You take the figures, the records; I’ll take just the won-

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derful sight of that big red horse reaching out, so easily—and we’ll see who retains the richest memory of a great horse.”

Kent Hollingsworth

At the Threshold of Giants The Blood-Horse, May 28, 1973

BY EDWARD L. BOWEN Thirty-four hours before the 1972 Preakness, Upper Case stood in the end stall of Pimlico’s special barn for classic runners.

His head was thrust over the webbing, swinging left and right like a caged polar bear—a brutish youngster champing to prove his prowess. In the next stall stood a less taking colt, his stablemate, Riva Ridge, the Derby winner. Riva Ridge stood quietly in the deep straw bedding of his two-week home—a man proven and therefore not concerned with show.

Lucien Laurin and Mrs. Penny Tweedy stood outside the barn. It was less than two weeks since Riva Ridge—their 2-yearold champion of 1971—had routed his field in the Kentucky Derby. On this day, they had both horses in the Preakness. Riva Ridge had breezed a half-mile splendidly during the week. He was ready. Upper Case was to have his turn in a few minutes— his chance to rush three furlongs. He looked marvelous, but in the end he stayed home. “I don’t need him,” said Laurin, his trainer, when he later announced he would start only one of the Meadow Stable colts in the Preakness, second leg of the Triple Crown. No, he would not need Upper Case. He had Riva Ridge, a colt which since the previous summer he thought might be a “superhorse.” He did not need the other colt, winner of two $100,000 races. He was in a beautiful spot.

Thirty-four hours before the 1973 Preakness, last week, Secretariat flicked his ears forward and looked out of the end stall of Pimlico’s special barn. The chestnut colt was Meadow Stable’s 1972 champion 2-year-old—and Horse of the Year—and he was Meadow Stable’s 1973 Kentucky Derby winner. There have not been many horses like Secretariat. He is between Upper Case and Riva Ridge in temperament, an Upper Case-plus in build. Friday before the Preakness, Mrs. Tweedy stood outside the barn, while Laurin herded jockey Ron Turcotte into a corner tackroom for some secret conference on the morning’s plans. Mrs. Tweedy, who since her late father fell ill several years ago has managed the historic Meadow stud and stable, was relaxed on the cold morning, and she talked blithely to reporters: “How do you like my heavy jacket and Palm Beach slacks?”

She was asked, again, of the progress of the 2-year-old half-brothers to Secretariat and Riva Ridge—already 100th

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SECRETARIAT Derby candidates by guilt of association. “We usually start our 2-year-olds in June or July. They both are breezing impressively, but when they go together Capito (Riva Ridge’s half-brother by Sir Gaylord) pulls away from Capital Asset (Secretariat’s half-brother by First Landing) by a couple of lengths.”

She was asked, again, if it is true that Riva Ridge is her favorite horse. “Well, it is true that Riva Ridge is a very lovable colt, but I am warming to Secretariat very quickly.”

She was asked, in jest, it was presumed, if she, as an experienced rider, ever had felt a compulsion to ride one of her champions. “Oh, I don’t think Lucien would let me—but he did say I could ride the lead pony when we get back to Belmont Park.”

Exercise rider Charlie Davis was astride Secretariat as the big Bold Ruler colt made a couple of turns around the shedrow, but then Turcotte took over. The colt was to gallop almost twice around the mile track, then blow out a quarter-mile. Secretariat wanted to run, not gallop.

“Look, he’s got Ronnie straight up,” said Laurin, as he and Mrs. Tweedy watched from the platform beside the jockey’s room, virtually adjacent to the finish line.

Secretariat plunged on, once around, and then confronted a wall of lesser horses and eased to the inside as he trod through the stretch to prepare for his second trip around.

“He is so big, so large where the saddle fits, that Ronnie really has to lean so far over when he runs,” Mrs. Tweedy had mentioned a few minutes earlier. Turcotte did indeed stretch far over the neck as the powerful colt motored on, his head low as if even at low paces he was preoccupied with covering maximum distance.

At about the three-eighths pole the second time around, Turcotte laboriously pulled the colt gradually to a stop. He walked a few yards on the outside of the turn, as cars swished past a few feet outside the wire-mesh fence, naive to the presence of a $6,080,000 horse to their right.

Turcotte then sent him again, gradually gaining in speed, until at the quarter-mile at last Secretariat got his way. He was allowed to roll along, as he had wanted to all morning. As if in deference to his presence, the other Friday gallopers suddenly cleared away, and the stretch was virtually empty as Secretariat charged past the eighth pole.

On the apron in front of the stands, a worker slammed a metal door against another, stacked on a pickup, unmindful of what was flashing past. The rider of a solitary horse, trotting the wrong way back after an unmemorable work, shouted, “Hey, hold that door!” He, at least, knew what was coming by him.

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Secretariat rushed on past the post, giving the impression, as always, no matter how fast he was going, he would wish more speed.

Laurin, who idly had remarked “it looks like the track comes uphill down there before the eighth pole,” glanced at his watch, and dismissed it: “Twenty-five. Oh, I must have missed it.” Clockers in the stand caught it at :242⁄5, and at :25:1⁄5, but Laurin was not concerned. The move was “just what I wanted. That’s it until 5:40 tomorrow afternoon.”

Later in the morning, Mrs. Tweedy and Laurin and Turcotte attended the Alibi Breakfast, scene the year before of a formal presentation of their first Kentucky Derby trophy. All three were chatty and relaxed, and Turcotte stole the show. Why had Secretariat gone wide in the final turn of the Derby? “We were going so fast by that time that he just skidded around the turn…in measuring his stride (at 24 feet, 11 inches) this week, they noticed that his stride was even on the turns, too.”

Had he hit him more than necessary to win the Derby? “I hit him just about enough, and not too much.”

Laurin noted that he had “been here three times before without winning. If I don’t win tomorrow, you’ve lost a customer.”

Larry Abbundi, Pimlico racing secretary, said that if the Preakness were a handicap instead of being at the classic weight of 126 pounds each, he was afraid Laurin would be sent back to New York by his evaluation of the field: Secretariat, 130 pounds; Derby runner-up Sham, 126; Derby-third Our Native, 118; Ecole Etage, 113; Deadly Dream, 112; Torsion, 107.

Bill Resseguet Jr., trainer and co-owner of Our Native, outlined his strategy as “holding on to Secretariat’s tail, so we at least will be second,” and Buddy Delp, trainer of speed horse Ecole Etage, said that at a crucial stage his horse would be equipped with “high-speed roller skates.”

Secretariat had them scared.

On the day of the 1972 Preakness, groom Eddie Sweat fed Riva Ridge in the morning and later shut the top and bottom doors of the horse’s stall.

“When I shut him up, he goes to the back of the stall, and he doesn’t move until I come to get him for the race.”

On this day, he was wrong. Riva Ridge got mad at the darkness and moved to the front of his stall to push his head against it. The door did not move, and the Derby winner knocked a patch of hair off his forehead.

Outside, it was an ugly day. The rain came down, and the track turned sloppy. It was a dark scene, and tragedy came.

In the race immediately before the Preakness, a horse snapped a leg in the stretch run and stood dazed and helpless in full

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view of the stands, the left foreleg dangling as if no longer a part of the animal.

So soggy was the infield turf course that the saddling of the Preakness runners in front of the stands—a happy tradition of the classic—was declared, and the 3- year-olds were saddled in the enclosed paddock where runners of other races are prepared.

On the morning of the 1973 Preakness Eddie Sweat went into Secretariat’s stall, snapped a shank to the horse’s halter and turned him over to Charlie Davis.

The husky 3-year-old wanted to run, again, but the morning’s schedule called merely for walking under the shedrow. He decided to test it. Midway through the first turn around, Sweat went to the aid of Davis, slipping the chain end of a shank through Secretariat’s mouth. Convinced, Secretariat calmed down and plodded along quietly, save for a moment when he came too quickly upon a horse whose leader had neglected to warn those behind him that he was stopping for a moment.

Sweat piled fresh straw deep in the stall.

Through Secretariat’s walk, his protagonist, Sigmund Sommer’s Sham, stood near the other end of the barn, his stall as usual guarded by plush, maroon theater ropes. Sham walks in icy quiet, his eyes ahead as if transfixed, but once put back into his stall he is apt to reach his head out into the shedrow. In the cool morning, a groom toweled off a trickle of moisture from Sham’s nostrils as he coaxed the horse to the back of his stall, where Sham remained through most of the morning.

Pimlico hosts a party of dinner, drink, and dance on the evening before the Preakness, and Laurin did not arrive at the barn until about eight o’clock on the morning of the race.

“I did everything I could to forget about today,” he said, but he had not long forgotten about the race.

Late in the evening before, he had remembered again the experience of Riva Ridge in the Preakness. Pimlico is renowned for its tight turns, but Laurin believes it is only the first turn that is a problem.

“They go into the turn, and then they hit a little straight, and then another turn,” he said. “Actually, it is two turns there. The other turn is okay. Last year, Riva Ridge lost 10 lengths in that first turn. I may not win tomorrow, but I’ll guarantee you I won’t lose any 10 lengths in the first turn. And I’ll make everyone of them run every step of the way.”

No, he had not forgotten about “today,” not for a minute.

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The 98th Preakness drew only five opponents for Secretariat, and of them Sham was the only supposed danger. The lanky son of Pretense–Sequoia, by Princequillo, had won the Santa Anita Derby, run a close second ahead of Secretariat in the Wood Memorial, and finished 21⁄2 lengths behind the champion in the Kentucky Derby. In pushing Secretariat to a new Derby record of 1:592⁄5 for the 10 furlongs at Churchill Downs, Sham had proven a high-class horse, and he was said to have something in the way of an excuse, since he had banged his head on the gate at the start and knocked loose a pair of teeth.

Our Native (Exclusive Native–Our Jackie, by Crafty Admiral), the tough little Flamingo Stakes winner owned by Mrs. M. .T. Pritchard, Dr. E. W. Thomas, and trainer Resseguet, had finished 101⁄2 lengths behind Secretariat in the Derby. He figured to be third choice for the Preakness, but Marylanders made locally raced Ecole Etage a slight third choice at 11.30-1. Our Native was 11.90-1.

Ecole Etage (Disciplinarian–Sun Heiress, by Sunglow) was the potential Bee Bee Bee. Like the 1972 Preakness winner, he had finished fifth on a tiring course in the Woodlawn Stakes, a race which in retrospect owner William Farish III said probably helped

Secretariat riveted the general public during his Triple Crown campaign.

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SECRETARIAT bring the 1972 Preakness winner to his best form. Ecole Etage won the General George Stakes by eight lengths in February, and he generally had won whenever he was able to establish a clear lead in the early running.

Buckland Farm’s Torsion (Never Bend–Fairway Fun,

by Prince John) was regarded a rank outsider. Mike Ryan, the young girl who is assistant to trainer John Campo, saddled the attractive bay colt. Campo did not attend the race; Mr. and Mrs. Thomas Mellon Evans, the owners, were elsewhere committed; Buckland Farm manager Don Robertson drove up from Middleburg, Va., for the Friday evening party, but went back to attend to such matters at the farm as checking on Sea Saga, in foal to Northern Dancer, and getting the dam of Hoist the Flag in foal. It was not a stable confident of a Preakness upset.

Completing the field was Wide Track Farms’ Deadly Dream (Dead Ahead–Dream Alot, by Mameluke). He had the distinction of having defeated older horses, but he did it in a minor race at Penn National.

Contrasted to his foes, Secretariat (Bold Ruler–Somethingroyal, by Princequillo) had been 2-year-old champion and Horse of the Year in 1972, had won 10 of 13 starts, and had earned $675,222. He had charged from behind to take command in the stretch in most of his races, but he was not locked in by one style. In the Gotham at one mile, he was in front after a half-mile and matched Aqueduct’s track record of 1:332⁄5.

Larry Boyce almost had a starter in the Preakness, but he scratched his The Lark Twist. Pimlico executive Ben Cohen described the sequence: “He put the horse in, for $1,000. Then, he found out Our Native was going, and he wanted out. I said, ‘When you’re in, you’re in.’ So, he scratched the horse. Then, he decided on Friday that he wanted back in, but he already had scratched. So, for $1,000, he got in and then got out.”

Preakness Day was bright and clear and, as expected, the race attracted a record crowd. With Preakness Festival week gaining momentum in Baltimore, the last two runnings have seen unprecedented crowds. Last year, despite the gloomy weather, 48,721 turned out, wagering a record $3,304,361, including $821,960 on the Preakness.

This year, the crowd count was jumped by some 13,000, as 61,657 bet $3,792,076, including $922,989 on the feature race.

Parts of the infield were packed like a Kentucky Derby infield. Rock bands, dance contests, concessions, and betting lines jammed the area near the stretch turn, giving way near the center to the Preakness tradition of family picnics. The Baltimore Colts football team booster clubs had areas reserved near the other end of the infield, where

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hospitality tents were set up for members. There were held ceremonies at which the governor, the mayor, and players paid tributes to former Colt quarterback John Unitas.

As the races went off through the afternoon, announcer Ray Haight’s voice was drowned by the raucous music, the marching bands, the infield loudspeakers. For many, it was not going to the Preakness, but it was going to a Preakness celebration.

Others found their inability to see a horse disconcerting, and several times waves of spectators raced from near the center to the retaining fence along the stretch as the horses raced to the finish. Finally, a few pushed through the barriers, so that when Secretariat raced the final furlongs of the Preakness, they had made it to the inner rail of the track and at least one lad jumped up onto the fence.

Pimlico officials, beset by nothing like it in the past, immediately made plans for improved methods of crowd control at their burgeoning affair.

Riva Ridge broke poorly and lost ground on the first turn, but he seemed to settle down turning into the backstretch and easily reached contention. Turcotte looked over at Braulio Baeza, whose mount, Key to the Mint—supposedly the 3-10 Derby winner’s most dangerous rival—was slipping and having trouble with the slop. Turcotte thought he had it won Laurin thought he had it won.

Turning for home, Turcotte asked Riva Ridge for a run, and he had none to offer. Bee Bee Bee, a 19-1 shot which had led from the start, suddenly had the race wrapped up, and Riva Ridge could not even beat Key to the Mint. No Le Hace swished past to be second, and Key to the Mint outgunned Riva Ridge for third.

Working through the milling crowd, Laurin, in a bright cranberry sport coat, met Joe Thomas of Windfields Farm.

“I really want to get by this one,” Laurin said. “This is my fourth try, and I’ve never won this race (third with Amberoid and Jay Ray, fourth with Riva Ridge). I think we can do it, don’t you? You know, unless something happens.”

E. P. Taylor, owner of Windfields and one of the Secretariat syndicate members, had some 2-year-olds to send to Laurin in a few days, Thomas said, and so for a few minutes the trainer was able to talk of something other than the race.

Around five o’clock, trainers Resseguet and Pancho Martin stood by the stalls of Our Native and Sham, waiting for the television director to cue a Pimlico representative to cue the handlers of horses to take them to the infield.

A crowd clustered around Secretariat as Sweat led him

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from the stall, and Resseguet and Martin walked the long trek behind their horses.

Ecole Etage, a local, emerged from a nearby barn, and Pimlico grooms and hotwalkers shouted encouragement, of a sort, to his groom: “Go get’em, Mo! Go out and get third money.”

“Whatchewmean, third?”

Again, the $6,080,000 Secretariat was a few feet from a line of traffic as he wound along the white, sandy path between the last row of barns and a side street. His presence was unnoticed by the drivers, their horn blasts unnoticed by the horse. The way to the Preakness crossed a wide avenue of pavement, the horses emerging into the clear after passing a row of buses, engines roaring, exhaust systems pouring fumes.

Nothing seemed to bother the Preakness horses, but Eddie Sweat and Charlie Davis were restive. Davis, astride the speckled lead pony which accompanies Secretariat, shouted to a youngster who jumped onto a gate to get a better look at the champion. Secretariat paid no mind to the commotion, or to the trickle of applause that followed his walk past the stands.

Nearing the yellow and black poles set out in the infield course with the names of the starters, however, he whirled around to the left, but Sweat quickly soothed him.

Saddling procedures were smooth.

Seth Hancock, who had put together the Secretariat syndicate, and whose father, the late A. B. Hancock Jr., bred Sham, remarked that both horses “looked like a picture.” He said one of the syndicate members told him he had been offered $250,000 for his share in Secretariat, compared to the original price of $190,000, and Hancock conceded he was “not as nervous as I was before the Derby.”

A chorus sang “Maryland, My Maryland” as the field paraded in front of the stands, the crowd in the infield rushed back to their seats, and the stage was set. Mrs. Tweedy, in a box adjacent to the platform above the jockey stand, stood relaxed,

Nasrullah, 1940 BOLD RULER, dkb, 1954

Nearco, 1935 I

Pharos

Mumtaz Begum, 1932

Blenheim II

Nogara Mumtaz Mahal

Discovery, 1931

Ariadne

Miss Disco, 1944 Outdone, 1936

SECRETARIAT ch, h 1970

Display Pompey Sweep Out

Prince Rose, 1928

Rose Prince Indolence

Princequillo, 1940 Cosquilla, 1933

Papyrus Quick Thought

SOMETHING ROYAL, b, 1952

Caruso, 1927

Polymelian Sweet Music

Imperatrice, 1938 Cinquepace, 1934

Brown Bud Assignation

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looking up over the crowd, then turned her attention to the race. On the other side of a glass partition, Mike Ryan—Torsion’s party—perched on a step.

Secretariat, which had been away slowly in the Derby, once again was last in the Preakness after the opening burst. Turcotte eased him to the outside as the 3-10 choice, climbing slightly, sought to pass horses. Despite Laurin’s Friday evening avowal not to lose ground on the first turn, there were Turcotte and Secretariat parked outside two horses as the short field moved into the curve.

In the Derby, Secretariat had begun his move from last around 12 horses at about the same point; he did not reach the lead until the stretch. In the 13⁄16-mile Preakness, he rushed up so swiftly that, straightening into the backstretch, he already had assumed command. Ecole Etage was urged to the front early, but his moment as this year’s Bee Bee Bee was ludicrously short. Secretariat looped the entire field and was sailing clear inside of two furlongs.

Laffit Pincay Jr. on Sham had a slight mishap, the horse bumping the rail on the first turn—two turns, Laurin had said —but it was Secretariat, not racing luck, that was his problem.

Without urging, Secretariat had a 2½ length lead after six furlongs, by which time Pincay had moved Sham from fourth to second. It was a reversal of the Derby, in which Sham had been in striking position of Shecky Greene’s pace and Secretariat had been the chaser.

Laurin had told Turcotte to ride his own race, which with Secretariat means basically to hold on and let the horse do what he pleases. Turcotte said that in the opening furlong the pace seemed acceptable, but then he sensed the others began to take back; at the time, his horse was galloping easily.

The rush, which would have been criticized had the horse lost, was a Secretariat move, with Turcotte consenting. Pincay interpreted the move as a possible advantage to his chances; surely, a horse using himself so much in the early going would come back to Sham late in the game.

On they rolled, the burly chestnut charging down the backstretch with the dark Sham staying in touch.

“I thought I had a good chance,” said Pincay. “At the three-eighths pole I still hadn’t asked Sham to run. My horse was running pretty strong, but I looked up at Turcotte and he hadn’t even cocked his stick.”

Turcotte and Secretariat tore around the looping second turn and into the stretch, still with a 21⁄2-length margin. As in the Derby, Sham now felt the slash of Pincay’s weapon, slicing down his left flank, and if he had possessed the speed to catch Secretariat he would have done it. Still the favorite and Turcotte rolled on, the rider

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SECRETARIAT in blue and white blocked silks hunched far over the high withers as Secretariat raced into the final furlongs.

Suddenly, the threat of trouble came not from behind but from in front, for part of the crowd had rushed—waving, shouting, jumping—right to the rail. Turcotte cocked not his whip but his horse’s head, to the right, hoping that the move and the colt’s blinkers would keep him from seeing and being spooked by the turmoil to his immediate left.

Whether Secretariat saw the crowd only he knew. If he did, it was no bother to him. Straight and true, without feeling the whip, he rushed the final furlongs, and he still led the straining Sham by 21⁄2 lengths at the finish.

Our Native finished third, 101⁄2 lengths behind. Thus, not only did the first three Derby horses run one-twothree in the Preakness for the first time in history, but they also finished in identical relationship to each other as in the Derby—Secretariat by 21⁄2 over Sham, the latter by eight over Our Native.

Ecole Etage, his efforts to steal the race thwarted early, dropped to fourth, but came back again and missed catching Our Native by a length. Don Brumfield, rider of Our Native, said: “My colt was trying to get out most of the way around. He never did that before.” He agreed that Ecole Etage was getting to him at the end and that Our Native did not finish as strongly as he had in the Blue Grass Stakes and Kentucky Derby.

The time of the race was flashed on the board as 1:55, compared with Canonero II’s 1971 stakes record of 1:54.

It was the subject of immediate conjecture. The opening quarter-mile was recorded as 25 seconds, the same time Laurin had clocked, but not believed, for Secretariat’s Friday move from the quarter-mile pole to the wire.

Turcotte was suspicious of the time, feeling his horse was moving faster than he had been in the first quarter-mile of the Derby, in which the pace was caught in :232⁄5. Figuring one-fifth of a second to a length, Secretariat would have clocked :251⁄5 for the first quarter at Churchill Downs; if the 25-second clocking in the Preakness were accurate, his time would have been almost :261⁄5.

After the race, two Daily Racing Form clockers reported having caught the race independently in 1:532⁄5, a new record. Later, J. Fred Colwill, the steward representing the Maryland State Racing Commission, and Pimlico stewards J. Melvin Mackin and Merrall MacNeille accepted a revised time, 1:542⁄5, as the official clocking.

Thus, Secretariat is credited with a time three-fifths of a second faster than the original teletimer clocking, but he is denied the clockers believed he deserved. The 1:542⁄5 is the second-fastest for the Preakness, two-fifths slower than

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Canonero II’s record and one-fifth faster than Nashua’s previous record, set in 1955.

Eddie Sweat went calmly about his work. He has been through the good and bad, had been with Laurin since before Quill was stunned in the Coaching Club Oaks years ago. He washed away the thick, ugly mud from Riva Ridge, and told the horse, “That’s okay. You can’t win every time.”

It was a bad day, though, and Sweat knew it. Jack and Penny Tweedy arrived back at the barn a few minutes later, and Mrs. Tweedy’s first question was “how is he?” The colt appeared to have come out of the race in good order, adding to the baffling element.

Mrs. Tweedy tentatively toyed with some excuses—a bad break, some bit of trouble on the first turn—but she has been through it all, too. She had known Hill Prince, which lost a Derby but won a Preakness; known Sir Gaylord, which broke down on the eve of a Derby; known First Landing, whose winning streak was followed by a series of losses; known Cicada, and Third Brother, and Bryan G. They have their great moments, but they are bound to lose, and the owner is lucky if the loss is only that, and not a crippling or a fatal injury.

She might have wanted excuses, but she did not attempt to make any.

That evening, Mrs. Lucien Laurin sat at an unhappy table and suggested that her husband simply quit talking about the 1972 Preakness. It was no use.

Laurin slammed the table. “For the life of me, I. can’t figure out why he come up empty!” He and Turcotte swapped possibilities— maybe Riva Ridge was choked back too much, but maybe if he had sent him he would have died; maybe he did not like the mud as much as they thought. Their champion, their Derby winner, their Triple Crown horse had lost.

How could they talk of anything else?

As the Bee Bee Bee Purse was being run, the excitement of the Preakness matured into a quiet satisfaction.

There was champagne at the track and at the barn. Eddie Sweat and Charlie Davis and assistant Yann Houyvet busied themselves with cooling out Secretariat. Miss Elizabeth Ham, for many years secretary to the late Christopher T. Chenery, founder of Meadow Stud, was among the first of the winner’s party to arrive at the triumphant barn.

Miss Ham, in whose honor Secretariat was named, said that she for years had been “Mr. Chenery’s transportation department,” and thus had seen the great Meadow racers of other years.

“I have always been involved, but now it is more of a personal connection,” she said, explaining that once the Chenery estate is settled the racing stable will be a partnership of herself and the three Chenery children—Mrs.

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Tweedy, Mrs. Margaret Carmichael, and Dr. Hollis Chenery.

Jack Tweedy said he was reminded of Hill Prince when Secretariat ran as he had in the Preakness: “Hill Prince used to just circle the whole field, too.” He remarked on the dedication of Laurin: “We’ll take him out and party tonight, but by 1:30 he’ll be worrying about what he is going to do Monday—if the horses are fit, if they are okay.”

A few feet—a mile-away, trainer Pancho Martin’s initial reaction had been to dwell on the incident of Sham’s hitting the rail on the first turn. He was a man crushed—again—by the outcome. Mr. and Mrs. Sigmund Sommer stood silently, listening, but Mrs. Sommer was suspect of the excuse. She has been through much. She has known major triumphs of her husband’s Autobiography and Hitchcock, and she has known that they died. Defeat, second in a classic, is better than that, as Martin also knows. “I’ll say one thing,” Mrs. Sommer told Martin. “Secretariat surely was running easily.”

Martin shrugged, palms upward.

A few minutes later, the horse’s hitting the rail was mentioned afresh to Martin, and he, too, chose not to make an issue of it. “I don’t want to make any more excuses—no more excuses.”

Lucien Laurin, mad at his rider, checked on Riva Ridge on the cold, dreary morning after the Preakness. He was headed back to New York, confident Riva Ridge would redeem himself in the Belmont, which he did. Ron Turcotte and Mrs. Turcotte carried their bags from a nearby Holiday Inn. “It’ll be different next time, won’t it,” someone said. Turcotte turned sad eyes upward and mumbled faintly. The thought was not consoling.

On the rainy morning after the 1973 Preakness, Eddie Sweat arose at 4:30. “When I opened the tackroom door, Secretariat had his head out of the stall looking at me, waiting for his breakfast.”

Sometime later, he smeared some ointment into the horse’s right eye, where he had been hit by sand—it had to have been early in the race—and then Charlie Davis walked the Triple Crown hope under the shed.

Later, they shipped to Belmont Park, home base, where Secretariat again is scheduled to meet Sham in the June 9 Belmont. Will he get 11⁄2 miles? “He sure seemed like it today,” Turcotte had said after the Preakness. “I wasn’t perservering with him, and he was strong at the finish.”

Secretariat thus was en route to the final test, the last 12 furlongs of a Triple Crown, racing’s ultimate prize which has eluded the great and the near-great of the American Turf for a quarter-century. Since Citation won the Derby, the Preakness, the Belmont in 1948, the shorter panels of the triptych have been clutched by Tim Tam, Carry Back, Northern

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Dancer, Kauai King, Forward Pass, Majestic Prince, and Canonero II—but each was caught reaching for the third.

On June 9, if all goes well in the interim, Secretariat will make his bid, reach for the long unattained; there will come a moment when he will leave the paddock one more time, Turcotte white-faced and unblinking, the big colt prancing slightly to the unsettling applause of perhaps another record crowd. All those in whose sight he passes will hold their breath.

Belmont Thoughts The Blood-Horse, June 18, 1973

BY KENT HOLLINGSWORTH

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o what now for Secretariat? The usual route in recent years for 3-year-olds which had not won all three of the Triple Crown races and had yet to prove their championship qualities, entailed rest and freshening through the remainder of June and July, pointing for the 11⁄4-mile Travers, with the Jim Dandy as a tightener, then the 11⁄2-mile Woodward and two-mile Jockey Club Gold Cup. As a usual thing, these stakes can solidify a championship, demonstrating additional dimensions of a horse—consistency through the year, confirmed distance ability, and exceptional merit in handling older horses at weight for age.

Secretariat, however, is not your usual 3-year-old champion pro-tem. At two, he was voted Horse of the Year. At three, he has been acclaimed as Horse of the Century. There is nothing left for him to demonstrate at the Travers or Woodward distances, for he already has shown he can carry his weight in record times for 11⁄4, and 11⁄2 miles. He was clocked in 2:373⁄5, four-fifths of a second faster than the world record for 15⁄8 miles, while pulling up after the Belmont Stakes, so it would seem an idle query as to what he could in the two miles of the Jockey Club Gold Cup. He has run off from all serious competition among the 3-year-olds. Who would choose to humiliate his horse by sending him after Secretariat in the Travers? The historic midsummer Derby would be reduced to a betless exhibition, or in the absence of a Donnacona, a walkover. We cannot see right now an older horse around capable of bettering Secretariat’s 11⁄2-mile ability so as to provide a contest in the Woodward.

In short, for prestige or purse money, Secretariat does not need the Travers, Woodward, and Jockey Club Gold Cup, and as sporting contests or business propositions, these fixtures do not need Secretariat.

If there is a challenge left in all of racing worthy of this

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SECRETARIAT super horse, it most probably is the Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe to be run the first Sunday in October at Longchamp for the world’s greatest racing prize.

This is 11⁄2 miles on grass, uphill for a half-mile, then down and around a right-hand turn for a quarter-mile, and once on the level again, yet another turn before the final three-furlong straight. It is a course which has tested Europe’s best 3-year-olds against older horses for more than a half-century.

No American-raced horse ever has won the Arc. Several have been flown over a week or so before the race, including grass champion Career Boy and 3-year-old champions Carry Back and Tom Rolfe, but none has been able to adapt within such a short time to the climatic change, to racing on grass with the required European flat shoe, to racing uphill and down, clockwise rather than counterclockwise, and around irregular turns.

Thus the Arc could provide challenges which Secretariat never has met: Acclimatization, flat shoes in the grass, uphill and down, clockwise, Europe’s best classic and older horses.

Secretariat would have a better chance of winning the Arc than did other American horses shipped to the race. He could be shipped to France earlier, three or four months being ample time for acclimatization and schooling on French racing conditions, whereas Carry Back and Tom Rolfe had to race here during the summer and early fall to solidify their American championship claims.

The venture could not lessen Secretariat’s value as a stallion, for that already has been fixed at a record $190,000 a share; the prospective auction prices of Secretariat’s yearling progeny would not likely be lessened.

Buyers will go for the get of this Triple Crown winner irrespective of losses in the Wood Memorial or Arc; on the other hand, prices of yearlings by a Triple Crown winner which proved in the Arc he was the best horse in all the world, may be a tad higher.

Actually, Secretariat already has convinced American horsemen he is the best horse in the world. For Europeans, however, who never saw Man o’ War and who use as standards Ormonde, Ribot, and Sea-Bird, the sight of America’s finest, surging along without need of a stick to awaken his power, could revise values.

raced 11⁄2 miles with such fast early fractions and finished in anything like 2:24,.

Records clearly indicated this was the fastest Belmont Stakes, eclipsing Gallant Man’s 1957 mark of 2:263⁄5. Further, Secretariat’s time bettered Going Abroad’s American record on a dirt course, 2:261⁄5, set at Aqueduct in 1964.

Horses have raced 11⁄2 miles faster on grass, however.

Kelso beat Gun Bow in the 1964 Washington, D. C., International in 2:23 4⁄5, and this record was on the level so to speak.

Then we have the Santa Anita turf course records, a category to themselves for these are made with the advantage of running downhill for the first part of 11⁄2-mile races. In 1967, Fleet Host equaled Kelso’s grass record by racing down Santa Anita’s hill in 2:234⁄5; in 1969, Czar Alexander clipped two-fifths of a second from the Santa Anita course record, and two years ago Fiddle Isle lowered the Santa Anita mark to 2 :23, considered by some to be the fastest 11⁄2 miles raced anywhere in the world.

On Oct. 18, 1929, however, over Newmarket’s undulating turf in England, The Bastard was clocked 1½ miles in 2:23 flat. Through the 1966 American Racing Manual, The Bastard’s time was listed as the world record for 1½ miles.

The 1967 Manual, perhaps cleaned up for family reading, replaced The Bastard with a horse called Meneleck, listing him as the world-record holder for 1½ miles by virtue of his having raced at Haydock in England in 1961 in time of 2:26, albeit this was three seconds slower than The Bastard’s time, and 23⁄5 seconds slower than Kelso’s mark at Laurel.

Whatever happened to The Bastard’s record we are not certain (we do know his name was changed to The Buzzard when he was shipped down under to Australia), for our latest edition of the American Racing Manual lists Fiddle Isle’s downhill Santa Anita time of 2:23 as the world record for 1½ miles, while Meneleck’s 1961 English record has been replaced with Persian Gulf ’s 1944 time of 2:254⁄5, raced over the same undulating Newmarket course where The Bastard was clocked in 2:23 in 1929.

So it would appear that a world record for 1½ miles over an up-and-down grass course is 2:23 held by The Bastard; over a down-hill grass course is 2:23 held by Fiddle Isle; over a level grass course is 2:234⁄5 held by Kelso; and on plain old dirt, 2:24 flat held by Secretariat.

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hen Secretariat flashed across the finish in the first division of the 1973 Belmont Stakes in 2:24. flat, the time immediately was recognized as a record. But what kind or record?

Inasmuch as nobody had a watch on Pegasus, it generally was agreed no horse, with or without wings, ever had

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ecretariat’s record time for the Belmont cannot be impeached, as many track records are, by the specially fast condition of the surface on the day of the race. The five other races run on the dirt that day averaged more than two seconds slower than the track records for a mile and 11⁄16 miles. These involved good horses, too.

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Woodlawn Vase replica to Mrs. John B. Tweedy, he inquired if he might borrow Lucien Laurin’s stopwatch for the next Preakness running.

Washington Post columnist Gerry Strine, who likes his records neat, wants the Maryland Racing Commission to review the basis for the Pimlico stewards’ determination that Secretariat’s official Preakness time was 1:542⁄5, two-fifths of a second slower than Canonero II’s time in the 1971 Preakness.

Strine suggests simultaneous showings of pan shots from the film patrols of the 1971 and 1973 runnings of the Preakness, with starter Eddie Blind springing the projectors, and Charley Hatton present to insure nobody takes an edge on his horse.

On the off chance the Maryland Racing Commission will not entertain his suggestion, Strine may appeal to the highest court, CBS, demanding a split screen, delayed instant-replay of Canonero II and Secretariat winning the Preakness.

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nly amateur to ride in the Belmont Stakes has been millionaire G. H. (Pete) Bostwick, top polo player and leading steeplechase rider and trainer now a trustee of the New York Racing Association. In the 1928 Belmont Stakes, he finished fourth ahoard Mrs. F. Ambrose

BOB COGLIANESE

Massive Forego, yet to become a stakes winner, won off by nine lengths in time only one-fifth of a second slower than the 11⁄16-mile record. Stakes-winning Spanish Riddle won at a mile in time 22⁄5 slower than the track record. The maiden race was won in time 31⁄5 seconds slower than the 11⁄16-mile record; the winner was 3-year-old Key to the Kingdom, one of those coin-flip colts by Bold Ruler, out of a Princequillo mare that produced two champions (Fort Marcy and Key to the Mint).

Another of the coin flips that year, involving a Bold Ruler colt out of a nice Princequillo mare, put Secretariat in the Meadow Stable.

At any rate, the average time for the day’s other dirt races in relation to the track marks was 43⁄5 seconds slower than Secretariat’s time. For comparison of Secretariat’s spectacular early fractions with those of the fastest previous winners of the Belmont, see box.

ABOUT all that can be said or written about Secretariat’s record times in the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes has been said or written. There is more to come on Secretariat’s Preakness time of 1:55 by the Visumatic Timer, 1:542⁄5 by Pimlico’s official timer E. T. McLean Jr., and 1:532⁄5 by Daily Racing Form’s Gene Schwartz.

At Belmont, when Pimlico’s Chick Lang presented the

Secretariat’s 31-length tour-de-force in record time in the Belmont Stakes remains unmatched in American racing.

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SECRETARIAT Clark’s Broom Whisk. In the second race on this year’s Belmont card, Bostwick’s daughter, Dolly, made her New York riding debut, finishing last aboard Mrs. Russell Reineman’s Sentimentalist.

Joining the Giants The Ninth Triple Crown The Blood-Horse, June 18, 1973

BY EDWARD L. BOWEN

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lightly canted, he lurched from the gate, the face from Time and Newsweek angling to the left. For an instant, the eyes stared into cameras to the left of the rail, and the privacy of the deep blinkers was invaded, like those of a fox startled and held by the sight of a human before he slips into the underbrush. It was not a flaw, not a misstep, but it deprived Secretariat of a tiny moment’s speed. As if to make up for the hint of loss, he rushed on, breaking in fact better than usual. The horse which had trailed in the opening strides of the Kentucky Derby and Preakness quickly was head and head with the others in the 105th Belmont Stakes.

The bartenders and taxi drivers—infallible barometers of events—had promised that the Belmont would be something out of the ordinary, and Secretariat was off to prove them right. Although the great chestnut colt had gained his reputation first by sweeping rallies around the turns and in the stretches, he moved on to take command in the Belmont. From the opening stride toward his left, he glided along the rail—having broken from the inside post—and to anyone brave enough to challenge he offered his chin from the opening bell.

Laffit Pincay Jr., a young man who only a few days before had ridden his 500th winner to be center of an hour, had no great expectations about the Belmont, but he crouched hopefully over the lean darkness of his horse and allowed Sham his best chance. Sham, which had, felt Pincay’s whip search deep for courage in the Derby and Preakness, was willing, and he set out to defeat Secretariat. At the first turn, Secretariat was to Sham’s left, and that was something different. In the Derby five weeks before, Secretariat had rushed by him on the right, a chestnut motion that had emptied the swell of free-running confidence Sham had carried around the final turn.

In the Preakness, Secretariat had rushed by him again, once more on the right, and it had come so early in the race that Sham had the largest part of a mile to stare at the favorite’s haunches as he sought desperately to narrow the gap.

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Now the big red shoulders and checkered blinkers were beside him, to the left, and—it seemed—in his grasp. Sham looped out of the first turn nearly even.

Pincay sat easily against the bit, glancing over to Ron Turcotte and Secretariat, hoping for signs that they somehow would be bothered by the head and head confrontation.

The pace was swift, but the air was in Sham’s nostrils, there was nothing in front as he looked down the russet path, and he edged on—into the lead.

Like John P. Grier in an age before, Sham was committed to the battle—long though the odds—and he meant to take it to the end. He got his nose in front, then the length of his dark head, his neck, half his glistening body.

Now Secretariat would have to catch him.

Sham’s moment was brief. Secretariat the stretch-runner lost no equilibrium in being in front. This was not Gallant Fox and Whichone setting it up for a Jim Dandy, not even Canonero II and Eastern Fleet locked in a private duel that would last to near the end. This was a great horse letting a good horse have his run, and then he would smash him.

The first quarter-mile was run in :233⁄5 (too fast for a 12-furlong race). The next required only :223⁄5 (good strategy for the Toboggan, suicide for the Belmont). The aggregate half-mile time was :461⁄5, much of it around the turn. The heat of the pace perhaps was accented by the dishearteningly familiar sight of Secretariat, the fatigue inherent in losing the Derby and Preakness after supreme efforts, or some other, hidden catalyst. At any rate, it soon was over. Sham was easy prey.

It would not be a long, excruciating grinding down of his resources. It was quick, more merciful perhaps, and Pincay knew. The horse he had slashed stride after stride during the murderous final furlongs of the Derby and Preakness this time he would not punish farther. The public was entitled to Sham’s best effort, and Pincay let him give it, but he would not dishearten a brilliant colt more by asking for something he knew—probably had known for weeks—Sham simply could not deliver.

Once Sham was done, the race was over. Farther and farther ahead drew Secretariat. Turcotte glanced often over his shoulder. The torrid pace continued, but it was not a duel, it was a super display of a horse running within himself more swiftly than most horses can run in a drive.

He went from the mile pole to the six-furlong pole in :233⁄5, added the next quarter-mile in :242⁄5. The mile time was 1:341⁄5 ; next fastest time for that fractional distance of a Belmont was 1:353⁄5, recorded by Secretariat’s sire, Bold Ruler, when he was goaded into a speed duel with Gallant Man’s stablemate, Bold Nero, in the 1957 run-

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ning. Whereas Bold Ruler reeled, fading eventually to third, 12 lengths behind Gallant Man, Secretariat went right on to complete 11⁄4 miles in 1:59, two-fifths of a second faster than his record time for the Kentucky Derby.

So, the suicide pace was not suicide at all—not for the one that dictated it. Secretariat was seven on top after a mile, as Sham still held second, and he was 20 on top after running the next quarter-mile in :244⁄5. By then, the others had lost their identity, no longer competitors but merely moving yardsticks whose only function was to provide a measure of Secretariat’s mastery.

Turcotte had time to check the infield Tote in the stretch run, and he allowed Secretariat to roll along, hoping for a record, rather than to begin slowing him. Secretariat went the last quarter-mile in :25 and won by 31 lengths. His time of 2:24 was 23⁄5 seconds swifter than Gallant Man’s stakes and track record of 2:263⁄5.

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he inevitability of Secretariat’s completion of the Triple Crown was not so apparent early in the race as it may seem in retrospect. Even those who know the colt best—Mrs. John Tweedy and trainer Lucien Laurin—had some uneasy moments as the blazing fractions kept flashing up every 24 seconds or so.

“I certainly was worried,” Mrs. Tweedy said a few minutes after the race. “Then, in the stretch, Lucien said the only way he could lose from then on was to fall down.”

Turcotte, aboard the brute, always felt he was going well.

He had watched the other riders in the warm-up, to see if he could tell which one might be planning to run from the start. He thought about the rider’s styles, the various trainers’ usual instructions, and guessed that none of them was going to try to cut him off by gunning out and cutting to the rail early. Pincay had been told by Frank (Pancho) Martin to take Sigmund Sommer’s Sham to the front early, but the rider’s efforts did not include rushing the colt to try to come from the outside post in the five-horse field to the rail before the first turn.

After the Belmont, after the reality of the first Triple Crown in 25 years had become manifest, Laurin and Turcotte swapped banter on how the horse—and they—had done it.

They have disagreed in the past, but on Belmont Day their disagreements were less important, for it had turned out so well. The disagreements were over such things as at what point Turcotte had made his smartest move in the race, or whether he warmed up the horse very much before the race (“I took him farther than I did for the Derby or at Baltimore.”).

Turcotte said he did not deliberately send Secretariat at the start, that the horse settled into stride on his own.

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He did express some question over the swiftness of Sham’s demise: “He was going very easy. Pincay had a good hold on his horse, but I was not worried when he got a half-length on me. Pincay is a good rider, and I was not afraid he would go on and drop in front of me, or crowd me on the turn, because he does not do these things. So, I just let my horse run on his own, and he was going very easily.

“After three-quarters, I do not know what happened to Sham. All I can figure is that the 91⁄5 must have cooked him, because he suddenly just stopped, and we went right on. Yes, I knew we were going fast, but my horse was running so easily, I was not afraid. I never pushed him—he was just running on his own. The only place I ever really started riding him was in the last sixteenth or last eighth, when I see the time, and I want to be sure we get the record this time.

“But this horse really paced himself. He is smart; I think he knew he was going 11⁄2 miles.”

Laurin suggested that, while the colt is smart, he is not that smart. (Probably, Secretariat cannot read.) Laurin said he knew why Sham stopped, and it was because Secretariat had cooked him down in Baltimore, in the Preakness.

He disagreed about the six-furlong fraction having done in the Sommer colt, because Sham is the sort that can reel off three-quarters in less than 1:09 any time. The trainer thought that no horse can know how long he is going to be asked to run on a given day, so as to pace himself, and he believed Sham quit because he realized that it was Secretariat running inside him and running easily.

“Well, they were running right together there straightening out for the backside,” Turcotte countered, and it looked to him that Pincay had a good hold on his horse. Then, suddenly he stopped. “I thought maybe he was going to take back and then run at me, and I went off there, real suddenly by two lengths. I looked back to see what he was doing, and then I knew I didn’t have to worry about Sham anymore.

Then, I just let my horse run on like he wanted to, without hurrying him or pushing him.”

Surely, Laurin thought, he must have pushed him when rounding the turn, the way that horse went around there.

“No,” said Turcotte. “I never pushed him. Listen, tell you one thing: This is the best turn horse I ever saw. He always wants to run on the turn. He picks up on the turn because he likes to run there. [It conjured visions of the horse’s devastating rushes between the backstretch and the stretch in the Hopeful and Futurity, sewing up victory while losing ground in a looping move around the outside.] I don’t know why, but if he picked up some lengths on the turn today, it was not me —it was him. He really likes to run on the turn.”

Even at the moment of their ultimate triumph, the two Canadians could not agree, but this time the argument was fun.

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wice a prince rallied for second in the longest classic, and in so doing gained some vindication—if losing by 31 lengths ever thus can be considered. Twice a Prince, a colt with stamina on both sides of his pedigree (Prince John–Double Zero II,

by Never Say Die), did not race at two, then won a maiden race at 11⁄8 miles in his first start at three, on Feb. 14 at Hialeah. Trainer John Campo ran Maxwell Gluck’s Elmendorf Farm homebred only once more before moving him into stakes company. He was third in an allowance race, then was wearing down Shecky Greene while losing by only a length in the Fountain of Youth Stakes at 1⁄16 miles. Bob Ussery, who rode Twice a Prince that day, jumped off confident that Shecky The traditional blanket of carnations enveloped the Triple Crown winner.

Greene never would beat him again, but he was wrong.

Shecky left Twice a Prince 11 lengths up the track in the Stepping Stone Purse a week before the Grass Stakes, Arthur Appleton’s My Gallant (Gallant Derby, after the Elmendorf colt had been unplaced in the Man–Predate, by Nashua), had run ninth in the Derby Florida Derby but had won a nine-furlong allowance race but had come back on May 31 to lead all the way and deat Aqueduct. feat older stakes winner Loud in a nine-furlong allowance It was before the Derby that Twice a Prince gained race at Belmont Park. It seemed an ideal way to approach his villain’s cloak. Upset by the infield crowd, or by the a Belmont, but his trainer, Lou Goldfine, said on the day assistant starters, or both, he reared, became entangled of the classic that he thought it was “a little like going in the gate, and pawed at the saddle of Our Native, in a after an elephant with a BB gun.” neighboring stall. Sham banged his head on the gate, freeC. V. Whitney’s Pvt. Smiles had pedigree, looks, and ing two teeth, and as the weeks passed his trainer, Martin, question marks going for him. The striking chestnut colt more and more blamed Twice a Prince for the incident.

by Herbager is from Silver True, a Hail to Reason filly Then, Twice a Prince acted up at the gate before his that won the Spinaway and is a half-sister to Silver Spoon. next race, a June 2 allowance, and he finished fourth.

Pvt. Smiles, a maiden until April 17, had been unable to Martin could not stand the sound of his name: “They are make any impression on the better grades of 3-year-olds giving that horse the same consideration as if he were Secin the Stepping Stone on April 28, but exactly a month retariat. You don’t see him on the starters’ list—at least not later he had charged from ninth to miss catching Knightly until he races. A horse like that should be sent to Lincoln Dawn by a tiny nose in the slop of the Jersey Derby. The Downs.” As Latin fervor urged his voice to its bombastic questions were, was he merely an off-track horse or had he best, he took a verbal swipe at Campo, and then let it really improved so much in so short a time? drop.

The result, of course, pointed to Secretariat as equinus Martin several days before the race announced that maximus, the rest as, well, horses. Indicative of the Sommer’s Knightly Dawn, winner of the Jersey Derby, response to Secretariat was that most of the other riders would be entered along with Sham for the Belmont. were joking and happy after the race. Like the crowd, On Friday before the test, however, he announced that they were exhilarated. Pincay apparently had taken no Knightly Dawn would run only if the track were not fast. illusions into the race, and Angel Cordero Jr., rider of It was fast, and Knightly Dawn stayed in the barn.

My Gallant, said “Secretariat can just do everything a In addition to Santa Anita Derby winner Sham great horse can do.”

(Pretense–Sequoia, by Princequillo), runner-up in the Baeza, who said he had thought he had a good chance Wood Memorial, the Derby, and the Preakness, the field to run second, “but no chance to win,” was asked if Secreincluded Pvt. Smiles and My Gallant. Winner of the Blue tariat reminded him of his days on Buckpasser as a 3-year-

old. “You cannot compare,” he said, but he added with a broad smile, “With Buckpasser, I have the confidence; with Secretariat, Ron has the confidence.”

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ecretariat ended a quarter-century drought, during which the Triple Crown emerged from a four-times-a-decade routine into the biggest adrenalin producer in the sport. By its seeming impossibility, the Triple Crown became legend, aided by the two-thirds then a clink of Tim Tam (1958), Carry Back (1961), Northern Dancer (1964), Kauai King (1966), Majestic Prince (1969), and Canonero II (1971). (Forward Pass cannot be placed in the same category, inasmuch as he went into the Belmont—and into stud, for that matter—with his 1968 Derby-winner status still clouded.)

As hopes kept being raised only to be dashed, a feeling grew strong among the many of little faith that racing had evolved to a point that there could be no Triple Crown winner. This feeling grew despite the numerous winners of the first two-thirds, after a decade had elapsed between Citation’s 1948 sweep and the next time a horse even won the first two- thirds.

Sir Barton won the first Triple Crown in 1919, Gallant Fox the second in 1930, then Omaha in 1935, War Admiral in 1937, Whirlaway in 1941, Count Fleet in 1943, Assault in 1946, and Citation in 1948. A generation of the Turf has grown up with the number— eight Triple Crown winners—as indelible as the date of the first Kentucky Derby, and a change to nine Triple Crown winners seemed somehow surrealistic.

The ninth member is a flashy son of Bold Ruler–Somethingroyal, by Princequillo. He is a full brother to stakes winner Syrian Sea and a half-brother to major winner and sire Sir Gaylord and to major winner First Family (which was third in the 1965 Belmont). Bold Ruler, seven-time leading sire, being mated with a daughter of leading sire and leading broodmare sire Princequillo to produce a superhorse may make the breeding game seem simple, but there exists no noticeable Bold Ruler –Princequillo nick. Of the 37 foals

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(through 1970) sired by Bold Ruler and out of Princequillo mares, eight became stakes winners, or 21.6 per cent. Of Bold Ruler foals (through 1970) out of all mares other than Princequillo mares, there emerged a slightly higher percentage (23.0) of stakes winners. Secretariat, then, perhaps could be said to be the result of an anti-nick. Patterns, however, mean nothing when such a horse comes along, else a Secretariat could be designed and planned for with some semblance of order.

Secretariat was foaled and raised on the rolling lands of Doswell, Va., at Meadow Stud, where Mrs. Tweedy’s father, the late Christopher T. Chenery, founded a new operation on an old foundation. The Meadow was built in 1810 by Charles Dabney Morris, an ancestor, but the home and land passed from the family’s ownership after the Civil War changed the lifestyle along the North Anna River near Richmond. Chenery bought it back in 1936, and on the 2,600 acres 41 stakes winners have been bred.

There were floods last year, but generally it is pleasant land, friendly land, green and lazy in the spring and summer, bright and golden of autumn. Howard Gentry, a Virginian who has worked there since 1946, is the manager. Gentry knows the barns and horses and fields of blue grass, orchard, fescue, and clover, as Lucien Laurin knows Secretariat and Riva Ridge and Capito.

There is a field on a hill, across the road from the main farm, that affords a view of the house and many of the barns and fields where Riva Ridge’s new little brother and the other youngsters and mares roam by day.

It is a pleasant spot to sit in the tall grass and watch the day give way. Of all the spring evenings that have wafted down over The Meadow, there was one of particular import. Of all the foals that Gentry and his men have attended as they snuggled in their damp newness next to their dams, there was a certain one foaled on March 30, 1970, of all the possible March 30ths, of all the possible stalls on all the possible farms. He was to win the Belmont by a larger margin than Count Fleet did, bridge the gap of Citation-to-present, tear down the caution of horsemen in their appraisals, and sing to the hearts of those who knew him. TC

Secretariat was seven on top after a mile, as Sham still held second, and he was 20 on top after running the next quarter-mile in :244⁄5. By then, the others had lost their identity, no longer competitors but merely moving yardsticks whose only function was to provide a measure of Secretariat’s mastery.

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