by William Nack
1:09 4/5.
There are gasps from the crowd. The reaction is almost universal. Finney is stunned.
“That’s suicidal!” he yells to Bert Firestone. By almost one full second it is the fastest six furlongs ever run in the Belmont Stakes, and only 0:1 1/5 seconds off the course record for that distance. In the box seats, Lucien has seen the splits and his face is rigid. His lips are pursed. His hands are on the box-seat railing. He understands the implications of the running time. So he waits, staring at his red horse bounding around the far turn.
Down on the racetrack, racing official Pat O’Brien stands by the finish line looking at the teletimer and his mind jumps back to that afternoon of June 15, 1957, when Bold Ruler raced through the first half-mile in 0:46 4/5 and the three-quarters in a suicidal 1:10 2/5 and almost stopped to a walk in the stretch, finally finishing third. Remembering that, O’Brien sees the sins of the father visited on the son.
Up in the press box, CBS’s Gene Petersen hollers to Racing Form columnist Herb Goldstein, “He’s going to win big, Herb!”
Goldstein, appalled by the fraction, shouts back: “He’s going too damn fast!”
Dr. William Lockridge, the syndicate member, looks at the time from his place in the dining room at Belmont Park and excitedly climbs up on a chair and then onto the dining room table. The beginnings of pandemonium rock the place.
What is Turcotte doing? Has he gone mad?
He is still sitting cool on the turn, listening as Sham’s hoofbeats fade away behind him. Turning around once to see who is coming, he sees them dropping back. Then he turns again.
He wonders how fast he’s going. He suspects he is going fast enough. He has not cocked his whip, and he’s still thinking he’s traveling at the rate of 12 seconds to the eighth. He thinks he has gone the three-quarters in 1:12 and that he is doing the seven-eighths in 1:24 and coming to the mile mark in 1:36. It has all been working so beautifully for Turcotte. Secretariat has killed off Sham and now he’s coasting home, far in front and getting farther. The colt is bounding along on his own. He has opened three lengths on Sham. Now four, now five. Then six. Turcotte turns again and sees them all far behind him. Now he is widening the lead to seven as he races on the turn and finishes the seventh furlong in 0:12 1/5, giving him seven-eighths in 1:22, and banks around the turn through the eighth furlong in 0:12 1/5. Once again the crowd’s eyes turn to the clocks and roll in their sockets:
1:34 1/5.
It is an incredible fraction, far faster than any horse has ever run the first mile in the Belmont Stakes. Goldstein stands awed by it. O’Brien wonders how Secretariat will be able to stand up at the end. Penny clenches her hands. Lucien remains quiet, still looking solemnly at the racetrack, across the hedge and the lakes and lawns to the far turn, where Turcotte rocks on across the back of Secretariat, listens to the beat of Secretariat’s hooves on the racetrack and the sound of the 70,000 people screaming and moiling and echoing 600 yards away. Finney is boggled.
“He can’t stand up to this!” he yells to Firestone.
In the announcer’s booth, announcer Chick Anderson’s voice is rising at the sight of it. Beneath him the crowd has grown deafening, loud and rich, and Anderson gropes to articulate what he is witnessing.
“Secretariat is blazing along! The first three-quarters of a mile in 1:09 4/5. Secretariat is widening now. He is moving like a tremendous machine!”
The colt is in front by eight and by ten and now he is opening twelve over Sham, who is beginning to come back to My Gallant and Twice a Prince. Feeling the hopelessness, Pincay has decided not to persevere with Sham. He feels the Sommer colt is in distress and so he coasts rearward. Turcotte wheels Secretariat around the turn. All Turcotte hears is the sound of Secretariat walloping the earth and taking deep breaths of air and then, to the right, the lone voice of a man calling to him from the hedge by the fence.
“You got it, Ronnie! Stay there.”
The poles flash by, one after another, and Secretariat continues widening his lead—to fourteen and then fifteen lengths midway of the turn. Then sixteen. Seventeen. Eighteen. He does not back off. He never slows a moment as he sweeps the turn and races to an ever-widening lead.
Finney and Laurin and all the others are watching for some sign that Secretariat is weakening, for some evidence that the pace is beginning to hurt, for the stride to shorten or the tail to slash or the ears to lay back fast to the skull. But there are no signs of weariness. Racing past the three-eighths pole—midway of the turn for home, with 660 yards to go—Secretariat is racing faster than he was past the half-mile pole on the turn. He flashes by the pole one and one eighth miles into the race—1:46 1/5!
Secretariat has just tied the world record for nine furlongs. He is running now as if in contempt of the clock. Those watching him are only beginning to fathom the magnitude of the effort. He is moving beyond the standard by which the running horse has been traditionally judged, not tiring, not leg weary, not backing up a stroke, dimensionless in scope, and all the time Turcotte asking nothing of him. The crowds continue to erupt. Looking, Turcotte sees the hands shoot up in the grandstand, the thousands on their feet, hundreds lining the rail of the homestretch with the programs waving and the hands clapping and the legs jumping.
He is still galloping to the beat of twelve. Aglide, he turns for home in full flight. He opens twenty-one lengths. He increases that to twenty-two. He is running easily. Nor is the form deteriorating. There remains the pendulumlike stride of the forelegs and the drive of the hindlegs, the pumping of the shoulders and the neck, the rise and dip of the head. He makes sense of all the mystical pageant rites of blood through which he has evolved as distillate, a climactic act in a triumph of the breed, one horse combining all the noblest qualities of his species and his ancestry—of the unbeaten Nearco through Nasrullah and Bold Ruler, of the iron horse Discovery through Outdone and Miss Disco, of the dashing St. Simon through Prince Rose and Princequillo, and of the staying Brown Bud through Imperatrice by way of Somethingroyal. He defines the blooded horse in his own terms.
He sweeps into the stretch through a tenth furlong in 0:12 4/5, the slowest eighth yet, and Turcotte is still holding him together—his black boots pressed against the upper back, moving with the rocky motion of the legs, his hands feeling the mane blown back against the fingers and the knuckles pressed white against the rubber-thick reins. The teletimer flashes 1:59 for the mile and a quarter, two-fifths faster than his Derby, faster than the Belmont ten-furlong record by a full second.
He is twenty-three lengths in front. He lengthens that to twenty-four. And then to twenty-five, the record victory margin held by Count Fleet since 1943.
He is not backing up yet.
Once again he picks up the tempo in the upper stretch, racing the eleventh furlong in 0:12 1/5, as fast as he has run the opening 220 yards of the race. That furlong gives him a mile and three-eighths in 2:11 1/5, three seconds faster than Man o’ War’s world record set in the Belmont Stakes fifty-three years before. Obliterating Count Fleet’s record, Secretariat opens twenty-six lengths. He widens that to twenty-seven and twenty-eight. He comes to the eighth pole in midstretch, and the whole of Belmont Park is roaring full-throatedly. The television camera sweeps the stands and hands are shooting in the air. No one can remember anything quite like it, not even the oldest veteran. No one applauds during the running of a race, but now the crowds in the box seats and the grandstand are standing as one and clapping as Secretariat races alone through the homestretch. They’ve come to see a coronation, America’s ninth Triple Crown winner, but many are beginning to realize that they are witnessing the greatest single performance in the history of the sport. Veteran horsemen are incredulous. Eyes have turned to and from the teletimer and the horse in disbelief, looking for some signs of stress and seeing nothing but the methodical rock of the form and the reach and snap of the forelegs. For a moment in midstretch, as the sounds envelop him, even Turcotte is caught off guard by the scope of t
he accomplishment. Passing the eighth pole, he looks to the left at the infield tote and the teletimer, and the first number he sees is 1:09 4/5 for the first three-quarters. He sees these numbers but they fail to register. So he looks ahead again. Then they register and he looks back again, in a delayed double take.
By now he has passed the sixteenth pole, with only seventy-five yards to run, and the crowd senses the record, too. Turcotte looks at the teletimer blinking excitedly and sees 2:19, 2:20. The record is 2:26 3/5. The colt has a chance to break the record in all three classics—an unprecedented feat. So, keeping his whip uncocked, Turcotte pumps his arm and hand-rides Secretariat through the final yards. Sham fades back to last, and Twice a Prince and My Gallant are head and head battling for the place—Cordero and Baeza are riding all out to the wire—but Secretariat continues widening on them.
To twenty-nine lengths.
Turcotte scrubs and pushes on Secretariat and he lengthens the margin to thirty lengths. The wire looms. The teletimer flashes crazily. All eyes are on it and on the horse. Many horsemen have seen Turcotte looking at the timer and now they’re looking at it, too. He is racing the clock, his only competitor, and he is beating it badly as he rushes the red horse through the final yards. At the end, the colt dives for the wire. The teletimer blinks the last time and then it stops, as though it has been caught in midair—2:24.
He hits the wire thirty-one lengths in front of Twice a Prince, with Sham finishing last, forty-five lengths behind.
The sounds of the crowd have gathered in the run through the straight and now they burst forth in one stentorian howl. Secretariat has just shattered three records in the Triple Crown, this mile-and-a-half record by two and two-fifths seconds, and Turcotte stands up at the wire and lets him gallop out an extra eighth to the turn. Even easing up he eclipses records through his momentum. Clocker Sonny Taylor catches him going the final eighth in 0:13 3/5, giving the colt a mile and five-eighths in an unofficial 2:37 3/5, time that would shatter Swaps’s world mark by three-fifths of a second. He has strung together a phenomenal run of eighths—0:12 1/5, 0:11 2/5, 0:11 2/5, 0:11 1/5, 0:12, 0:11 3/5, 0:12 1/5, 0:12 1/5, 0:12, 0:12 4/5, 0:12 1/5, 0:12 4/5. Incredibly, none of them is slower than 0:12 4/5.
Turcotte pulls him to a halt on the turn. Jim Dailey, the outrider who met Gaffney on the colt a year before, meets him now on the bend. He has not seen the teletimer.
“How fast you go?”
“Two twenty-four flat,” Turcotte yells back to him.
“You’re crazy.”
“I’m telling you!” says Turcotte.
“Can’t be.”
Turcotte turns the horse around at the bend. With Dailey riding a pony beside him, he begins a slow gallop past the stands and the clubhouse. Ovations ripple and accompany him home. Acknowledging them, Turcotte doffs his helmet as he did at the Derby and brings down the house, prompting even more thunderous cheering and applause.
On the racetrack, Hollis Chenery greets Secretariat and Turcotte outside the winner’s circle, and Chenery takes hold of the lead shank and brings them into the circle. The reception of the crowd is electric.
They lean over the flower boxes down the victory lane; long, braceleted arms reach out for him. Hands slap his glistening coat. Hands shoot up in fists. Hands are cupped over faces. Hands are holding hands and gesturing elation and awe. The clapping and the shouts of encouragement—to Turcotte and Laurin, to Penny and Secretariat—come in endless waves, and they follow them all through the winner’s circle ceremony. Eddie Sweat takes the colt and walks him home, passing the crowds that line the winner’s circle, the governors and racing officials, and heading back to the mouth of the tunnel. Thousands of people line the tunnel and send up cheers as Sweat and Secretariat pass. Men and women of all ages holler boisterously to Sweat and clap their hands. Sweat nods his head and smiles and raises his fist in the air. As he makes his way home through the paddock, the crowds are waiting for him everywhere. The colt is sweating heavily as he slants around the walking ring of the paddock, his nostrils moist and warm and flaring. Beads of sweat trickle down his head and neck, his eyes dart left and right. The crowds shout his name over and over as he walks past them.
As Sweat leads the colt around the paddock, he passes trainer Elliott Burch, who is waiting to saddle a horse in the race following the Belmont. His patron, Paul Mellon, owns a share in Secretariat. Burch’s face is flushed with excitement. His arms are folded and he turns to follow Secretariat as he goes by. He has never seen such a performance, and he calls out, “Spectacular! Just sensational!”
Burch is one of many horsemen, young and old, who would claim that they had witnessed, on a sultry afternoon in June, the greatest single performance ever by a running horse, an unprecedented feat of power, grace, and speed. The chorus is large and vocal in their claims of that, and among them are Alfred Vanderbilt and Woody Stephens, Buddy Hirsch and Sherrill Ward, P. G. Johnson and Arthur Kennedy. Charles Hatton is calling Secretariat the greatest horse he has ever seen, in sixty years of covering and observing the American turf, greater even than Man o’ War.
“His only point of reference is himself,” Hatton says.
That evening they all leave the racetrack rethinking their old notions and beliefs on the standards of greatness in the thoroughbred. The impact of the victory is felt everywhere. The effect of the Belmont on the value of the colt is instantaneous. As much as $500,000 is offered for a single share. Vanderbilt sells half his share to his friends, the Whitneys of Greentree—John Hay Whitney and Mrs. Charles Shipman Payson, who were offered but turned down a share originally—for the $190,000 purchase price, but only because he is their friend. All others hold on to their entire shares in the immediate wake of the Belmont, knowing that a foal by Secretariat out of a stakes-winning mare could bring $500,000 at auction. Secretariat, like his sire, is virtually not for sale.
The victors raise a thousand toasts that night. Penny and Lucien and the Meadow Stable party meet at the barn. As the colt is being cooled out following the triumph, Lucien comes through the gate into the stable paddock and is cheered lustily by the stable grooms and hot walkers who have stayed behind to greet and congratulate him. Turcotte arrives and he is cheered, too, and so is Penny Tweedy.
At Fasig-Tipton’s central office, across the street from the racetrack, the company’s clients are gathered over a case of champagne. They are toasting the victors. Among them is Howard Gilman, whose paper company owns a share of Secretariat only because John Galbreath turned his share down. Howard Gilman offers a toast to Fasig-Tipton for having encouraged the company to buy the share, and so the glasses are raised and the clientele sip a salute to the company for its wisdom and sagacity. And then John Finney offers a countertoast. He raises his glass and says, “The toast should properly be to John Galbreath. If he had not declined his share, you would not have gotten it.”
They all agree and drink a toast to him.
“Thanks to John Galbreath.”
Epilogue
The L-188 Electra banked in over Lexington, its four turboprop engines whining and vibrating loudly as it slowed for landing, and Elizabeth Ham stood dressed in her Persian lamb coat and fur hat, holding to Secretariat’s stall in the center aisle of the plane. Strapped into a narrow stall directly behind Riva Ridge, Secretariat was nibbling hay.
It was November 12, 1973, and Secretariat was returning home to Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky, where he had been conceived almost five years before. He may have been born to be a racehorse, the culmination and coming together of the richest and most prepotent thoroughbred bloodlines in America, but already the best years of his life lay behind him. At the age of three, he was being consumed by the industry that had raised and made him worth ten times his weight in gold. Composed and collected to the point of indifference, Secretariat waited quietly in the stall.
“It’s a shame Mr. Chenery isn’t here to see him,” said Elizabeth Ham. “But if Mr. Chenery were here to see him, Secretariat wou
ldn’t be here. He wouldn’t be going to the farm. He would be racing again next year.”
That was the shame of it. The Belmont Stakes, ultimately viewed by more than 50 million people during the live telecast and on countless news accounts of it that evening, had made Secretariat the most celebrated and popular racehorse of all time. He became the client of the William Morris Agency, joining all the other sex symbols of the era, and a valuable commercial property to Penny Tweedy and the estate of C. T. Chenery. He began receiving hundreds of letters, many from young girls and old men wishing him well and thanking him for the memories. And there were offers to do photos of the colt and books and statues and lithographs, records and posters and public appearances on television. Sonny and Cher, for instance, made an offer for Secretariat to appear on their show. But that would have made it necessary to van him to Manhattan and then lead him into a studio and onto an open stage.