Secretariat (38 page)

“Mrs. Tweedy, thank you very much, Mrs. Helen Tweedy, manager of Secretariat. We wish you good luck at the Belmont Stakes!”

Penny Tweedy enjoyed an enormously responsive and largely sympathetic press. Newsmen admired her wit, her enthusiasm, her ability to frame a sentence, and her respect for candor when she spoke of herself and how people had responded to her. So she told Jurate Kazickas of the Associated Press, in a story circulated widely: “I have not really done anything not related to horses in the last five years, but it has given me the thrill of accomplishment. I love the prestige, the excitement, and the money.”

Asked about her fan mail, she said, “Most of the letters are wonderful, but occasionally we get hate mail, too. Things like, ‘Oh, you rich Anglo-Saxon bitch with your roses and silver trays.’ ”

Several news and magazine stories depicted her as “handsome,” one of them as “extremely handsome,” while another called Penny “striking,” as if to differentiate. She was described as “articulate and bright” and “warm and open” and as having “a sense of steely determination” and “an unabashedly competitive spirit, independence and ambition.” The press loved her.

More, she always had a sense of humor and understood what made readable copy. When she might have been bland, she was not.

“Speaking of Penny, where does that come from?” Jerry Tallmer of the
New York Post
, asked.

“My mother’s name was Helen, as was mine, so there was a need to differentiate. I guess it was an era when nicknames were popular. And I deplored it. Penny, Boofie, Muffie—we should all be shot.”

In the crush of the publicity, authors and artists wanted to do books and paintings about Secretariat, so Penny sought the counsel of the William Morris Agency, the world’s largest talent agency, among whose clients were Mark Spitz, Elvis Presley, Don Rickles, and Sophia Loren. “Only two things bother me a bit,” she would tell Tom Buckley of
The New York Times
between dances at the Belmont Ball. “The first is that Secretariat will be retired from competition so soon, although it was unavoidable. The second is that we’ve had to put a price tag on a horse who should be appreciated for his good qualities alone.” Yet there was more than one price tag on Secretariat, more than the $6.08 million syndication. Anyone who wanted to paint Secretariat and merchandise photographs of him, to publish the books and make Secretariat T-shirts and medallions, had to talk money and percentages with Penny or the agency. Penny liked money, as she told Jurate Kazickas, and she sought her share, not only for herself but for the C. T. Chenery estate, which would benefit from all proceeds earned by the name of Secretariat off the racetrack.

Those who sought to do Secretariat-related projects had to receive her permission or that of the agency. And she continued acting decisively and forcefully on matters involving the selling of Secretariat.

“What about the artist from South Africa?” Lucien asked her one day outside the office, as she dipped into her Mercedes Benz. “Has he been commissioned?”

“No!” Her tone was emphatic. “He’s been given permission, that’s all.”

“Well, he keeps coming around here,” said Lucien.

“Well,” she said, thinking a moment. “Tell him the next time he comes, that Mrs. Tweedy hopes he has gotten enough pictures. And ‘Please don’t come around here anymore.’ ”

His stable was besieged daily by reporters and photographers, by racing officials and the merely curious. His days were consumed by work and interviews, but Lucien Laurin trained with greater insight than he had ever done before. That Lucien was now sixty years old, that he was being subjected to the crudest pressures in the sport—those brought on by the historic quest for the Triple Crown—that trainers were quietly second-guessing his every move, seemed not to shake or deter him from the course he had plotted and thought was right. He had never in his life trained so superbly, and Secretariat thrived on it. The colt had just cracked two track records, and Lucien hardly let up on him. He kept cranking him tighter, asking more and more of him, for the first time actually beginning to get to the bottom of the colt. Between workouts, Secretariat was galloping a full two miles every morning, stretching his muscles for the longer distance of the Belmont Stakes, measuring his stride. Those mornings were events, with photographers and cameramen following him by the dozens to the track. Yet among them he remained unruffled. Nothing fazed him; nothing upset him.

Lucien walked Secretariat three days after the Preakness. The first workout was May 27. Turcotte sent him three-quarters of a mile in 1:12
1
/
5
, an almost perfect twelve-clip. The colt looked sharp, bouncing off the racetrack and jumping back at the barn.

As the Belmont Stakes neared, Secretariat continued training brilliantly. The colt walked the day following the six-furlong workout, then galloped just three days. On June 1, eight days before the Belmont Stakes, Laurin sent him out for his most critical work in preparation for the race. He wanted Turcotte to work the colt a flat mile in 1:36, time that would have won a classy race for stakes-winning fillies just the day before. The winner, Barely Even, raced the mile in 1:36
4
/
5
. But standards of time were beginning to have no meaning whenever the colt performed—in the Kentucky Derby, quarter after quarter; in the sensational workout prior to the Preakness Stakes, when he galloped out three-quarters in 1:10; and in the record-shattering Preakness Stakes itself.

Turcotte emerged at 9:10 at the gap in the fence, stopping to let photographers take their pictures, and then walked the colt onto the racetrack and to the far turn. Turning him around, he set out jogging back past the stands and around the clubhouse turn. Then he stopped. He looked around, left and right, then urged Secretariat into a gallop, and coming to the red and white striped mile pole, he sat down crouched on him.

The two took off quickly. Turcotte sat still on his back, the red horse racing the first eighth in 0:12, the second eighth in 0:11
4
/
5
, for an opening quarter in 0:23
4
/
5
. Down the backstretch Secretariat picked up speed, racing the third eighth in 0:12 but then the fourth in a rapid 0:11
1
/
5
, which gave him a half in 0:47. He was bounding along airily. Keeping to the beat of twelve, he raced to the five-eighths in 0:58
4
/
5
, then to the three-quarters in 1:11 and then to the seven-eighths in 1:22
4
/
5
, already a sensational move. He kept to the beat down the lane, finishing out the last eighth in 0:12.

Lucien clicked his watch at 1:34
4
/
5
. He watched the colt gallop out a mile and an eighth in 1:48
3
/
5
. Lucien sighed heavily. It was a marvelous workout, but was it too fast?

“He went faster than I really wanted,” said Laurin. “But he did it so easily that I am very pleased.” Yet there were murmurs from other trainers at the track that Laurin had worked his horse too fast.

The work hardly bothered Secretariat. The next day he was bucking and playing when they walked him up the shed, and three days later Laurin had him galloping again, limbering him up and stretching his muscles for the longest distance he would ever run. By the morning of June 6, Secretariat was ready for the third and final workout, one of those zingers to open his eyes and bring him to his toes. Laurin told Turcotte to let the colt roll for a half mile, and the red horse took off with him around the turn. It was one of those gray, melancholy mornings at Belmont Park—a chill was in the air—and when the colt appeared turning for home he seemed to emerge through the mists, grabbing at the ground and folding it under him. You could hear him breathing through all of the upper straight. For those who sought to beat him in the Belmont Stakes, that move was an omen. As Secretariat flashed past the wire, the clockers caught him in a fiery 0:46
3
/
5
, fast enough to put him near the pace in sprints, and then he came dancing home, his neck bowed and his eyes rolling white in their sockets.

Yet, despite the brilliance of the workouts, despite those assuring him that the colt could not lose, that he was training America’s ninth Triple Crown winner, Laurin spoke and moved with caution. The pressure heightened. At times he was expansive, open, and friendly, at other times tight lipped and snappy, stewing and blowing up over small things. He had been on racetracks far too long to come to any race as confident as some of Secretariat’s staunchest supporters. There were too many ways to be beaten. He wriggled openly.

“I’ve never seen so many goddamn favorites beaten as in the Belmont,” Lucien said one morning in his stable kitchen. He was sitting at the formica table over a large plate of eggs, sunny-side up, surrounded by shingles of beef and toast. A cup of coffee sat steaming next to him. Turcotte, reading the
Daily Racing Form,
sat across from him, his helmet on his lap. Turcotte looked over the top of the paper as Lucien spoke.

“I’ll tell you one thing,” he said. “I’ll be glad when this son-of-a-bitchin’ thing is over with, believe me. I just want it to end, and soon.” The conversation drifted. Laurin talked a moment of the way the colt’s value had soared since the Derby, to over $250,000 a share, though no one had sold out. Between bites of toast, he nodded across the table at Turcotte and said petulantly, “Just don’t fuck it up Saturday or he’ll go down in value again.”

Staring at Laurin, whose face returned to his food, Turcotte looked for the moment as if he wanted to pick up the plate of eggs and break it over Lucien’s head. But he said nothing.

For Laurin, the press to win was on. He grew touchier, more protective than ever of Secretariat’s privacy. One morning, a television crew of eight men arrived at Barn 5 to take a sequence for a news show, and as the colt emerged from the barn they followed him quietly, their lenses fixed. Lucien watched them, letting them into the paddock for the pictures. Later that morning, after the day’s work was done, he watched them trooping up the shed toward Secretariat’s stall. He howled them out, gesturing fiercely.

And he became more sensitive to routine, to what had been working well for him in the past. George (Charlie) Davis, who had been exercising Secretariat since he’d left for Louisville and the Kentucky Derby, had remained his most trusted exercise boy, the rider of Riva Ridge, and he felt a constancy in him that he didn’t feel in Gaffney. In fact, he hadn’t been pleased with the way Gaffney had ridden the colt, believing Jimmy was too busy putting on a show, grandstanding when he galloped him of mornings. Now in the crunch he turned to Charlie Davis, as if by instinct. Gaffney sensed what was coming. He had been warned on the first Wednesday following the Preakness, when Lucien met him after he had galloped Secretariat.

“How did he go?” Lucien asked.

“Like a champ, Mr. Laurin. He wanted to play a little out there.”

Lucien then confided in him: “Jimmy, Mrs. Tweedy doesn’t like the way you ride the horse.” So Gaffney knew there was a problem, yet he wasn’t expecting what happened in the shed on Friday morning. Henny, who had hired Jimmy just a year ago, approached him there. Lucien was in the office.

“Jimmy,” said Henny, “Lucien’s taking you off the big horse.”

“What?” said Gaffney. “What for?”

“I don’t know.”

“Well, I quit, then.” Henny tried to talk him out of it, but it was no use. “I’ll pick up my paycheck,” said Gaffney.

Crushed and bitter that Laurin hadn’t fired him himself, Gaffney left the barn with his Secretariat saddlecloths and his pummel pad, the one that his mother had knitted for him, and then drove home to tell his wife. She had sensed it coming, too, and knew what had happened when she saw him walk in the door of their Queens apartment. She saw his eyes filling. Sitting down, he said nothing.

“I can’t believe it,” Jimmy finally said. “I didn’t believe they’d do it.”

So the pressures of the Triple Crown were felt by all those around the colt. Even Eddie Sweat, while still talking freely to reporters, seemed more remote, less communicative amid the daily intrusions, more pressured as the demands on his time increased. He had come a long way from the vegetable gardens of Holly Hill, South Carolina, to the shed row at Belmont Park, to take his place with Will Harbut as racing’s most celebrated groom, the doyen of backstretch swipes. Now, as the biggest moment of his life arrived, he spent more and more time at the barn, arriving earlier, going home later, making sure the colt had everything he needed—hay, water, bedding. Like Lucien, he became increasingly protective of the colt and the routine that regulated his life.

The
Time
and
Newsweek
covers appeared on newsstands during Secretariat’s final week of training for the Belmont Stakes, and they gave the colt an aura of invincibility. Both labeled him a superhorse on the covers. There were few dissenters following the Derby and the Preakness Stakes. But there were a few, and among them was Pancho Martin, whose faith in Sham had never waned. It felt like months since those chilly mornings in Kentucky when Pancho leaned up against the cinder block of Barn 42 and extemporized on Sham’s superiority, attacking Laurin. Now he spoke in more subdued tones of Sham’s superiority in the Preakness. This time he was wearing patent leather shoes, chewing on his cigar, and sitting on a park bench beneath the trees at Belmont Park.

Pancho held a copy of
Time
magazine, with Secretariat looking at him, and he stared at it for a long time.

He muttered, “Superhorse.” Then he clamped the cigar in his mouth, pointed to the front of
Time
and said, his words solemn, “If he beat me in the Belmont Stakes,
then
I’ll call him a superhorse. I
know
he’s a good horse—everybody knows that! If he beat me fair and square—and he hasn’t beaten me fair and square yet—then I will”—he paused, poising his cigar—“I’ll call him the nicest things you can call a racehorse.” Then he denounced the accounts that Sham appeared washed out and tired in the first few days home from Pimlico. “He looked like a drowned rat,” said Charles Hatton, who watched Secretariat and Sham train at Belmont Park, where he wrote his daily column. But Sham recovered, and Pancho with him, and he claimed that Sham had not lost confidence, that he had a chance to beat the red horse going twelve furlongs.