Secretariat (26 page)

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 breath 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.”

Venezia asked the roan for more speed, and he responded at the bend, edging up toward Secretariat as they made the turn and set off down the lane. He could feel Champagne Charlie close the gap. He reached, asking for more. The roan responded again, shaving the margin to a length and a half, then to a length. Turcotte, at first unaware as Champagne Charlie came to him, suddenly heard the immediacy of the crowd—a reboant roar that grew in intensity as Champagne Charlie came to Secretariat.

“I could hear the crowd and I thought the stands were coming down.”

They were passing the three-sixteenths pole now, with 330 yards to go, and announcer Dave Johnson’s voice boomed out: “Secretariat now in front by a length and a quarter. Champagne Charlie on the outside up to challenge. Down the stretch they come! Secretariat on the rail. Champagne Charlie on the outside.”

Turcotte, hearing the crowd and aware that something was unfolding behind him—something of an alarming nature—glanced to his right. He could hardly believe it, after that pace he had been setting with the red horse.

By now, as the two raced for the eighth pole, Secretariat had had the breather he needed, and he had finally relaxed, easing off between the quarter pole and the three-sixteenths pole. “I still thought I had that closing run,” said Turcotte. “When Champagne Charlie came to me at the three-sixteenths pole, I set my horse down again, and I could feel Secretariat start to pick up the momentum again.”

The roan never got his nose to the front, though the crowd was frantic as he edged to a neck away. Turcotte struck Secretariat twice, deep in the stretch, and the red horse moved away again. In the last 200 yards he rushed off to win by three.

Secretariat raced the mile in 1:33
2
/
5
, tying the track mark set by an older horse five years before, and up in the stands there was another sustained breath of relief following that long drive through the lane, as there had been after the Bay Shore. Laurin was almost as excited as he was after that race. “I thought he was beat at the three-sixteenths pole. I almost had a heart attack.”

Chapter 22

All seemed within their grasp after the Gotham. Secretariat appeared virtually invincible, emerging without a peer among the three-year-olds, bounding along as if inexorably destined to win the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont stakes. Historically, all this was in the harshest defiance of the odds. Only eight horses had ever won the Triple Crown, and never in history had the same team of owner-breeder-trainer-jockey won consecutive runnings of the Kentucky Derby, much less all three. Never had a son of Bold Ruler won any of the three, so star-crossed were the sire’s progeny for the three-year-old spring classics. Yet never had a two-year-old son of Bold Ruler come to his three-year-old year with such speed and promise.

For Laurin, Turcotte, and Penny Tweedy, the press was on to win the second Kentucky Derby, to take another crack at the Preakness Stakes, and to try to win the Belmont the second year in a row. Following the Gotham they radiated confidence, swelling with hope. Penny’s feelings of pessimism about Secretariat had dissolved almost entirely since the Bay Shore Stakes. The race had convinced her that the colt had experienced safe passage through the transition period over winter, and it set her to thinking that she had a shot to win the Derby again in 1973. The Gotham simply reinforced that notion in her mind, filling her with optimism. The colt was running heavy-headedly, battering at the ground, but not so much as he had at the age of two. He was giving signs that he was learning to run, to carry himself more smoothly. Turcotte felt a change between the Bay Shore and the Gotham stakes—a greater airiness in stride. The colt had done everything asked of him and had done it well. He had blown by horses on the outside. He had rushed past them on the rail in the Gotham. He had busted between horses. He had come from behind and had gone to the lead. He had run over fast and sloppy racetracks. He relished turns—the sharper the better—and worked willingly in the morning. He had no limiting flaws, at least none that had surfaced yet.

After the Gotham, Laurin turned and aimed him for the final prep race before the Kentucky Derby, the $100,000-added Wood Memorial, one mile and an eighth at Aqueduct on April 21. To that race the colt brought a lengthening list of nicknames—Superhorse, Big Red, Big Red II, Red, the Big Red Machine, the Red Horse, and Super Red. He was hailed already as the ninth Triple Crown winner, the peer of Man o’ War, and the greatest heir of the greatest sire in American history.

But at least one major question had arisen in the last several weeks, one major threat to Secretariat’s dominance of the spring classics. There were no outstanding three-year-olds tracking the red horse through Florida, as Arcaro had said, and there was nothing of critical note training in either Louisiana or Kentucky. But out west in California, a big horse had emerged in full scale, growing up and filling out that winter in the foothills of the San Gabriel mountains at Santa Anita Park. He was Sham, and he had classic dimensions to him.

Sham had become one of America’s most accomplished three-year-olds since Pancho Martin started training him at Santa Anita that winter, just weeks after his patron, construction magnate Sigmund Sommer, paid $200,000 for him at the Bull Hancock dispersal sale at Belmont Park. He had won that first start for them in December at Aqueduct, breaking his maiden, and had come back New Year’s Day at Santa Anita and won that allowance race by fifteen.

“This is my Derby horse,” said jockey Laffit Pincay, Jr.

Pancho shipped Sham across the Rockies following the Santa Anita Derby, bringing him to Long Island and a stall in the Sommer barn at Belmont Park, at the opposite end of the stable area from Secretariat. It was a fighting move—a move that said that Secretariat’s reign as champion of his generation had endured too long, that vowed Sham would go out of his way to meet him on his own turf.

Proud, defiant, angry, and confident, Martin came looking for a scrap, for the chance to send his Sham against the red horse. The Kentucky Derby could wait.

He would battle him first in the Wood.

Pancho had deviated from the traditional course: other Santa Anita Derby winners—Swaps, Lucky Debonair, and Majestic Prince—went directly to Kentucky from California, doing their final tuning up at Churchill Downs or Keeneland. Now Martin was gearing up for the race at Aqueduct. “The Wood is the way I wanted to go, that’s all,” Martin said one day at the barn. Trainers, like fight managers, often speak for their horses in the first person.

While Martin was grabbing hold of the bit on his way to Kentucky via Aqueduct, it was not unanimous in the Sommer camp that the colt should even go to Churchill Downs. When Sommer saw Sham in the Santa Anita Derby, his thoughts turned to Kentucky. He had never run in a Derby.

Martin had never even been to Churchill Downs, much less had a horse in the Derby, and the challenge of winning it and beating the red horse began to consume him. The two men decided that Sham would run in the ninety-ninth Kentucky Derby. But they had to overrule Viola Sommer, Sigmund’s pleasant, cherubic, unobtrusive wife, who shared her husband’s interest in the racing stable and had definite ideas of her own concerning the Kentucky Derby.

Viola Sommer thought there were too many unqualified horses causing too much traffic in the Derby and that a good horse could get hurt in it too easily. The Kentucky Derby, in fact, was known for its large fields and the unqualified horses entered in it by owners willing to pay the $4100 in entry fees for the privilege of saying they had a horse compete in it. Martin believed Sham could win, but that, to Viola, was beside the point. Even if Sham were better than Secretariat, that didn’t justify risking injury to their horse.

But the plans were laid, against her wishes, to ship the bay colt to Kentucky following the Wood.

Martin and Sommer had been together for eight years. Martin had a reputation as a brilliant conditioner, a peer of the inimitable Allen Jerkens and Hirsch Jacobs, and Sommer, a self-made construction millionaire, had strong ambitions. Sommer sought out Martin after Martin claimed a horse from him, won several races with the horse at a higher claiming value, and then lost him in a claiming race himself, though not before making a large profit for the owner. He hired Martin to train for him exclusively.

By 1971, Sigmund Sommer was America’s leading owner in money won, the horses owned by him winning a world’s record $1,523,508 in prize money. Sommer broke his own record in 1972: his horses won $1,605,896. He owned a high-class operation, with Martin orchestrating the stable operations like a major-general, buying and selling horses at the races. They lost a number of exceptional horses, however, to illnesses and accidents. Sommer’s Autobiography, voted the leading handicap horse in America in 1972, broke a leg at Santa Anita and was destroyed. Dust the Plate, a promising two-year-old, broke a leg that summer past and had to be destroyed. Stakes-winning Hitchcock collapsed and died one morning of a heart attack. While being loaded on a plane bound for Europe, stakes-winning Never Bow fell from the loading ramp and broke his neck.

Autobiography died in March, while Sham was emerging as the leading three-year-old in California, and the death left Martin and Sommer crushed. In that emptiness rose Sham, a rangy, elegant-looking bay horse with a leggy leanness to him and a dappling coat. Pancho soon came to regard Sham as the best horse he’d ever trained, better than Autobiography, and toward him became as solicitous as a father toward his gifted son. There was honor involved in all this, too—and pride and faith. All these needed defending during battle. As it turned out, Martin would have a better chance to win the Wood than he ever imagined then, for events in mid-April began conspiring to bring the race within his reach and shape the course of things for weeks to come.

Laurin eased off Secretariat’s training following such a fast mile in the Gotham. He sent him out an easy half mile in 0:49 on April 13. Then he said, “I’ll work him once again and then try to catch Sham.” On April 17, he boosted Turcotte aboard the red horse for that second work, a one-mile breeze around the main track at Belmont Park. Laurin told Turcotte to let the colt run the mile in about 1:38, two seconds slower than twelving it. Turcotte, after warming him up through the stretch, took Secretariat to the mile pole past the clocker’s shed and got ready to break him off. The colt grew anxious. Ahead of him, at once, Turcotte saw a loose horse galloping toward him, clockwise. So he waited. The loose horse came charging past him and up the homestretch, reins flapping and riderless, going the wrong way. Secretariat was getting edgy as Turcotte waited. Then he lost sight of the loose horse, and decided to send the colt on his way.

Turcotte picked up speed and galloped toward the mile pole, then sat down on Secretariat and took off around the turn and into the long Belmont backstretch, all the while letting the colt run and watching ahead for the loose horse. Down the backside and around the turn Turcotte watched for trouble. The fractions were agonizingly slow: 0:13
1
/
5
, 0:26
1
/
5
, 0:52 for the half, 1:17
4
/
5
for the three-quarters. “He’s thirteening it pretty good,” Laurin said, grimly.

The red horse accelerated through the final quarter in 0:24
2
/
5
, finishing out the mile in 1:42
2
/
5
, about five seconds slower than Laurin had wanted him to go. It was a dismal move, the slowest and least impressive of all Secretariat’s workouts.

But Laurin was a master at last-minute improvisation, and what he planned was a quick blowout to bring the colt to his toes.

Sham, meanwhile, had his second sharp workout since arriving in New York. Martin sent him a mile in 1:37
2
/
5
on April 12, and five days later wound the watch with a sizzling five-eighths in 0:58, the fastest move of the day. It may have been too fast.

Nor were Sham and Secretariat the only runners aiming for the Wood to appear on the racetrack that morning. Laurin sent Edwin Whittaker’s Angle Light a mile in 1:42 for his final Wood Memorial prep. It is a common and legal practice for trainers to run two horses of different owners in the same race. Angle Light was getting sharp. The same day Sham worked his mile, Angle Light worked a brisk six furlongs in 1:11
2
/
5
. Meanwhile, Laurin was still assuring Penny that there was nothing to worry about with Angle Light, as he had assured her the last fall; yet she remained concerned about him, seeing him as a real threat to Secretariat.

Angle Light was the best horse Whittaker had ever owned. Whittaker had bought him for only $15,500 at the 1971 Keeneland summer sales, and he’d already won $89,006 as a two-year-old, and had finished second in the Garden State to the Horse of the Year. That winter, while Secretariat was idle, Whittaker nearly won the $100,000-added Flamingo Stakes at one and an eighth miles with him. The colt just missed for all the money, finishing a neck behind Our Native in third. Whittaker’s enthusiasm grew. After Angle Light raced to a ten-length victory at Aqueduct on March 21, according to
The New York Times,
Whittaker said, “This colt is going to the Kentucky Derby
with
Secretariat because they’re both trained by Lucien Laurin. As to who will win, I can’t say, but they’ll run one-two.” Laurin thought the colt would run sharply in the Wood, and he also believed Sham’s long journey from California might adversely affect him.

The problems began sometime before the Wood Memorial, perhaps even before the slow mile workout. Jimmy Gaffney jumped on Secretariat on Thursday morning, two days before the Wood, and took him to the track to gallop him. The horse wasn’t acting himself. Gaffney started to gallop him and sensed there was something wrong. He went a mile and a half open gallop and had to kick the colt a little bit to do it.

This puzzled Gaffney because Secretariat was a horse who worked so willingly in the morning. When he brought the colt back to the barn he told Sweat about it.

The next day was even more alarming to Gaffney. On Friday, Hoeffner told Gaffney to gallop the red horse a “two-minute lick”—that is, a mile in two minutes, which is not a flat-out run but is faster than a normal gallop. Gaffney took him to the track, and again he had to kick the colt to keep him going. Worse, when he brought Secretariat back to the barn, the colt was blowing—a sign of distress fatigue. After Turcotte brought Secretariat back to the barn following the slow mile on Tuesday, the colt was blowing and his nostrils were flared.

Gaffney never told Laurin of the need to kick the red horse. Lucien’s father-in-law had died the week of the Wood, and Gaffney didn’t want to upset him further. He was under more strain than usual by the close of the week. He had two horses coming to the Wood Memorial, the final Derby prep race, and there was a death in the family. In the confusion of those final days, things weren’t meshing at Barn 5, and whatever plans there were to give the colt a blowout never materialized. The source of the problem remained hidden and unknown until the morning of the Wood Memorial, concealed under Secretariat’s upper lip, just to the right of center.

Dr. Manuel A. Gilman, the examining veterinarian for the New York Racing Association, discovered a swelling abscess under the lip. Gilman arrived early at Barn 5 that morning to give Secretariat the routine prerace physical examination and to identify Secretariat
as
Secretariat by checking his tattoo number—Z20669. All horses have a tattoo number as part of the universal horse identification system, which is designed, in part, to ensure that horses competing in races
are
the horses their handlers claim they are.

The number is tattooed inside the upper lip. Gilman lifted the lip to look at it.

He was the first to notice the abscess. It was blue, about the size of a quarter, and was sore and getting sorer. Gilman went to see Laurin about it, and brought Lucien back to the stall to show it to him, referring to it at the time as an abscess.