Secretariat (29 page)

“Blame Ronnie!” Lucien cried.

“No! I blame you because every other jock figured you weren’t going to get Secretariat beat by Angle Light. So they all took the cue from what Ronnie did! The other jocks figured, ‘Angle Light’s supposed to be a rabbit, he’s supposed to back up. Certainly Laurin won’t let this expensive horse get beat. So this must be a phony, and even though it’s a phony pace, Angle Light’s going to die, it’s all right.’ And that’s how Angle Light just stole the Wood! You’ve embarrassed yourself, you’ve embarrassed me, and you’ve embarrassed a good horse. And for nothing! Because Angle Light is never going to be any more than he was today. And if I didn’t have so much faith in you and weren’t so fond of you, I would throw you out now. I would have reason to change trainers tonight! And instead I’m going to give you hell.”

They ended up lost in the old whaling community of Cold Spring Harbor. By the time he pulled into the Tweedy’s driveway, the fighting had subsided, and Penny was feeling better.

“We really had a knock-down, drag-out fight and it was really so good,” she said. “By the time I got here I was pleasant. Lucien was very silent.”

So they were Derby bound.

On April 22, the day after the Wood, Laurin was already preparing to ship Secretariat and Angle Light by plane to Louisville. He had decided to send them the following day—Monday—accompanied by Ed Sweat as groom and Jimmy Gaffney as exercise boy. When the red horse traveled to Laurel and Garden State the autumn past, Charlie Davis took Gaffney’s place as exercise boy for Secretariat. Gaffney had his family in New York and his job behind the mutuel machines at Aqueduct, and he didn’t want to give up the money to go with the red horse then. But Secretariat in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes was something different. Thus he decided to sacrifice his mutuel clerk’s pay and accompany the colt out of town, prevailing on Laurin to send him instead of Charlie Davis.

There would be that triumphant sweep through Louisville and Baltimore, a tour de force: he had it all dreamed out in his mind. On the day of the Belmont Stakes, the day he saw Secretariat winning the Triple Crown, he would fit himself out—tails, top hat, and cummerbund—and lead Secretariat to the starting gate on Billy Silver. Secretariat would win, and Gaffney would step down in that warm flush of victory, full of good memories. It was his wish to retire that way, and all dressed up for the occasion; he had it all worked out. Now it was the morning of April 22, in the somber wake of the Wood.

“Are you ready to go?” Laurin asked Gaffney.

“I’ve wanted to talk to you about that,” said Gaffney. “I’ve changed my mind. No one around here wants to talk dollars and I just can’t afford it.”

Laurin said he understood. But Ron Turcotte was not as understanding. He remembered Gaffney had been telling him for weeks how much he was looking forward to going to Kentucky with Secretariat. So he was caught off guard.

“I’m not going to the Derby,” Gaffney told Turcotte.

“Why?” he asked. Turcotte would remember how disappointed he was thinking that Gaffney—of all people!—was so let down on the colt after the Wood, and after boosting him for so long.

So Laurin sent Charlie Davis, a long-time friend of Sweat’s from Holly Hill, South Carolina, for years Laurin’s most trusted journeyman exercise boy, the regular rider of Riva Ridge. On Monday they flew to Louisville out of Kennedy, vanned the short distance from the airport to Churchill Downs, and unloaded the two colts, Billy Silver, the trunks, and the suitcases at Barn 42, the main Kentucky Derby barn. They bedded Angle Light in Stall 20. Sweat took Secretariat to Stall 21, the same stall occupied by Riva Ridge the year before.

And there the final drive to win the Kentucky Derby began—the last two weeks of feast and fever played out in an old riverboat city on the Ohio, with its racetrack, a graceful flight of wood and spires overlooking a mile oval. The rumors of Secretariat’s unsoundness persisted and increased in the closing days; pressures intensified and bitternesses surfaced while, oblivious to most of this, thousands flocked to Louisville to see Secretariat do battle with Sham.

The abscess had worsened since the Wood, and Sweat was clearly troubled by it. The colt was not himself. The day after their arrival in Louisville, Dr. Robert Copelan came by the barn and Sweat spotted him. Copelan was the regular veterinarian for Laurin’s horses when they were in Kentucky.

Copelan lifted the lip, looking under it. By now the abscess was larger than on Saturday, and it was growing more painful as it matured. It was sore and puffed up and there was an actual swelling on the outside of the lip, but Copelan was not alarmed about it. It wasn’t serious. The upper lip was not an uncommon place for a horse to get an abscess. Copelan thought it might have been caused by a hay briar or an ingrown hair. But it was something that had to be watched and cared for. Copelan decided to treat it conservatively. He instructed Sweat to bathe it with hot towels in hopes of bringing it to a head on its own. He would lance it on Thursday if it failed to break open by then.

So the bathings became a part of Sweat’s routine the next two days, Tuesday and Wednesday. Sweat would fill a bucket with hot water from the faucet—as hot as his hands could tolerate—dunk and wring out a towel and press the steaming cloth to the lip. The colt’s eyes would widen and Davis and Sweat would mutter to soothe him.

Early Thursday morning, Sweat climbed out of bed and went into Stall 21 to check the abscess again. Raising the lip, he saw it had a pimple on its peak and it was festering, with pus and blood oozing from it. Grabbing a wet, clean sponge, Sweat wiped it off, then called Davis. Sweat quickly prepared another hot-towel application, and Davis held Secretariat as Sweat dunked and wrung and pressed the steaming towel to the lip, squeezing it gently, working to force the seed of the abscess from it and reduce the swelling and hence the pain. The abscess continued to drain. Doc Copelan, prepared to lance it, arrived at the barn shortly after noon on Thursday and examined it.

“Well, Eddie,” said Copelan, looking at it, “that’s good. This thing has already ruptured on its own and I don’t think we’re going to have any more trouble with it.”

So things were breaking for them just in time, and it wouldn’t be the last time.

That evening—Thursday night—Jacinto Vasquez and Turcotte flew together to Louisville to work Secretariat and Angle Light the following morning. Signing into the Executive Inn not far from the track and airport, Turcotte received a message telling him to meet Laurin and Penny for a conference in her room. He went upstairs immediately. Walking into the suite, Turcotte could feel that the moment had an edge to it—sharp with emotion and tension. The Wood had been a horror show and Penny was still agonizing over it. Laurin had already spoken to friends about retiring if the colt lost the Derby. For her part, Penny knew she would seriously have to consider retiring Secretariat if he ran as poorly as he had in the Wood. She had no legal obligation to retire Secretariat, but the moral commitment was firm and unmistakable. She had told Seth that if Secretariat lost once, she would wonder why; if he lost twice, she would consider stopping him and sending him to Claiborne. She knew the colt would have to run big in the Derby. It was crucial. They could not tolerate another Wood Memorial. So they had reached a juncture together, and the future was as uncertain for them as the immediate past was bleak.

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
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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
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, then made the bend and drilled the half in 0:47
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, sharp time for the Downs. Cachola stayed hunched over him through the lane, sending him the next eighth in 0:11
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. 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.