Secretariat (37 page)

Most were conceding Secretariat his second track record. More, they were already conceding him Horse of the Year, and there were not a few already conceding him the third and most difficult of the Triple Crown races, the one hundred fifth running of the Belmont Stakes, scheduled for June 9. At least one man, though, was conceding nothing. Pancho Martin had been twice shattered by the turn of things. After the race, he spoke of Sham’s hitting the rail going into the first turn, as he had spoken of Sham’s knocking out two teeth in the starting gate at Churchill Downs. But Pincay gave the colt no excuse in either race, not in the Derby and not at Pimlico. Sham, too, had broken the track record, as he had done at Churchill Downs, and excuses remained hard to find under those circumstances. Pincay had come to terms with Secretariat’s superiority. But he said nothing to Martin of his feelings. So the drama was played out, and Pancho must have known it then, even as he prepared to ship the son of Pretense north to Belmont Park. They couldn’t turn back now. Even Sigmund Sommer, a realist who had made his money in the New York construction world, kept chasing the old dream. He had a few drinks with Patrick Lynch, a New York racing official, following the Preakness, and with each drink Sham cut into Secretariat’s margin of victory in the impending Belmont Stakes. “If I’d stayed another five minutes, Sham would have beaten Secretariat by five,” said Lynch.

Of the three in the Sommer stable, only Viola Sommer, who hadn’t wanted to begin the campaign at Kentucky in the first place, appeared suspect of all the excuses. At the barn following the Preakness, Pancho was again talking about Sham hitting the rail.

The Preakness reaffirmed Secretariat’s Derby form, and it also served to inflate his value even more. John Finney had advised The Meadow that the colt would be worth perhaps $250,000 a share if he did only what he was supposed to do—that is, win the Triple Crown. The estate had decided to syndicate Secretariat rather than gamble with the government’s money, and they had all underestimated him.

“I wish we could syndicate him over again,” Penny said. “But I’m grateful that people had the confidence to go with us before he started racing again. I still think we have a good deal.”

At the time the colt was syndicated, Lucien did not think the price was high enough, and now the form had borne him out. “He was cheap at $190,000 a share,” he told reporters at the barn. “They should have syndicated him for $250,000 a share.”

But all that, for the moment, was peripheral to what was coming up in three weeks. Secretariat had successfully made it through the first two races of the Triple Crown, and now there was but the Belmont Stakes to run, and Penny was eagerly looking forward to it. As she, Lucien, Jack Tweedy, and Howard Gentry walked into the press box following the Preakness, she repeated, “We have two down and one to go. It’s up to Lucien, Ron, and the horse.”

Chapter 27

By ten o’clock Sunday morning Eddie Sweat and Charlie Davis had almost finished loading the van, piling the interior with feed tubs and buckets, lawn chairs and unopened bags of feed, fold-up beds and suitcases and trunks laden with bridles, blinkers, and bandages. They had already led three horses onto the van, too—Billy Silver and the speedy Spanish Riddle and In Trust, an unraced two-year-old filly that Laurin had agreed to take back to New York. Others in the stakes barn, including Sham, had been shipped off earlier, and most of the stable workers had cleaned and drifted off to lunch. A radio was playing soul music, it was raining steadily, and there was a sense of desertion in the air.

Down the aisle of the shed, his victory hat tipped askew, whistling and swinging a lead shank in his hand, came Eddie Sweat. He went directly to Stall 41, patted Secretariat on the neck, rubbing his fingers through his mane, and led him out the door. He whispered, “Now this time, Red, we’re goin’ home.”

They were heading north to Long Island and to the stable area at Belmont Park, to Stall 7 of Barn 5. Only four weeks had passed since the Monday following the Wood, when they flew Secretariat and Angle Light to Kentucky for the Derby, but in that time Secretariat had remade and glossed his image. He had performed beyond all reasonable expectations, shattering track records in two of America’s oldest and most prestigious races, and he’d done it in shows of versatility and style.

He had left New York as a vaguely discredited son of Bold Ruler—and was returning as racing’s reigning prince of the blood, a commanding victor at a mile and a quarter, America’s classic distance. He had left Long Island one race away from being retired, and was returning on the threshold of what passes in this sport for immortality. He had left New York worth a tenuous $6.08 million to more than a score of uneasy and sometimes panicky syndicate members, and he was returning worth as much as $10 million to men who were patting each other on the back. He had left town known largely by those who had read the sports pages and heard of the record syndication, and he was returning a national figure, a culture hero. The nation was beginning to suffer the effects of Watergate, and the news was filled with names such as Haldeman and Mitchell and Dean, Ehrlichman and Liddy and Hunt, McCord and Strachan and Magruder. Though oblivious to all but the sensate world within his immediate grasp, Secretariat represented everything that they did not—honest, generous, simple, and incorruptible. More, he was coming to a historic meeting place, to the last and most challenging of the Triple Crown races, in recent years the most difficult of all to win for Triple Crown candidates.

In the last fifteen years, six horses had won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, then failed in the Belmont. They had come to the race either lacking the stamina to go the route, tired or worn down by the first two races, poorly or inadequately trained. For one reason or another, the Belmont was one too many, and they had come up short. Tim Tam had broken a sesemoid bone at the top of the stretch in 1958, wobbling home on three legs, though there was some doubt whether he could have handled victorious Cavan that day on all four. Carry Back was not himself in 1961. Northern Dancer tired in 1964. Two years later, so did Kauai King. Majestic Prince and Canonero, both of them sore, were not the horses they were at either Churchill Downs or Pimlico. Neither should have run in the Belmont Stakes, but the historic pressures forced their owners’ hands. It had been so long since Citation! There had been so many failures, so many near misses.

Now the red horse was returning to Long Island, the soundest and most brilliant of all the candidates in history, and he generated crackling excitement in and out of the sport of racing. He had a presence to him that the others did not have, a sense of greatness, what horsemen used to call the “look of eagles.” Sweat sensed this in the horse’s poised demeanor, his superior air.

He walked Secretariat through the shed to the loading ramp, waited a moment out of the rain, and then walked him quickly to the foot of the gentle incline and up into the wide open door. Turning the colt, Sweat backed him into a narrow stall, then clipped chains to each side of his halter. On Secretariat’s right was Spanish Riddle, while facing across from him, about ten feet away, was the melancholy Billy Silver. Sweat quickly fastened the hay rack to a post between Secretariat and Spanish Riddle, and the two reached and tore at it voraciously, nervously.

Davis moved to Secretariat’s head, patting him and talking softly. He climbed quickly into the cab, and moments later the engine fired up, raucously, the van shook with tremors, and Secretariat spread both fores to brace himself. Sweat let out the clutch, sending the van pitching and teetering slowly through the stable to the gate. The red horse tossed his head sharply as the van hit bumps and wobbled left and right. He pawed at the floor and strained forward on the chains that held him. Davis talked to him above the engine noise.

The van picked up speed, passing the manure bins, and Secretariat pounded violently at the rubber matting on the floor, beating and scraping it with his left fore.

As they neared the stable gate, Davis picked up the leather end of the lead shank and put it, like a lollipop, into Secretariat’s mouth, and the colt grabbed it at once, settling down. Sweat waved to the guards at the gate—“Good luck,” one of them yelled back—and took a right on Winner Street for home.

“As soon as we start moving, he’ll settle down,” said Davis. “He ships beautiful. No trouble. No trouble at all.”

Sweat turned off Winner Street and headed up Northern Parkway toward the superhighways skirting Baltimore. He stopped at a light, outside the gates of the track, and motorists gazed up indifferently at the chestnut with the blaze of white down his face. It was still raining steadily, drops running down the glass, and his ears played constantly as he looked across the streets of Baltimore. Horns honked. A small child waved to him. He sniffed at the window pane.

At three o’clock in the afternoon, Sweat came to a halt at the Belmont stable gate, turned left inside with the light, and edged slowly through the doors, parking under a mass of leaves dripping with rain. Leaves were sticking through the windows, and Secretariat sniffed at them. It had rained all the way. The cab door slammed and Sweat walked toward the office for the paperwork.

Moments later he emerged from the office and took off in the truck through the stable area, turning left at Ogden Phipps’s barn and past Paul Mellon’s barn and the stable of the Calumet Farm. He edged past Barn 5, and there were grooms and stable workers and racing officials and photographers waiting for him, newsmen from the Associated Press and United Press International and the
New York Daily News
and
Newsday.

Sweat led Secretariat down the ramp and toward the barn, and everyone greeted him as he crossed the road, slapping him on the back and shouting encouragement to him.

Cameras were clicking as photographers ducked around to get pictures. Horses’ heads popped out of stalls and regarded Secretariat as he walked past. Among them were Angle Light, Voler, Capito, and, farther on down the aisle, there was Riva Ridge. Almost a year had passed since Riva Ridge had returned from Pimlico, the latest of the Triple Crown hopefuls who had failed. Riva Ridge stuck out his nose as the red horse passed, sniffing at him. The photographers hovered for pictures. Sweat grew annoyed. A cat sneaked out of the tack room and Secretariat reached down and nibbled at him.

“You can’t come in here with all those cameras,” said Eddie Sweat finally. But they all came anyway. Sweat turned the colt in Stall 7, freshly made with straw, unclipped the lead shank, and left. Photographers hovered, wild with delight as Secretariat made two quick turns of the stall, sniffing at the bedding, and then collapsed to his side, rolling on his back and kicking his feet in the air. They loaded film and snapped pictures of the red horse, urging him to prick his ears, which he frequently did at the sound of shutters snapping.

Thus Secretariat came home to Belmont Park, and those first few minutes were but an augury of the weeks to come. The day after his return, a full nineteen days before the Belmont Stakes—a day that he didn’t even leave the shed—at least sixty reporters, photographers, and film crew members turned up at Barn 5, some wandering into the shed, others standing in the paddock adjoining it. Secretariat was now clearly an object of national adulation and curiosity, a source of intense interest that grew as the Belmont neared. CBS-TV was estimating that 28 million saw the Kentucky Derby, and that as many saw the Preakness Stakes. The impact of that exposure was just beginning to be felt.

The colt became the cover boy for three national weekly magazines—
Time, Newsweek,
and
Sports Illustrated
—and the topic of features and news stories in newspapers throughout America. The two wire services had men covering the red horse daily, and television and film crews tramped to Barn 5 periodically, taking film and tape of him grazing, walking, and working on the racetrack. The traffic was so heavy, in fact, that Penny and Lucien sought to establish some kind of controls. Reporters were not allowed inside the shed, first of all, and then they were not allowed inside the paddock adjoining the barn. Then interviews were granted largely by appointment. Penny had her home phone number changed and unlisted. Secretariat was a media happening, an event whatever he did, a celebrity.

Through the weeks leading to the Belmont Stakes, Penny became a familiar voice on radio, a face on news and talk-show television and in glossy magazines, a name in print. She was frequently referred to as the “First Lady of American Racing,” a title she would protest, but she was certainly the sport’s most engaging, visible, and energetic spokeswoman. People stopped her on the street and approached her in supermarkets. And she loved all the fame and attention. She loved the hectic eighteen-hour days leading to the race, at the barn early watching the colt exercise and giving interviews most everywhere, seated and on the run—in the paddock, in the stable office complex, in the dining room of the clubhouse, in her box seat and home and in her wine red Mercedes Benz in which she scooted hurriedly from home to racetrack to the city.

On network television she expanded in her role, simplifying and clarifying for a public largely uninformed about racing and breeding. Thus she appeared on NBC’s
Today Show,
interviewed by Gene Shalit, and spoke in the simplest terms, though not patronizingly, about bloodlines and the record syndication and racing generally, about the red horse in particular.

“Now, Secretariat is what is known as a Bold Ruler because his sire is Bold Ruler,” said Shalit. “Bold Rulers usually don’t run a mile and a half, which is the Belmont distance.”

“That’s true,” she said.

“Do you think this horse is an exception? That this son of Bold Ruler can go a mile and a half?”

“Well,” she said, “I do think so. Of course, he’s half Bold Ruler but he’s one-quarter Princequillo, and Princequillo is staying blood.”

“That’s the dam?”

“That’s the dam. She’s Somethingroyal, by Princequillo. Her family, Imperatrice, is also staying blood; so he has an even chance and I think we might be able to do it.”

“Everyone talks about Secretariat as some kind of a superhorse as a three-year-old,” said Shalit. “The horse is so remarkable. Are there any more home like him?”

“Yes, he has a baby brother who is a year now, and I’ve taken the terrible risk of giving him an important-sounding name. He’s by Northern Dancer and we’ve named him Somethingfabulous. I think this is the sure kiss of death. But so far he looks good.”

“He’s a brother or a half brother?”

“He’s a half brother . . .”

“Then there’s another horse, called Capito, who made his debut just a few days ago. That’s Riva Ridge’s half brother. How did he make out in his first race?”

“He won! It was very satisfactory.”

“So you’ve got two horses coming up that you have your eye on. One a half brother to Secretariat, one a half brother to Riva Ridge. How soon can you predict that a horse is going to be a great racehorse? When he’s a colt? Can you tell when you’re looking at him running ’round The Meadow?”

“With Secretariat, he’s
so
good-looking that we always had high hopes for him, but you really don’t know until you see him run his first race. People say, oh, he had the look of eagles and so forth, but I think that’s romance. I don’t think real horsemen believe that.”

“Some of the big news lately was the syndication of Secretariat,” said Shalit. “You sold him for something over $6 million. What was it, about $180,000 a share?”

“A hundred and ninety.”

“A hundred and ninety thousand dollars a share. You have four shares, the others have the others. Now, that was before a lot of this attention and excitement came to Secretariat. Suppose you had waited, suppose you had bitten your nails and said, ‘I’m going to hold off until after the three races, to see what he does in the Triple Crown.’ Or even after the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness. What do you think he would be worth now in syndication?”

“This is a gambling game and we had to take a gamble. We had a tremendous obligation to Uncle Sam, and I didn’t feel we could gamble with Uncle Sam’s money. We had to pay those inheritance taxes whatever the horse did, so we took a gamble. Perhaps you hadn’t heard of him in January but he was Horse of the Year as a two-year-old; it had never happened before. So he had quite a lot going for him then. I think probably if we were to syndicate him today we could get a quarter of a million dollars a share. That sounds terribly greedy. But if he wins the Belmont I just don’t know, we haven’t had one in twenty-five years!”

“Citation was the last. Are you superstitious, since you’re a gambler? Since you’re in horseracing? I mean, do you always wear the same pair of shoes when you go to the track?”

“Well, I always wear this little pin.”

“Can we see that on camera?”

The camera dollied in. “It’s a jockey,” said Penny. “It was my mother’s. A jockey riding a horse. It was given to her by old friends of the family and whenever we have a horse in a race I have that on. That’s about the only consistent thing I do, and I try not to bet too much on our horses.”