Secretariat (36 page)

Pancho raised Pincay to Sham’s back, and Laurin boosted Turcotte. The post parade began. Owners and trainers and officials scurried across the racetrack to the clubhouse, settling into seats and elbowing through the crowd that went to and from the betting windows. A chorus sang “Maryland, My Maryland.” Lucien and Penny and Jack Tweedy settled at once into a box seat near the jockeys’ veranda at the finish line. On the racetrack below, Turcotte started warming up the colt, galloping him to the upper stretch with Billy Silver running next to him. Applause tracked him everywhere, a fluttering of hands and programs.

A bell rang three times loudly.

“Three minutes left,” said the loudspeaker. “Three minutes.”

The crowd started drifting to the rail. Turcotte felt Secretariat warming up well, very loosely, so he stopped him around the turn. Sister Yvonne, a Catholic nun and long-time friend of Lucien, put her arm around him. Laurin lit a cigarette. Jack Tweedy leaned over and said something to his wife, and Penny nodded and popped a Rolaid tablet into her mouth.

“Post time two minutes.”

In the upper stretch the horses moved toward the starting gate. Billy Silver paraded next to Secretariat. The calisthenics were finally over for the day. Lucien’s face had grown suddenly weary. Turning, he sighed. Several seats behind him sat Senator Hubert H. Humphrey. A man, apparently drunk, had been haranguing Humphrey for some time, but through it all the senator smiled patiently. “I think Secretariat is going to win, but I have my money on Sham and Our Native,” Humphrey said.

“Post time one minute.”

The horses were nearing the gate. All around the oval, in the grandstand and infield, crowds thinned out by the fences to see the race. Heads craned up. Horseplayers rushed to make final bets. Owners and trainers of Preakness horses went to their seats. Seth Hancock was there and E. V. Benjamin. So was Howard M. Gentry, who had come north to Baltimore from The Meadow to see the red horse run. It had been almost thirty-eight months since he rushed off that night to the foaling barn in the field.

The crew at the starting gate brought the horses forward. They took Sham in Post 1, then the 35–1 shot Deadly Dream, then Secretariat to Post 3. Turcotte had pulled down his goggles and now he waited in the gate. He was more confident in Secretariat than he’d ever been. He was coming off that powerful Derby and a sensational workout, and he believed there was no way they could beat him if all went well. He took up a lock of mane and leaned forward again, waiting.

“It is now post time.”

It was over in less than thirty seconds, in the time it took him to apply the cruncher.

The latch sprang and Turcotte felt the red horse having trouble with the track, floundering as the surface chipped and broke away beneath him, while in the midst of his struggles to leave the gate he hopped a tractor print in front of it. Turcotte, unalarmed and sympathetic to what the colt was going through, simply steadied and folded up on him, giving him time to settle into stride. It didn’t take long.

The field took off around him.

On the inside Sham broke drifting right and bumped into Deadly Dream, but Pincay hauled him off and sent him up to challenge for the lead. He would have to fight for it: on the far outside George Cusimano was gunning Ecole Etage, asking the son of Disciplinarian for speed, and he was responding in a charge down the middle of the racetrack.

Secretariat, as if back on his feet and straightening his tie, dropped back to last in the first few jumps. Sham and Deadly Dream pulled away on his left, and as they cleared him Turcotte angled Secretariat toward the rail. Thus the Preakness began as the Derby, and there was a stirring from the stands as Secretariat galloped trailing past them down the lane. He was a stretch runner by reputation now, and nothing excited a race crowd more than that.

Turcotte already sensed victory. The colt had found his footing and was leveling out beautifully, and Turcotte felt at once that he was running with the power and the rhythm he had in the first run through the straight at Churchill Downs. So he left him alone and waited for the Preakness to develop.

It was developing up front. There, racing by the eighth pole and making his first pass at the wire, Ecole Etage was outrunning Sham. Pincay had wanted the lead if he could get it, but now he was declining to make an issue of it, letting Ecole Etage set sail on his own. It was too soon to go to the well. Besides, Pincay had been concerned since the break about the way Sham was running. He’d detected a small hitch in Sham’s stride, a kind of unsoundness of motion, as if something were bothering him, and as they raced past the wire Pincay was worrying about it. Then, as quickly as it came, it went, vanishing as Sham settled into stride as he neared the turn.

Clearing the field of horses on his left, Cusimano eased Ecole Etage toward the rail, then opened up two lengths in the run past the wire. Heading for the first turn, Cusimano started sitting tight on Ecole Etage. So far there would be no hesitation waltz.

Behind Ecole Etage was Torsion, racing a head in front of Sham. The Sommer colt was racing in close quarters on the rail, hugging it too tightly, now caroming off it as he raced into the clubhouse turn. But in a moment Pincay had steadied him and was going on again. Sham was running as well as he had two weeks before.

Behind them Deadly Dream was racing inside Our Native.

And behind them, bounding happily along two lengths astern of Our Native, came Secretariat. He was gaining speed, as he had at Churchill Downs, picking up momentum. He was moving gazellelike to the first turn.

Ecole Etage was a length and a half in front of Torsion as they banked into it. Tracking him, Torsion had a half length on Sham. Sommer’s bay was four in front of Our Native and Deadly Dream. Those two were still lapped on each other. Secretariat raced directly behind them. They moved to the bend. Secretariat was relaxing and running effortlessly, taking deep breaths as he galloped within himself, and Turcotte felt the colt was ready at any time to run. Then it all began. Coming to the turn, Turcotte looked up front to check the pacesetting Ecole Etage. The leader was running alone. Looking, Turcotte thought he saw Ecole Etage’s head rise up, and one connection came to his mind: Cusimano is trying to slow down the pace.

He reacted instantly, almost by instinct. He reached and shortened his line in a quick flicking of the wrists, like a man adjusting his cuffs—a movement of the hands so subtle, barely noticeable, yet a signal to the red horse that it was time. He felt Turcotte take ahold of him, and in turn he grabbed the bit, and when Turcotte took back slightly on the right line, tugging gently on it, Secretariat swung outside of Our Native. All this was in a set of motions interlocked as one, a kind of chain reaction started by the hands: the flicking of the wrists, the grabbing of the bit, the pulling on the right line, the swinging outside, and then the first thrust forward, with dancer’s grace, when Secretariat raised his forelegs in a single stride that lifted and swept him across the hindlegs of Our Native and set him down sprinting three horses wide on Pimlico’s tight first turn, like a hoop around a barrel, and through all this Turcotte sat still, having moved only his hands, and that was all he did.

Secretariat sprinted past Our Native and Deadly Dream, while in the clubhouse seats Lucien thought he’d lost the Preakness and yelled to Penny, “He blew it!”

Leaving Deadly Dream and Our Native, Secretariat sprinted after Sham. He came to Sham in a rush, cutting the margin between them to three lengths, then two, then one, then bounded past him just midway of the turn. Still sprinting, Secretariat raced to Torsion and went past him and then set out for Ecole Etage. They were turning into the backstretch. He had come from last place in less than a quarter mile, and as they went into the backside he was at the throat of Ecole Etage. Cusimano saw him coming and he let out a notch on him. But it was too late. Secretariat powered past him and took the lead. Behind him the field was in shambles. Turcotte had caught them all, including Pincay, by surprise, and now he was setting sail on the lead and waiting for a response. It never came.

Secretariat opened a short lead as he raced to the five-eighths pole, gaining a length on Ecole Etage. Pincay had taken Sham outside Torsion and was in pursuit of Secretariat.

Secretariat widened his lead past the five-eighths pole. He opened a half length on Ecole Etage, then a length, then a length and a half, then two lengths as he raced past the half-mile pole into the far turn. Sham pursued. Pincay thought he had a chance to catch the red horse. He thought the move around the turn was too fast, and he thought the colt would falter on the turn for home. Turcotte, racing past the half-mile pole, looked under his right arm and saw the Sommer colors. Yet he sat quietly. Sham was racing two and a half lengths behind him, the crowd roaring for battle.

Midway of the turn for home, Turcotte heard the lashing of Pincay’s whip. So he eased his hold on the red horse, letting out a notch of rein, and felt a surge of power. Sham was running from Pincay’s stick but gaining nothing on Secretariat. They wheeled past the quarter pole and into the homestretch. There were still two and a half lengths between them. The final drive was on. The crowds in the stands were leaping on the rail and on the seats, while youths in the infield leaped the fences and swept down to the rail on Secretariat’s left. Hands went up. Turcotte saw them five feet away and turned Secretariat’s head to the right. Unconcerned at the tumult he was creating, Secretariat raced toward home. Pincay was still working on Sham with the whip, pushing and scrubbing on him, and he was looking for Turcotte to ask Secretariat for reserves.

But Turcotte hand-rode him, feeling at any time he could have opened another five lengths on Sham, but never asking him for more than he was giving on his own. At the eighth pole he was still two and a half in front. Pincay began to see it was no use, but he rode Sham hard for the wire, many lengths in front of Our Native but unable to gain ground on Secretariat.

They came to the wire that way, Secretariat winning it by two and a half lengths, Sham second, eight lengths in front of Our Native—in a finish identical to that of the Kentucky Derby. The reaction was spontaneous. Horseplayers and fans shaking hands, slapping backs, raced onto the track by the finish line.

The infield and the winner’s circle developed into a mob scene as the jockeys pulled up their horses and dismounted. People scurried around Secretariat as Turcotte rode along on him. The colt remained a center of calm among them, walking quietly, unmoved by the moilings around him, by the voices, by the garland of daisies, painted to look like black-eyed Susans, they draped across his withers. Lucien, who had howled when he saw the move on the first turn, was marveling at it now, congratulating Turcotte for sensing a slowdown of the pace and acting so decisively. If that move had failed, Turcotte would have come under a sharper and more unrelenting attack than he’d ever been under in his life, but Secretariat had won under a hand-ride, without strong urging, so the move began to take on all the aspects of a masterstroke. It was a sharp variation from the way horses are supposed to run around the first turn at Pimlico, containing the brilliance of surprise.

In one sweep around the first turn at Pimlico, Turcotte had muted the critics who thought he lacked confidence, that he could get a good horse in a bad spot. He had ridden Secretariat with rare confidence, and he’d done it with everything at stake: all the responsibility was his. The safe decision was to sit and wait. Yet Turcotte gambled, and he drew gasps from the crowd, and fooled every jockey in the race, among them Laffit Pincay, Jr., who was admittedly caught off guard. “I was really surprised. I didn’t think Turcotte would ride him that way. He went by me very fast. I was hoping from the early effort that he would get tired, but . . .”

The general reaction in the jockeys’ room was awe. “I never seen anything like the horse,” said Tony Black, who rode Deadly Dream, “to move so early and have so much left. I was on the inside, with Secretariat on the outside—next thing I know, I look over, and Secretariat was gone. He’s unreal.”

In the press box, too, there were exclamations of disbelief, and they involved the running time as much as they involved the manner of the running. The final time posted on the tote board teletimer was 1:55, making Secretariat’s Preakness a full second slower than the track record of Canonero II, and 0:1
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slower than Andrew Beyer had predicted with a flourish of his red felt-tipped pen. What puzzled Beyer most, making him suspicious of the electric timer, was that the margins between the first three finishers were identical to those in the Derby. That meant, to Beyer, that all three horses had tailed off identically in their form, a coincidence the handicapper refused to accept. More, the electric timer—in which horses break a beam of light across the track—showed the speedy Ecole Etage running the first quarter mile in a very lackluster 0:25, and Cusimano was gunning him out of the blocks.

So Beyer didn’t believe the teletimer, and it wasn’t long before his suspicions were vindicated. Word of the discrepancy spread quickly, first coming to light when veteran clockers for the
Daily Racing Form,
including the paper’s chief of clockers Gene (Frenchy) Schwartz, and the paper’s chief clocker at Pimlico, Frank Robinson, told Joe Hirsch they had timed the Preakness, from different vantage points, and recorded the identical time: 1:53
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.

That, precisely, was what Beyer had predicted, a track record by three-fifths of a second. The discrepancy would never be resolved, though the proof would be overwhelmingly in favor of the faster clocking. Pimlico officials, conceding that the electric timer had malfunctioned, would later accept the time belatedly reported to them by the track’s official timer, E. T. McClean, who claimed he had timed Secretariat in 1:54
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. Later still, behind the impetus of handicapper Steve Davidowitz, the Maryland Racing Commission held a hearing on the matter and listened to testimony presented by CBS-TV, among others, that Secretariat had beaten Canonero’s track record. The television network ran videotapes of the two Preaknesses, showing that Secretariat defeated Canonero by about two lengths. The network thus claimed it had technical proof of a track record. But despite the time reported by two veteran
Racing Form
clockers, and despite the evidence presented by CBS-TV, the racing commission would finally decide to keep McClean’s time as official. The
Racing Form
would forever note its disagreement in its official charts, citing Schwartz’s and Robinson’s time in a footnote.