by William Nack
“That’s too slow,” Lucien said. Secretariat had breezed through the first three furlongs in 0:39, a thirteen-clip, hardly enough to draw from him a deep breath.
They picked up speed through the lane, running the fourth eighth in 0:12 1/5.
“Now he’s letting him fly,” said Laurin. The colt went the final eighth in 0:11 4/5, going the five-eighths in 1:03, the final quarter in 0:24. Lucien didn’t appear pleased. Shrugging, he sighed, and headed back to the barn to gather with newsmen. There were just four days to the Gotham, and the name Secretariat was stirring interest in the media. A television crew was in the yard, for the first time, as well as the newspaper reporters. The slow workout drew only mild notice. The red horse, not the workout, was the event that they came to see.
“What about these advance notices that he’s a superhorse?” the TV man asked Laurin, who answered without hesitation, “I don’t believe there is such a thing as a superhorse. But he has done everything beautiful.”
Around the walking ring outdoors, with Turcotte on his back, walked Riva Ridge, still months away from the races. Secretariat, walking inside the shed, was cooling out.
“What chance does Secretariat have in the Triple Crown?”
Seeing Riva Ridge, Laurin said, “Last year I thought he had the shot of his life. This horse has a good chance. You never know from one day to another, to be honest with you.” Nearby, Penny was talking to someone of the pressures they had felt in the Bay Shore Stakes—since that was the horse’s first start—and then was trying to explain what Lucien had in mind with the red horse. As usual, she was articulate and informative. “He’s aiming the horse to reach his peak for the Triple Crown,” she said. At one point, looking at Riva Ridge, she told a reporter, “There’s a real Derby winner.” He was still her golden boy.
“A horse has to prove himself,” Laurin was saying. “They’re going back years when they compare him with Man o’ War.”
“Can you compare Secretariat’s temperament with Riva Ridge’s?” someone asked him.
“They’re both very intelligent horses.”
“Why does Secretariat insist on coming from the backstretch to win?”
“Horses are different. Riva Ridge was a frontrunner, and this horse comes from behind.”
“Aside from the bloodlines, what makes Secretariat great?”
“I wish to God I knew.”
The media were moving in. And so, too, were the odds makers, bringing Delphi to Reno, Nevada. Later in the morning, Laurin came into the office kitchen wearing an overcoat speckled here and there with mud, pulled it off and walked to the stove. Turcotte, his coffee cup half filled, smoking a cigarette, sat intently reading the front page of the Daily Racing Form, specifically a one-column story headlined: “Secretariat Even Money for Derby.”
So the odds makers were at work again. Five days earlier, on March 28, the Form had carried a story saying that the Reno Turf Club had made Secretariat the 6–5 choice to win the ninety-ninth running of the Kentucky Derby. Now they had shaved him another point, making him even money.
Turcotte read the last paragraph of the story aloud: “As an added fillip, North Swanson, operator of the Future Book, posted Secretariat at 5–2 to capture the Triple Crown—the Derby, Preakness and Belmont stakes.”
There was a silence in the room.
“Jesus Christ,” Laurin said. “Can you imagine 5–2 to win the Triple Crown?” His words measured, he added, “I wouldn’t bet him if he were 10–1. I wouldn’t bet $2. No . . . sir!”
Lucien walked toward the door, as if the thought were gradually dawning in its entirety on him: he was the trainer of a son of Bold Ruler who was worth $6.08 million as a stud horse, who had never run farther than a mile and a sixteenth, who was 6–5 to win the one-and-a-quarter-mile Kentucky Derby and 5–2 to sweep the Triple Crown, including the one-and-a-half-mile Belmont Stakes.
The red horse walked the next day, Wednesday, and Gaffney galloped him Thursday and Friday, letting him stretch out through the lane the day before the race. Hopping off, heading into the tack room, Gaffney said, “I let him gallop out a little through the stretch to blow him out for the race tomorrow. He’ll win. I don’t know who could beat him. He’s absolutely super. That track is going to be lightning fast. If he gets rollin’ and no one gets in his way, he could shoot for a record.” Gaffney entered the tack room. Cleaning off the saddle, he said, “You haven’t seen the best of Secretariat yet. Believe me. I think he’s much better now than he was for the Bay Shore. He’s just gettin’ sharp and good. I have known him a year this month, and I know him like a book.”
Secretariat, with a hot walker at his head, turned the corner at the top of the shed and moved powerfully down the aisle past the stalls. Ed Sweat, standing at the door of the colt’s stall, watched him pass, leaning on the fork. “He trained real good for this race. He’s edgy. The Ridge was the same way when he was two and three. But The Ridge has settled down quite a bit. He’s already been through the hard campaign.”
Eddie Sweat was awake before five the next morning, and he was at the barn by 5:30, pulling up to the shed in his car, buying his usual cup of regular coffee, and walking down the shed in the half dark.
Sweat ducked inside the stall and checked the feed tub and the pail. All was as he wanted it. The colt had been fed several quarts of dry oats at three o’clock that morning, and he had finished it, always a sign of good health. Then Sweat cleaned the stall, and so tipped off the red horse that the day would not be an ordinary one—that, in fact, it would be a racing day: he didn’t replace the dirty straw with fresh.
“He knows what’s happening now,” Sweat said later that morning. “He ain’t got no hay in the back and he ain’t got no fresh straw in the stall. I didn’t change it this morning. I never do on a day he runs. He won’t eat dirty straw. He’s a smart rascal. He knows what’s happening. Look at him. He’s quiet now. He don’t want to be bothered.” As always on a day he raced, Secretariat hung morosely about the back of the stall.
Outside the sun was up, dappling the ground in shadows. The pregnant cat was lying on a red and black trunk inside the tack room. The morning had an edge to it: the colt was running that day. The front page of the Racing Form read: “Secretariat 1–5 in Big A’s Gotham.”
In the office, Laurin had just gotten off the telephone when Marshall Cassidy, the assistant track announcer, appeared at the door of the office. Cassidy bowed his head, as if reporting for duty, and said, “Lucien, I have a group of students with me from New York University who would like to see Secretariat. Is there any chance?”
“You know it’s not a good day,” said Lucien.
“Okay, if you don’t . . .” Cassidy started to leave.
“No, no. It’s okay,” said Lucien, who was always too nice to refuse a friend. “Just don’t let them stay too long.”
Cassidy made the formal introduction for the group of students: “This,” he said, “is Secretariat.”
There was a rush of murmurs.
Then a formal farewell and the group was gone. “I’ll never get my work done here,” said Sweat. “He wants to be left alone. Everybody’s coming by this morning.”
They were harbingers all. More and more was being said and written about the colt and the Kentucky Derby, even more now of the Triple Crown. It was a refreshing turn for those involved in the sport. Racing scandals had recently rocked political foundations in Illinois, ruining former governor Otto Kerner, while allegations of horse drugging had been made in a widely publicized congressional inquiry. Racing needed a hero, a symbol and a standard of the game as sport. It needed a horse to fire the imagination of the nonracing public, a winner of the Triple Crown—the most glamorous of racing’s accolades—and the red horse was nearing odds-on.
Near noon that morning of the Gotham, Laurin jumped into his car, zipped out of the stable area, and drove off to Aqueduct, about ten miles southwest of Belmont Park, to meet for an interview with television producer Tommy R
oberts. He sped down the Cross Island Parkway like a jockey, pulled into Aqueduct, and came to a halt near the barns along the backstretch. There, waiting at the mouth of the chute, where it joins the backstretch of the Big A, were Roberts, cameramen, jockey Turcotte, and the old master, Eddie Arcaro.
“Hi, Eddie,” said Laurin, beaming.
“Hi, Lucius,” said Arcaro, who always called him Lucius.
The day was bright and blue at the seven-eighths pole of the racetrack, 220 yards down from the end of the chute, where the one-mile Gotham would begin later that afternoon. The conversation dwelled on Secretariat. Arcaro, known as old “Banana Nose” to every horseplayer who ever made a bet at old Aqueduct, old Jamaica, or old Belmont Park, looked snappy in the sunlight in his red pants and a striped sports coat and a tan that spoke of fairways and putting greens.
“Secretariat is one of the prettiest horses I ever saw,” Arcaro said. “In fact, going back in my memory, the only horse I ever saw any prettier was Eight-Thirty. Remember Eight-Thirty?” Turcotte shook his head, Laurin nodded, acknowledging the generation gap. “Eight-Thirty looked like a show horse,” said Arcaro.
He presided for the moment—articulate, informed, recalling the past with clarity and relish, talking about the 1948 Kentucky Derby and the Calumet Farm entry of Citation. He talked about Nashua, the brilliant son of Nasrullah on whom he had won the Preakness and Belmont stakes in 1955, and of Swaps, the colt who beat Nashua in the Kentucky Derby. “Oh, Swaps was a great horse,” said Arcaro. “I’ll never forget the Washington Park Handicap in Chicago. I was on Summer Tan and we went to the half-mile pole in 0:44 1/5, and around the turn I looked over at Swaps next to me and Shoemaker had Swaps’s neck bowed. I couldn’t believe it. And he looked like he was running easily. When I got off, Sherrill Ward—he was training Summer Tan—he said to me, ‘What the hell were you running so fast for so early?’ We’d done six furlongs in 1:07 4/5. I said to Sherrill that Swaps was next to me and his neck was bowed. Sherrill said, ‘No!’ I said, ‘We’ll go look at the films!’ Swaps was probably the worst managed horse in history. There is no telling how great Swaps would have been if he’d been managed right. No telling.”
“They scratched a good horse today, Step Nicely,” said Laurin at one point.
“If I had your horse, I wouldn’t worry about anyone,” said Arcaro.
“I don’t like all the talk of superhorse,” said Laurin. “I really don’t.”
Tommy Roberts organized the Arcaro and Turcotte filming. Roberts would ask a question about Citation and Secretariat; Arcaro would answer for Citation, Turcotte for Secretariat.
Leading the men through rehearsals, Roberts asked how the horses worked.
“Citation was a super workhorse,” said Arcaro. “He was a gentle horse in the paddock.”
“Secretariat’s a super workhorse,” said Turcotte.
“How about in the starting gate?” asked Roberts.
“Citation was a very fast break horse,” said Eddie.
Roberts then asked about running style.
“Citation could do anything,” Arcaro said. “He could go to the front or come from behind.”
“I never asked Secretariat for speed,” said Turcotte.
No, Turcotte had never asked the colt for speed. He’d always let him settle down and let him run when he wanted to run. Turcotte had never sent him, as they say, never rushed him to the front early. That morning, answering Tommy Roberts’s question, he knew he was standing near the spot on the racetrack where all would end in several hours.
Earlier in the barn at Belmont Park, Turcotte and Laurin had sat together in the tack room and talked about the strategy for the race. They agreed that the Gotham was a good time to send Secretariat to the lead near the start, to let him get himself together and race him on the front end. In the Gotham they would try a tactic that would serve a larger strategy. If Secretariat went to the lead and won, the colt would have a new dimension to him, another capability that opposing trainers would have to fear and consider in their tactics against him. The running style of the colt would have an element of unpredictability, a capacity for surprise. It was wiser to experiment in the Gotham than in the Kentucky Derby. A horse accustomed to racing off the pace, as Secretariat had done in all his races, might react sourly if he were sent to the front before the turn. It might confuse him. If the colt reacted adversely to it in the Gotham, only money would be lost. At Churchill Downs they would lose the Derby and any hope to win the Triple Crown. There is only one chance in Louisville, as Vanderbilt had learned with Native Dancer, and no going back.
“I think we should send this horse today,” said Lucien. “Let’s see what he can do up there. I’d hate like hell to put him on the lead on Derby Day and see him quit with you. We’d kick our ass back to Canada.”
Five hours later Turcotte was walking Secretariat past the seven-eighths pole and toward the starting gate 220 yards away. The wind was blowing off Jamaica Bay as the horses stepped into the gate. Secretariat was going off at 1–10 on the tote, with the second choice, the frontrunning Dawn Flight, off at $5.90 to $1.00.
Two stalls down, sitting on Champagne Charlie, was Mike Venezia. Two weeks had passed since the roan had finished second to Secretariat in the Bay Shore Stakes, a race that had not undermined Venezia’s belief in his horse. Despite the Future Book and the talk of the Triple Crown and Secretariat as a superhorse, Venezia held fast to the thought he had a chance to beat the red horse with the roan.
Secretariat moved into the three slip. Then Flush. Then Champagne Charlie, who was stepping into the five hole at 11–1. Venezia believed that Turcotte might send the red horse to the front, keeping him free of such traps as were laid for him two weeks ago. “Secretariat had an inside post in the Gotham and everyone was looking to trap him,” said Venezia. Before them now, stretching out like a furrowed field ready for planting, were the thousand yards of the backstretch straightaway. They would not have a chance to trap the colt that day.
Secretariat wobbled breaking from the gate, battering the sides as he powered away from it, so Turcotte waited and let him regain his balance. He held the colt together, giving him the chance to assemble himself, but that didn’t take long. He chirped to him, and as the field headed down the chute, the colt was lying in third, the closest he had ever been to the lead at the start of a horse race. Turcotte gathered him up, and Secretariat leaned into the bit, as Turcotte coaxed and moved rhythmically on him. Dawn Flight dashed to the front. Harrison Kid lay second. Champagne Charlie was right there, Venezia waiting and giving him time. Secretariat was tracking them down the chute when Turcotte tapped him once and clucked to him, dropping him to the inside. He could feel Secretariat pick up speed.
As the horses bounded from the chute, Secretariat was racing near the lead. Swipes and hot walkers and Pinkerton guards stood draped across the rail as the horses passed them at the end of the chute and raced across the backstretch. Turcotte was still not asking him through the first quarter, though he was keeping him near the pace. The colt was leveling out beneath him. Turcotte could feel him. Dawn Flight raced through the opening quarter in 0:23 1/5, a gentleman’s opening gambit, with Secretariat just a length behind him in third on the inside in 0:23 2/5.
Passing the pole Turcotte sent him to the front, clucking and asking him to move, and the red horse picked it up and took off in a rush, sprinting through a gap between the rail and Dawn Flight and charging up to the lead.
The tempo of the race accelerated. The red horse dashed an eighth in less than eleven seconds. He was applying the cruncher. He was racing down the backside about a head in front, with Dawn Flight right beside him on the outside.
Turcotte was trying to get the colt to settle down as they charged down the straightaway for the turn. He had roused him, and now he was trying to calm him down. Turcotte didn’t like the way Secretariat was breathing. It was irregular. He was racing and breathing like a human sprinter dashing out of the block, almost holding his breat
h as he accelerated, burning tremendous amounts of oxygen quickly. Down the backstretch the horse felt rank to Turcotte, and he was having trouble getting the red horse to relax. Jockey Angel Santiago, riding Dawn Flight, was not helping any at all. He was yelling and chirping to his horse and popping his whip and whistling, keeping Secretariat’s eyes open and his blood up.
Secretariat raced the half mile in 0:45 1/5, sprinting the second quarter in a sensational 0:21 4/5.
Dawn Flight began disintegrating as Secretariat rushed the turn, and within a few jumps the colt was two lengths in front. Passing the three-eighths pole, midway of the turn, Turcotte decided to let him go, to turn loose his head. Perhaps then he would relax, Turcotte thought. He was afraid the horse would burn himself out; he was trying to get him to breathe right.
As Dawn Flight staggered rearward, meanwhile, Venezia had dead aim on the red horse and was tracking him in second. Venezia hadn’t let him get away, letting the roan ease up around the turn. He sensed he had a chance to win it, and he was waiting for the moment to make his move. Secretariat was racing the third quarter in 0:23 2/5, around the turn, backing off slightly as he turned for home at the top of the straight. There he began to tire, after racing six furlongs in a torrid 1:08 3/5, time that tied the track record for the distance. But Turcotte wasn’t concerned.
Banking into the straight, Venezia was closing the margin between them. Unknown to Turcotte, Venezia had begun to make his run at the three-eighths pole, 660 yards from the wire. “I decided to make one charge with my horse, at the three-eighths pole, I decided Secretariat had been going too long on the lead and I had to try to win it. I wanted to make some kind of run at him because Secretariat had never really been challenged, and I figured that maybe—if he were challenged—he wouldn’t want to go on. I thought maybe if he backed up a little I’d get by him. If my horse ran big, I’d swallow him. But now I had to go get him.”