Secretariat

by William Nack

  “It was the thrill of a lifetime.”

  Hatton and the circle of onlookers parted, stepping back as groom Mordecai Williams led Secretariat to the paddock. Turcotte joined them there, conferring briefly with Lucien on the race and the way to ride the colt. This was not a herd of nonwinners of the type he spread-eagled at Aqueduct two weeks earlier. Two of the colts, Russ Miron and Joe Iz, had shown speed, and Turcotte knew he’d have to catch them if the red horse fell back and ran as he had under Feliciano.

  “Don’t rush this colt,” Lucien reminded him. “Let him feel his way and just come on with him. He has a particular way of running. You can’t rush him.”

  The crowd had made Secretariat the odds-on favorite at $0.40 to $1.00, and Turcotte sat ready on him in the starting gate, clutching a handful of his coppery mane for balance when George Cassidy sprang the latch and sent them on.

  Secretariat brushed the side of the gate when the doors sprang open, drifting left and brushing Fat Frank as they left the slip, and Turcotte could feel him trying to get with it. He could feel him chopping and struggling to put his mass in motion. So Turcotte sat chilly on him. Secretariat had broken alertly, but was dropping back as the field made off for the turn. Russ Miron rushed to the lead and through an opening quarter in 0:23 1/5, with Joe Iz a head behind and on the outside of him. Turcotte eased Secretariat to the outside, giving him time to find his stride and room to move when he found it. As Russ Miron raced past the half-mile pole, Secretariat was last, trailing him by four with his own quarter in 0:24. The horses made the bend, and Turcotte had Secretariat five horses wide, giving him the worst of it but no traffic to deal with. The colt started rolling around the turn, picking up speed past the three-eighths pole and moving past Fat Frank, Court Ruling, Blackthorn, and Tropic Action in a matter of jumps, zipping along that second quarter mile in 0:22 3/5, and moving up on Russ Miron and Joe Iz to the head of the lane. By then he was just a half a length from the lead and on the outside.

  With Secretariat moving to them, Joe Iz caved in first, dropping back, and passing the three-sixteenths pole Ron reached back and hit the red colt once, right-handed. Secretariat drifted left. Turcotte switched his stick and straightened him out by rapping him once left-handed. Secretariat had Russ Miron in trouble at the eighth pole. Carlos Marquez worked on him vigorously, but Turcotte eased away from him in the final 220 yards, hand-riding to a length-and-a-half victory in 1:10 4/5 for the six furlongs, his final quarter in 0:24 1/5.

  Now the colt began to exact more than just casual interest from horsemen. “Mrs. Tweedy,” said Virginia breeder Taylor Hardin, turning to her after the race. “I’d like to apply for breeding rights to that horse. I was the first person to ask for breeding rights to Native Dancer and I was right.”

  Turcotte liked his race that day, too, though he would not do handsprings back to the jockeys’ quarters over it. He had given the youngster the worst of the running, taking him to the high ground at the turn and giving away lengths to two fast colts. And the red horse caught them with a rush when his rider chirped to him. Secretariat ran willingly, responded to the whip, and didn’t loaf when he made the lead. The early signs were good. Turcotte also recalled his heavy-headed way of running—stylistically, he was the opposite of the airy-going Riva Ridge—the way he pounded the ground as he reached out for more of it. He had beaten maidens, he had beaten nonwinners of two races, and now he would have to run against the best—the best stakes horses on the grounds, and that meant running against the undefeated Linda’s Chief. Secretariat and Linda’s Chief were both being aimed for the $25,000-Added Sanford Stakes August 16, another six-furlong sprint.

  The tempo of Secretariat’s life was accelerating, and Lucien found him thriving on it. For The Meadow, the timing was superb. Riva Ridge was beginning to fall from the heights he’d attained following the exhausting journey to Hollywood Park. On August 5, at Monmouth Park in New Jersey, he was beaten in the $100,000 Monmouth Invitational, tiring after tracking the pace to the stretch. He finished fourth, beaten by six. It was the start of a long diminution in value and prestige.

  The following evening, back in Saratoga once again, Penny found herself sitting in the Wishing Well restaurant and looking across a plate of steak, corn, and potatoes at Bull Hancock. Sixty-two years old that year, Bull was the head of the most successful and prestigious breeding empire in America—Claiborne Farm—and was known as the godfather of his industry.

  By 1972, his son Seth was working under him, learning the breeding business as Bull had learned it himself, from the yearlings to the broodmares to the stallions. Claiborne had become an enormous spread of acreage, growing over the years from 2100 to almost 6000 acres. Bull had added the 1050-acre Marchmont Farm, which he purchased in the estate sale of his late brother-in-law, Charlton Clay, building five new barns on it and planting trees and adding broodmares. Bull leased the 1800-acre Xalapa Farm, with its stone barn and brass-lined stalls with iron hinges, with its broodmare barn chiseled in stone and its commodious stallion barn. Nasrullah had been his masterstroke, in retrospect, but only the beginning of his ascension as the leader in his industry. From 1955 through 1969, with the broodmare bands growing to 350 mares, America’s leading sire stood annually at Claiborne—Nasrullah, Princequillo, Ambiorix, and Bold Ruler. On that August evening in 1972, there were 26 stallions standing at Claiborne, 16 of them champion racehorses either in America or abroad, and among the most famous horses in the recent history of the turf—Buckpasser, Nijinsky II, Hoist The Flag, Damascus, and Round Table.

  It was a pleasant evening in a quiet town on the eve of a sudden change at Claiborne Farm and another resurge in the Meadow Stable. Bull would not be staying at Saratoga through August. He would spend a few more days at the spa, searching out yearlings for clients, playing golf, and doing some business in the booking of stallions for the coming spring. He would not be in Saratoga for the Sanford Stakes. Instead, he would fly to Scotland to shoot grouse, and he would watch the races in Ireland and fly to France to see a Claiborne horse run there.

  Bull was not feeling well that evening at dinner. In fact, he complained to Penny and her friends dining with them that he felt very badly, and for the first time Penny could remember, he had only one drink of bourbon before dinner, declining a second but telling the others not to mind him, to have another. Of course, Bull had seen Secretariat run and he spoke enthusiastically about the red horse at the Wishing Well. He didn’t live to see him run again.

  Chapter 14

  On the eve of the Sanford Stakes at Saratoga, Braulio Baeza knew about Secretariat but didn’t know what to think of him. The jockey, one of the world’s finest, had seen Secretariat lose his first start (“I knew he would have won that day if he hadn’t gotten bothered, knew it for sure”) and he saw the youngster win his second start. “But you see that too often. Horses get in trouble their first start and then they come back and win and then they don’t turn out to be anything.” Baeza had been impressed with Secretariat’s second victory, but he was confident because he was riding a youngster—the undefeated Linda’s Chief—who had already proved himself a superior runner, and consistently so, in far more compelling company than Secretariat had run against. The only colt he feared was Secretariat.

  Lucien, meanwhile, did not stop cranking up his red horse through the morning hours at Saratoga. On August 11, just five days before the Sanford, Secretariat drilled five-eighths of a mile in 0:59, the fastest workout in his life. He came back dancing, and he was saddled and standing ready in the paddock for the Sanford Stakes when Lucien and Ron conferred in generalities. Lucien had never given Ron elaborate instructions for a race.

  Lucien boosted him aboard. Nearby, trainer Al Scotti gave Baeza a leg up.

  This was the fifty-ninth running of the $27,750 Sanford, with $16,650 to the winner, the only race Man o’ War ever lost, to Upset in 1919. The crowd was not anticipating any such outlandish surprises that afternoon, making Linda’s Chief the heavy favorite at $0.60 to
$1.00, Secretariat the second choice at 3–2. Secretariat walked into the four hole on the backstretch, Linda’s Chief beside him in the three slip. Then they were in the gate—Linda’s Chief, the undefeated, standing next to Secretariat, the unknown factor.

  In a moment of fury near the head of the stretch, in the space of a dozen bounds passing the three-sixteenths pole, Secretariat made his name. He broke sharply, but he was outrun in the first jumps out of the gate. It took him a little longer to get in gear. He was running last as the field assembled loosely at the far turn. Trevose led by a half length as they went the quarter in 0:22 3/5, honest enough bidding, with stablemate Northstar Dancer joining him on the outside. Linda’s Chief was bounding along in third, a length and a half in front of Sailor Go Home. Secretariat was trailing inside of Sailor Go Home, as the horses in front of him made the bend. It was a bad place to be.

  Secretariat surprised Turcotte, taking longer to get rolling than the first time Ron had ridden him, and he had to steady the colt and let him drop off the leaders. This time he was falling back on his own. The pace was faster, and it seemed to Turcotte that Secretariat was having more trouble getting his things in order. “I was giving him time to find his stride,” he said. Sailor Go Home drifted outside the red horse at the turn, leaving him on the rail and hemmed in to it. Up ahead, Turcotte saw the entry in front, but he couldn’t swing outside; Sailor Go Home was in that lane. Nor could he drop to the rail; Trevose was holding that down.

  Trevose made the straight still leading by a half, in 0:46 1/5 at the pole, and Secretariat was right behind him a length away. Linda’s Chief moved on the outside, running to the leaders. Secretariat was blocked behind the front two. Turcotte waited. Baeza drove up on the outside with Linda’s Chief, taking the lead nearing midstretch, and everything happened at once.

  Turcotte saw jockey Angel Cordero, riding Northstar Dancer outside Trevose, glance quickly over his right shoulder at Linda’s Chief. Ron felt Secretariat grabbing hold of the bit, running powerfully against it, and he waited. Waited for Cordero to drift away from Trevose, waited for the crack to open up between the two, feeling his horse reaching for it and seeming to wait with him as they neared the eighth pole. And that was when Cordero drifted out, and here Ron turned his colt loose and chirped to him.

  Secretariat exploded, driving through whatever room there was, skimming both Trevose and Northstar Dancer and driving forward like a wedge, splitting the hole and shouldering Northstar Dancer aside. His head rose as he went through, gaining speed as Turcotte pumped and sent him to the front. He led by a half length at the eighth pole, then accelerated past Linda’s Chief and Baeza, who hardly knew what to make of it.

  Secretariat raced the six furlongs in a sharp 1:10 flat, and in that time he remade himself into the leading two-year-old in America, not only beating the best, but doing it with a dramatic flourish, as a seasoned five-year-old horse might do it. He threw his weight around in tight quarters. He bulled about the racetrack. He won by three.

  Penny Tweedy, prodding Lucien, said to him, “Well, there’s one horse that came from off the farm that’s not afraid of going between other horses.” Lucien had not spoken well of Riva Ridge’s training at The Meadow, telling her that the farm training was incomplete and had made the bay timid of other horses.

  Alfred Vanderbilt walked over to the Meadow Stable box, leaned over, and said, “I wasn’t worried about your horse, I was worried about those other poor horses.” Trainer P. G. Johnson, shaking his head, mused aloud, “I’ve seen a lot of races and it makes you think. Now, Linda’s Chief is a horse of quality, and Secretariat just took him apart, undressed him, beat him all to hell.”

  Up in the press box, Art Kennedy had not seen anything like it, and days later he was still speaking incredulously that a two-year-old with only three lifetime starts would even conceive of doing anything so bold as splitting two horses as he did.

  Charles Hatton left the clubhouse turn a man in search of a metaphor. He rummaged around in print for the next few weeks before finally settling on one he liked. On August 18, in his daily column, Hatton had his first chance to comment on the Sanford, and he wrote:

  In the race, the Tweedy colt proved himself a positive thinker. He required just 1:10, swiftest time of the meeting, to spot unbeaten Linda’s Chief and the others two lengths’ running start, then simply pulverized them a last quarter in :23 4/5. Coming to the quarter pole, he lowered his head and hunched his shoulders, like “Orange Juice” Simpson plunging the line and scattering a bunch of rookies from the second team.

  A week later, Hatton wrote:

  In action he can be terrifying. He swoops down on his field like a monster in a horror movie, and in the Sanford he left shambles of them reeling around the racetrack.

  While Charlie Hatton emerged as Secretariat’s most loyal and ardent cheerleader in print, Lucien Laurin seemed to be having trouble believing what was taking place. Only a year ago, he abandoned the idea of retirement, and Riva Ridge had yet to win the Futurity. Since then there had been Riva Ridge’s victory at the Kentucky Derby, the race Lucien always wanted to win, the galling disappointment of the Preakness, and the victory in the Belmont. He had just missed winning the Triple Crown, but in doing so he had reached his professional summit. Now, in August at Saratoga, Lucien saddled a horse who ran as if he had classic dimensions to him, a colt combative to a degree rarely seen in thoroughbreds and almost never in two-year-olds.

  Nothing at a racetrack seems to stir imaginations more than the sudden rise of a two-year-old. The Kentucky Derby is no sooner over one year than the search begins for the winner of the next—the Triple Crown candidate and the champion three-year-old. The older horses grind each other down, beating each other week after week, and the fillies and the sprinters dash; the grass horses drive for the American turf championship, and the three-year-olds head into summer with the Derby behind them. But nothing matches seeing and discovering a baby with a future.

  Secretariat’s workouts, like those of Riva Ridge, were events. Despite the tendency toward laziness that Turcotte sensed in him, Secretariat thrived on work, and he devoured his hay and oats and sweet feed and mash after even strenuous workouts, never backing off his feed cup, never missing an oat. He bloomed to a spectacular sheen in the Saratoga sun, gleaming on Tuesday morning, August 22, when Ron climbed aboard him for his only serious workout between the Sanford and Hopeful stakes.

  Secretariat was feeling sharp, jumping around as Mordecai Williams led him out. Eddie Sweat then walked out Riva Ridge. Riva Ridge was scheduled to gallop that morning, Secretariat to work a fast half mile. Lucien and Penny posted themselves along the wooden fence on the backstretch and watched for Secretariat. Lucien had his stopwatch in his right hand as Riva Ridge galloped slowly past. Heads followed him, turning in silence.

  Around the bend, coming to the backstretch, Turcotte galloped Secretariat slowly. The colt’s neck was bowed slightly, and he was following about a half mile behind Riva Ridge. The symbolism was not lost on Lucien, and Secretariat, nearing the half-mile pole, galloped past. As Secretariat reached for the wire in the distance, Laurin snapped the watch and grinned. He caught Secretariat in 0:46 2/5 for the half, just a fifth of a second slower than Trevose went the first half in the Sanford.

  As usual, following a day of a workout, Secretariat walked inside the shed on Wednesday, but on Thursday Williams saddled the colt for a slow gallop around the racetrack. Jimmy Gaffney, as usual, climbed on the colt. It was just past eight o’clock, and it was an idyllic day, one of those Saratoga mornings when bacon smoke filled the air around the stable kitchen and mash for the oats was cooking in the giant tubs, sending the aroma of oatmeal through the barns and wafting toward the backstretch.

  Out the gap to the main track, turning right, the colt moved off at a canter, around the turn for home, past the empty grandstand and clubhouse, past the crowds eating ham and eggs and French toast, around the clubhouse turn, and toward the backstretch. Secretariat was g
alloping easily. Gaffney neared the pole and started easing him to a walk.

  Secretariat was dancing as they neared the gap in the fence leading to the barn, frisky and alert to things around him. That half-mile workout had screwed him up tight, and the colt was simply full of himself.

  A van driver, climbing into the cab parked by the backstretch fence, slammed the door behind him. Secretariat stopped, stiffening and bowing his neck. He looked at the van and snorted. Motors made Secretariat especially spooky, Gaffney had noticed at Belmont Park. The colt would duck sharply from tractors chugging along pulling furrows on the racetrack.

  “Please don’t start the truck!” Gaffney shouted.

  But the window was closed, and the van driver couldn’t hear him. As the diesel fired up, Secretariat ducked out from under him and Gaffney dropped six feet to the very seat of his pants on the racetrack, the bridle still in his left hand. Secretariat took off through the gap toward the barn. Gaffney held on. Secretariat picked up speed bolting through the stable area, and Gaffney remembered the wet dew on the grass as the horse drew him across it like a sled. Secretariat gained speed. Trees rushed by. Finally Gaffney let the colt loose. Secretariat kept running, disappearing behind a barn, running toward the Meadow Stable, reins flapping.

  Gaffney jumped up and headed after him, reaching the stable minutes later. Lucien was ashen. Secretariat was still loose and running around. It took ten minutes to catch him at another stable.

  “Jimmy, you just took ten years off my life,” Lucien said.

  “You? He took fifteen off mine. He’s quick.”

  Chapter 15

  Late in the afternoon on the day of the Hopeful Stakes, Lucien Laurin stepped beneath a giant elm in the Saratoga paddock and waited for Secretariat. He was smoking a cigarette and was wrapped in a splash of colors—a red plaid sports coat, white shirt and pants, white shoes, and a white and purple tie. Lucien smoked only when he felt the pressure of the game closing around him, as he did now, with half an hour to post for the Hopeful Stakes.