by William Nack
Penny said, “Ronnie, do you really think the horse can go a mile and a quarter?”
Lucien broke in: “Do you really deep down in your heart believe it?”
Turcotte thought a moment. And nodded. And then he said, “I really believe he can go the distance.”
The next morning, Laurin boosted Turcotte and Vasquez on the colts and sent them out to work six furlongs together. They worked it in 1:12 3/5 in company, not a bad move at the Downs. But Turcotte didn’t like it. Secretariat kept throwing his head, for one thing, still smarting from an abscess about which Turcotte knew nothing. It had broken the morning before, but was apparently still sore to the touch. He again refused to grab the bit, and at one point in the workout Turcotte actually threw the lines away, riding with slack reins. Turcotte remained troubled. After returning home to New York, he told a friend that the colt was still not himself and that he didn’t like the workout, that something was wrong, that the colt seemed dull and listless. The problem was still something he could not figure out. Revelation came just days later. One afternoon at Aqueduct, as he was lounging in the jockeys’ room between races, an official of the New York Racing Association—a friend of Turcotte’s who had connections in the examining veterinarian’s office—took him aside and told him about the abscess, about how it was found the morning of the Wood, where it was located, the probable effect it had on him, and for Turcotte it all came together like a vision, so sudden was the realization.
It explained why the horse never took hold at any time and why he threw his head at Churchill Downs and why he didn’t tire or sulk or flatten out in the Wood. Ron felt he understood it all. Relieved, he felt almost euphoric. Now he had an answer for all the questions the running of the Wood had raised. It was a physical problem, not a head or attitudinal problem. Turcotte felt a sudden swelling of confidence.
Down in Kentucky Eddie Sweat felt no such thing. Through the days leading to the Kentucky Derby, the man who knew the red horse best remained disturbed about the way he was acting and carrying himself. The colt seemed dull and lifeless all the time, unlike the Secretariat he had known in the winter and spring and through those two sharp races in New York. The colt was playful then, but not now. He would bounce only occasionally when he walked. The change was subtle, barely noticeable to anyone but the man who had been around the colt constantly. He looked well, his eye was clear, but he was missing his jaunty alertness. Daily, Sweat watched for a change, but saw none. Periodically Sweat would think the horse was getting sick and he would take his temperature: it was always normal. Sweat conveyed his fears to Charlie Davis. Unshaken, Davis worked to shore up Sweat’s confidence, to assure him that all was well.
So the April mornings and afternoons breezed by, breaking off at the May pole into Derby Week, while the town filled with gamblers, hustlers, visiting businessmen, college students, and racing people and their Derby horses. They came in by car and by train, by plane and thumb, filling the rooms of all the inns in town, sleeping in parks, playing the horses by day and cards by night, the whoring and the chaste, the drinking and the temperate.
The horsemen’s world is a morning watch. That week they rose and went to the racetrack in the mornings as usual, grabbing coffee on the way to sip and a paper to read while honing their horses for the Derby.
Among them this year were Jimmy Croll with Royal and Regal, winner of the $100,000 Florida Derby at nine furlongs; Sherrill Ward with the giant Forego; trainer Bill Resseguet with his little iron horse, Our Native, who’d already run twenty-three times in his life; and young Don Combs with the long shot, Warbucks. From Louisiana and Florida came trainer Lou Goldfine with My Gallant, winner of the important Blue Grass Stakes at Keeneland April 26, and the speedster Shecky Greene, winner of three stakes in 1973. Also from Florida came the winner of the Everglades Stakes, Restless Jet with Jimmy Jones, and Johnny Campo to try the red horse again, this time with Twice a Prince. From California came trainer Randy Sechrest with Gold Bag—the colt who used to work out with Secretariat at Hialeah in the winter of ’72, the colt who beat Secretariat by fifteen lengths the first time they worked a quarter mile together. Now the two were back again, and facing each other. Laurin had sold Gold Bag in January, and Sechrest took him to Hollywood Park and won the Coronado Stakes with him. Then Secretariat lost the Wood, which opened it up for all of them.
The week of the Derby started on Monday, April 30, and Laurin began it with a countdown. That morning he put on a blue-striped overcoat, left his suite at the Executive Inn, and made off hurriedly to the racetrack. He hadn’t been eating or sleeping well since the Wood, and he looked drawn and weary, alternately pinching the bridge of his nose and wiping his chin.
Out of the car, Laurin entered the shed of Barn 42. The security guard, stepping forward, recognized him immediately and let him pass.
“How is he?” he asked Sweat. The red horse was in his stall and looking out the door from the back of it.
“He’s all right,” said Sweat. “All he want to do is eat.”
“Good, let him eat,” said Laurin.
He was still counting.
Down the shed, seven stalls away from Secretariat, was the leggy Sham, and just twenty feet beyond him and blocking the doorway of the tack room stood Pancho Martin. Sham was bridled and saddled for a three-quarter mile workout. As they took the bay from his stall, Martin preceded him to the racetrack between barns and manure bins and groups of newsmen. Pancho stooped to pick up pebbles and stones in Sham’s path, tossing them aside. Later in the week he hired a man with a broom to walk in front of Sham whenever he went to the racetrack, and the man would briskly sweep the stones away. Pancho was taking no chances.
Martin climbed into the clocker’s shed on the backstretch as Sham started his warm-up gallop to the three-quarter pole. Beyond were the twin spires, the emblem of Churchill Downs, the empty stands, and the infield that would be filled with more than 125,000 people in five days. Many horsemen stopped to watch the workout, sitting on ponies and leaning on the fence rails as word spread that Sham was on the track.
Exercise boy Pedeo Cachola galloped Sham toward the shed and down the backstretch. Nearing the pole he sat down, and Sham broke off quickly, accelerating for the turn. He ran the opening quarter in 0:23 4/5, then made the bend and drilled the half in 0:47 1/5, sharp time for the Downs. Cachola stayed hunched over him through the lane, sending him the next eighth in 0:11 4/5. That gave him five-eighths in 0:59. Sham was rolling. He finished out in 1:11 1/5 for six furlongs. It was a brilliant move over the track. Sham would appear for the Kentucky Derby off a powerful workout—his final major workout—and Pancho sensed victory.
“He has never been better,” he said, leaving the clocker’s shed with a flourish. “Never! That was a big move!”
Sham’s work seemed to inspire and embolden Martin, for it coincided with his sudden launch into a week-long run of soliloquies denouncing Laurin and extolling the manifest gifts of Sham.
Twirling a Mexican cigar with Havana tobacco, leaning against the cinder block of Barn 42, sipping a demitasse (against doctor’s orders), and wearing a hat with a feather in it, Martin held forth among the crowds of newsmen gathered there to hear him. He was cocky, brash, and self-assured, confident of victory. He excoriated Laurin in an oratory of disdain, sarcasm, and ire.
“All you hear from Laurin is excuses, excuses, excuses, excuses. He’s got more excuses than China’s got rice, and China’s got a lot of rice. Cryin’ like a little baby. That’s not my game.” Smiling wryly he said, “It’s very coincidental that the only time Secretariat ran a bad race is the one time he met Sham. We are going to run four times against one another: the Wood, the Derby, the Preakness, and the Belmont stakes. We’ll see who’s the best out of the four. If he beats me, I’ll say he’s better. We’ll see who’s the best. If he beats me more than I beat him—if he beats me three out of four—I’ll take my hat off and congratulate him and say, ‘You got the best horse.’ ”
Marti
n took off his hat and put it back on. “In my estimation, I got the best horse. My horse is in top condition. He loves the track. And I got Pincay. What more do I want? I have the best horse in the country. But the only way we can find out is running over there.”
Pancho jabbed his cigar toward the racetrack in the distance. “And I ain’t gonna have no excuses.”
Chapter 24
It was the evening of Tuesday, May 1, for Turcotte the close of a long and nervous day, and he was hoping to relax. He had just arrived in Kentucky from New York, following a five-hour journey that left him frazzled and edgy in his room at the Executive Inn. He had ridden all morning at Belmont Park and all afternoon at Aqueduct. When the last race was over, he showered hurriedly, climbed into a pair of jeans, a work shirt, and his Meadow Stable jacket and took off with his agent for Kennedy where he had to catch a helicopter shuttle to Newark Airport. Nothing went easily on that trip: Kennedy was under a heavy fog when Turcotte got there, and all chopper flights had been grounded. He rented a limousine to take him across the two rivers to Jersey and brooded all the way about missing his flight and being stranded in New York.
Turcotte was going to Louisville to ride Secretariat in his most important workout so far that year, the colt’s final major drill for the Kentucky Derby. Turcotte hadn’t liked that first workout at Churchill Downs, and now he was anxious to try him again, hoping he had returned to what he had been. The work would give some indication of the kind of colt he would be riding Saturday.
The limousine deposited him at Newark on time. Then the plane was late. Restless still, he glanced at his watch and paced the terminal. It was raining. By the time he arrived in Louisville and checked into his room, he had a headache and felt uncomfortable. He took a sleeping pill and went downstairs to have a cup of tea, something to settle him. As he crossed the lobby, Turcotte spotted Eddie Arcaro.
They sat down at a table by a window overlooking a fountain, a statue, and a waterwheel, and Arcaro settled into his chair with a martini, Turcotte with a brandy on the rocks. Arcaro was good company. Turcotte was feeling better already. Arcaro asked about Secretariat’s race in the Wood, a race he’d won on Bold Ruler sixteen years ago. Arcaro, like many horsemen, had doubts about Secretariat and the whole three-year-old crop, and he expressed them publicly before the week was out: “There isn’t a standout horse in the field. This is not a good three-year-old year. It’s hard to explain why it happens this way. No one knows if Secretariat can go a mile and a quarter.”
“This horse doesn’t have to go a distance, you know,” Arcaro continued to Turcotte. “Bold Ruler wasn’t a true distance horse. I remember a horse I never thought could go the distance in the Derby: Whirlaway. When Mrs. Markey asked me to ride him, I didn’t want to. Ben Jones told me, ‘Don’t worry about the horse. He’ll go the distance. But for God’s sake ride him the way I tell you.’ ” Arcaro told Turcotte the story of Whirlaway and how Ben Jones said no one could beat him sprinting and the idea was to save Whirlaway’s speed and let him gallop along easily for the first part of the Derby and then bust him loose in the late stages. Turcotte paid close attention to the master as he sipped his brandy, and he got the strong feeling that Arcaro was trying to tell him something about how to win a Kentucky Derby with a horse who didn’t want to go that far.
He had already given much thought to how he was going to ride Secretariat on Saturday. Among Laurin and Penny and others there was some sentiment for sending the horse early—right out of the gate—and lying close to the front from the start. But Turcotte mulled over what Arcaro told him. He believed Secretariat could go the distance, but he wasn’t absolutely certain of it—no one was, because he hadn’t done it yet.
“I know he can beat any horse in the country going a mile,” said Turcotte. “It’s that extra quarter. But, I really think he can go on.”
“I sure hope you’re right,” said Arcaro. “I got him in a pool in Florida.”
At 5:47 the next morning the rows of sheds were coming alive at the Downs. Television film crews patrolled between the barns and racetrack. Newspaper reporters trundled from shed to shed.
Down the shed from Barn 42, horses were grazing on the strips of grass beside their barns. Handlers held them by leather shanks. It was already Wednesday, only three days from the Kentucky Derby, and stable hands could feel it coming, the gathering bustle and the stirring of hope.
Lucien Laurin and Penny Tweedy arrived by 7:25 that morning, and Laurin approached the stall holding part of the bridle and the blinkers, putting them under Secretariat’s nose and saying, as if peeking into a crib, “If you’re a good boy, you’ll let me put this on.” Turcotte helped him, and the two men huddled talking in the shed.
Whatever Lucien Laurin was—excited or strained or tired—he was not confused about how to train the red horse for the ninety-ninth Kentucky Derby. He had his back against the wall. He appeared as if he had it all to do, and more. He was at his finest when the crunch was on, when he was under the severest pressures, for he seemed to train then with the sharpest insight and perception. He appeared harassed, and often angry and worried. At times he seemed frantic, trying to put down the stories of unsoundness, but he never lost track of what he was doing.
The rumors of unsoundness exasperated Lucien, following him from New York to Louisville to Lexington, and wherever he went people asked him if it were true that the colt was standing in ice or had a bad knee.
If the condition of Secretariat’s knees had been discussed sotto voce at the racetrack, after the Wood it became an open debate. Newspapers and wire services gave space to the circulation of the rumors, adding substance to their otherwise vaporous shapes. Hearsay was juxtaposed with fact, without any attempt at verification from a primary source. The Associated Press, for instance, ran a widely circulated story on April 26 in which the reporter interviewed the noted Las Vegas oddsmaker, Jimmy “the Greek” Snyder, and quoted Nevada’s leading expert on Secretariat’s knees as follows:
I just don’t like Secretariat—I don’t know why, I just don’t like Secretariat. I said before the Wood Memorial that this horse had no right to be a 1–5 odds-on choice. The race bore me out. . . . I’ve said it before and I’ll say it again—I still think they’re putting ice packs on Secretariat’s knees.
Jimmy the Greek had never been to the barn at Belmont Park, and he was handicapped by a somewhat limited understanding of the sport, as witnessed by his immortal explanation for Secretariat’s defeat in the Wood: “Maybe the pace was so slow Secretariat thought it was just a workout.”
In Louisville, the day before the workout, the estimable Louisville Courier Journal ran a story on the front page of its sports section in which the Associated Press reporter quoted H. A. (Jimmy) Jones as saying:
It doesn’t measure up as a good field. There are some good horses running, no great ones. No superstars . . . I don’t know about Secretariat. He has good breeding and his record was good coming into the Wood Memorial. But he ran as if something was pinching him. I keep hearing reports that there is some heat in his leg somewhere and he is being treated with ice packs, but Lucien denies it. Some people around the stables insist it’s true.
Laurin came to Kentucky in an announced search for Secretariat’s redemption, and if he worried privately about the colt’s ability to go the distance, publicly he remained confident.
On Wednesday morning, preparing for the redemption and convinced he was bringing the colt to the Derby off the right workouts, Laurin gave Turcotte the same instructions he did before the colt worked the sensational three-eighths of a mile that day before the Bay Shore. Wednesday was the end of a four-month program of races and workouts, all aiming ultimately for this Saturday.
“Let him bounce, Ronnie,” Lucien told Turcotte under the shed. “Don’t punish him, but let him roll.”
They had put blinkers on him as a signal to Secretariat that serious work was at hand, and Laurin raised Turcotte aboard. As Turcotte gathered up the reins, Lucien
and Penny left hastily for the clubhouse to watch the workout from the homestretch side of the oval, rather than the backstretch clocker’s shed. They did not know the clubhouse doors were locked.
The newsmen and stable hands followed Secretariat into a drizzle to the racetrack. Cameras whirred as men walked backward, while Billy Silver pricked his ears and swipes and hot walkers stopped work as the entourage passed. Secretariat ground the bit in his mouth—his eyes flicking, rimmed in white—and turning to the touch, he galloped off on the sloppy track. Turcotte warmed him up well, while Laurin and Penny went from one entrance to the next, trying frantically to hail a guard to let them in. All the gates were locked.
Turcotte galloped Secretariat past the clocker’s shed, where a large group of reporters gathered, and then took the colt to the five-eighths pole and aimed him toward the far turn. Coming to the pole, Turcotte took a hold and clucked to Secretariat. Turcotte’s blue and white jacket started billowing out in back, and as he passed the pole he chirped again and again and felt the red horse accelerate.
He plunged for the far turn, Turcotte sitting quietly on him, and raced for the bend in an opening quarter of 0:23 4/5. Now he started picking it up, faster and faster, as they raced for the quarter pole and the turn for home. They went the third eighth in 0:11 1/5, and the fourth in 0:12 for a half mile in 0:47. He was pounding for the wire, while in the clubhouse Laurin and Penny rose just in time to see him work the final eighth. Turcotte sent him through a final 220 yards in 0:11 3/5. He finished out the five-eighths in 0:58 3/5. Turcotte stood straight-legged at the wire, and Secretariat galloped out another eighth in 0:13 2/5 for a six-furlong clocking of 1:12.