Secretariat

He was thirty-seven years old. He had just returned to work as a mutuel clerk selling five-dollar place and show tickets in the grandstand section at Aqueduct. The clerks had been on strike for three weeks, but that was over, and once again Gaffney was working his artistry behind the window.

Gaffney was also an exercise boy, riding and working horses in the mornings. He had worked for Lucien briefly in 1963, and they had liked each other. They had gone fishing on Lucien’s boat, and when Gaffney left him several months later, they had parted on friendly terms. Now, seven years later, Gaffney saw Henny as he drove past the Meadow Stable. He stopped to chat, and in the course of the conversation, Henny asked him if he was working. When he said no, Henny offered him a job as an exercise boy and Gaffney took it.

Gaffney joined the Meadow Stable at a time of heightened expectations and morale raised by Riva Ridge, who, on April 27, went to the front not long after the start of the Blue Grass Stakes, shook off one challenge deep in the stretch, and ran off to win by four. That was only the prelude.

Nine days later, in front of 130,564 people at Churchill Downs and millions more on nationwide television, Riva Ridge galloped to the front in the run past the stands the first time, running easily under Turcotte, repulsed three challenges by the gritty little Hold Your Peace, and won the ninety-eighth running of the Kentucky Derby by more than three.

Turcotte, wearing the blue and white silks of the Meadow Stable, had just won his first Kentucky Derby, and he fairly glided on the colt toward the grassy winner’s circle. There was Lucien Laurin beaming, a man on the brink of retirement who woke up suddenly one morning with Riva Ridge in his barn.

There was Penny Tweedy, wearing a white and blue polka-dot dress and a choker of pearls, pivoting through the crowd like a princess newly crowned, her gestures contained but emphatic, her voice husky and assured on television, her manner courteous yet exuberant. She was too good to be true, and the press promptly collapsed at her feet.

On to the Preakness Stakes at Pimlico they went.

To this ecstatic aftermath came Gaffney, and one of the first things Henny Hoeffner told him to do was get on Secretariat. There were less than two months to Secretariat’s first race, and the red horse was just recovering from the tied-up muscles he had suffered the day he backed out from under Feliciano. Groom Mordecai Williams would put a saddle and a bridle on the colt and boost Gaffney aboard, sending both on a walk around the inside of the shed.

Secretariat, with Gaffney on him, walked to the training track that morning, taking the same route Feliciano had taken him the last time. The red horse stopped at the gap and stood there for several seconds, looking to the left and right, raising his head, as horses do when they are looking off into a distance. Gaffney did not hurry him, but let him stand there and watch the morning activity. It was a habit the colt acquired early in life—he liked to stop and see what he was getting into before he got into it—and he did that every time anyone ever took him to the racetrack.

Near the clocker’s shed a quarter mile away, Secretariat began doing his number: he dipped his shoulder and pulled, but Gaffney, riding with long stirrups, rode with him. The colt had been confined for a few weeks, and he was feeling his unburned oats. He galloped off strongly, pulling hard on the bit, but every day Gaffney gave him more rein, exerting less pressure, and after several days the colt relaxed. As he had done at Hialeah he started plopping along easily, moving smoothly and relaxed.

Secretariat soon stopped dipping his right shoulder. Gaffney, putting a special bit in the colt’s mouth with a prong on its left side, worked for days on the problem. Pressing both hands on his mount’s neck, Gaffney kept pressure on the right line, and every time the colt started to dip to the left Gaffney pressed down on the colt’s neck and exerted pressure on the rein.

Gaffney had been riding horses for almost two decades—he had ridden big and small horses, some fast and slow horses, stiff and supple horses—but in Secretariat he sensed the finest running machine he had ever straddled.

That the red horse had never run a race did not temper Gaffney’s public enthusiasm, an enthusiasm rooted in the way he looked and moved to Gaffney. “He was strictly a powerhouse—his movement, stride, and for a horse who is not supposed to know much at his age, he sure knew a lot. He would change strides just right coming in and out of a turn, and he seemed to me so intelligent for a young horse. Nothing bothered him. I had been on a lot of two-year-olds in my life, but this one really struck me.”

Gaffney’s mornings at the racetrack revolved around Secretariat. He rode the red horse steadily, building him up in his own mind, telling stablehands of the youngster’s extraordinary future, boasting about him to grooms and hot walkers and even to his wife, Mary. He began calling the horse “Big Red.”

Gaffney told his mother about the colt, too, and she replied by knitting and sending him a pommel pad—which is inserted as protection under the front of the saddle—with Secretariat’s name knitted in blue lettering across a white background. As if to flaunt his confidence and to reaffirm his instincts, translating them into something tangible, Gaffney purchased two blue saddlecloths, protective pads that prevent the saddle from abrading the colt. He took the saddlecloths—for which he paid four dollars each—to a woman in Queens who did needlework. Gaffney paid her twenty-four dollars to stitch “Secretariat” into the section that hangs, visibly, below the rear of the saddle. He took one of Lucien’s exercise saddles home—it was the saddle he always used when he rode the colt—and for several hours, with his leather-working kit, Gaffney hammered “Secretariat” into it, giving the letters a cursive flourish.

The red horse returned to serious work on the racetrack Thursday, May 18, when he went three-eighths of a mile in 0:37; yet no one but a few clockers—Meadow Stable hands and avid horseplayers—paid any attention. Lucien, for one, had his mind on things of greater moment: the Preakness Stakes, the second race in the Triple Crown series, was consuming all his energy. Penny Tweedy was confident of the outcome, feeling certain Riva Ridge would win it. This only made her disappointment at what happened all the more bitter.

The ninety-seventh running of the Preakness Stakes was a 1:553/s horror show, a mudslinger during the running and after it. Riva Ridge broke in a tangle, crowded Festive Mood on the first turn and down the backstretch, and began dueling his archrival Key to the Mint for second position. On the lead, his ears playing and pricking at the sight of the swipes and hot walkers draped over the backstretch fence, was William Farish III’s Bee Bee Bee. He was galloping along with consummate nonchalance, and neither Riva Ridge nor Key to the Mint ever got close enough to bite him, much less beat him, while veteran jockey Eldon Nelson sat chilly on him in a superbly judged piece of race riding.

Bee Bee Bee won it. Stretch-running No Le Hace was second, Key to the Mint a neck in front of Riva Ridge for third. The next day Lucien accused Turcotte of losing the race by not letting Riva Ridge move to the leader at the far turn. He said Turcotte was so busy watching jockey Braulio Baeza on Key to the Mint that he let Bee Bee Bee steal away with the race unchallenged. Elliott Burch, trainer of Key to the Mint, made no such accusations against Baeza. Turcotte said only that Riva Ridge could not handle the muddy track.

Laurin was furious with Turcotte, howling to turfwriter Joe Hirsch early Sunday morning. Laurin and Penny Tweedy talked about taking Turcotte off the horse again. “It was the second race he blew for us,” Penny Tweedy said. But again, rather than switch at a critical juncture, they decided to keep Turcotte for the Belmont Stakes June 9. Several days after the Preakness, Lucien had cooled off, and his opinion of Turcotte’s ride had mellowed considerably.

Hope for the Triple Crown was gone, just when it had seemed within their grasp.

If not for the Preakness Stakes, the bay might have won all three. For on June 10, Riva Ridge cruised to the front of the mile-and-a-half Belmont Stakes, opening the bidding with a half mile in 0:48 and six furlongs in 1:12, a perfect twelve-clip, and he almost strung two more twelves together heading for the far turn. Riva Ridge reached the mile in 1:361/5 when Smiling Jack, racing with Riva all the way, began to stagger. Key to the Mint, probably overtrained for the race, spit out the bit turning for home, and Riva Ridge slowed down but galloped to win by seven in 2:28, the third fastest time of the race since it was first run at that distance in 1926, the year Man o’ War’s son, Crusader, won it.

Thus Riva Ridge reclaimed whatever prestige he had lost in the Preakness, establishing himself as the leading three-year-old in America and seemingly destined for Horse-of-the-Year honors. Then it happened.

The big mistake—one that would hound Penny Tweedy and Lucien Laurin—was deciding to take Riva Ridge to California for the mile-and-a-quarter Hollywood Derby, a race that appeared a soft touch for “The Ridge.” It was not. He carried high weight of 129 pounds, and he was desperate to win it.

He was like Olympic quarter miler Lee Evans running against a good high school sprint relay team. Finalista made two runs at Riva Ridge, Royal Champion took one close look early before calling it an afternoon, and finally Bicker ran at him in the final yards. Riva Ridge just lasted to win. The race exhausted him, leaving him dead on his feet, and many believe he never was the same horse again all year. They had no way of knowing it then, of course, but Riva Ridge would race six more times before the end of the year, losing his final start by thirty-eight lengths, and wouldn’t win another race.

Through May and June, with Gaffney galloping him and others working him, Secretariat grew in strength and ability, gained in fitness, and appeared to begin learning in earnest how to run. Other two-year-olds were appearing, too, such as Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney’s chestnut colt Pvt. Smiles. On June 1 another unraced youngster headed down the path past Barn 5, walking from the stable of Bull Hancock. He was a son of Pretense, the one-time Claiborne stallion, out of the mare Sequoia, who like Somethingroyal was a daughter of Princequillo.

His name was Sham, and that morning he worked an easy half mile in 0:514A Sham was growing quickly, and he would fill out one day into a rangy, good-looking dark bay colt, but on June 1 he, too, was still an ungainly youngster who hadn’t yet caught on to the game. Sham would learn soon enough.

On Thursday morning, June 6, three days before Riva Ridge’s Belmont Stakes, Secretariat wore blinkers for the first time—blue and white blocks, with leather cups partially shielding his eyes to keep his mind on the business up front—and went a half mile in 0:471/5 That was the fastest half-mile work in his life, but not fast enough to stay with Voler, a two-year-old filly who whipped him by four lengths in a rapid 0:464/5, one of the fastest moves of the day. Voler could shake a leg in the morning, and that day Secretariat pinned his ears at her precocity as she pulled away from him.

His work picked up through the last part of June. Again with blinkers, he worked from the starting gate and dashed five-eighths of a mile in 1:001/5 on June 15, with Feliciano up. It was among the fastest moves that day at five furlongs.

Secretariat was within three weeks of his first race.

On June 24, on a sloppy track, the official clockers for Daily Racing Form, the horseplayers’ scripture, noted a Secretariat workout in boldface letters on the workout sheets, meaning that his clocking of 1:124/5 for six furlongs was the fastest workout at the distance that morning. The clockers, in their eyrie near the roof of the clubhouse, watched Secretariat closely, and in the paper underneath the boldface type they wrote: “Secretariat is on edge.”

The clockers themselves had come a long way since the red horse first appeared in Florida, where they were spelling his name “Secretarial.” Not only had they learned how to spell him, they had learned to like him.

Walking the colt back from the six-furlong workout that morning, Paul Feliciano saw Lucien waiting for him by the gap in the fence. The trainer was wearing his Cheshire-cat grin, turning up the corners of his mouth.

Penny Tweedy was still living in Colorado when Lucien called her long distance one morning. He asked her if she could be at Aqueduct one day next week, telling her that he wanted her to see Secretariat run his first race.

They finally decided to enter the colt on July 4, when Penny could be there. It was an $8000 maiden (nonwinner) race for colts and geldings at five and a half furlongs, with the start on the backstretch and facing the far turn.

The red horse was no secret, not since his sharp six-furlong workout ten days before. He had since worked another three-eighths in 0:35 flat. Sweep, the nom de plume for Daily Racing Form handicapper Jules Schanzer, advised his readers on July 4:

Secretariat, a half-brother to Sir Gaylord, appears greatly advanced in his training. The newcomer by Bold Ruler stepped 6 furlongs in 1:124/5 over a sloppy Belmont course June 24 and such outstanding speed entitles him to top billing.

Members of the Meadow Stable bet with both hands, some more than others, most of it on the red horse’s nose. They thought he couldn’t lose. Gaffney, selling tickets at the grandstand window, would not bet on Secretariat because he didn’t think Paul Feliciano liked the colt or had enough confidence in him.

Lucien was sitting in a box seat with Penny Tweedy while the horses walked past the grandstand in the single-file post parade, turned, and broke into warm-up gallops past the finish line, around the first turn. In the front row of the box seats by the finish line sat sixty-year-old Alfred Gwynne Vanderbilt, recently appointed chairman of the board of trustees of the New York Racing Association, the organization that runs Aqueduct, Belmont Park, and Saratoga.

It was nearing two o’clock. There was a wind blowing south against the horses walking to the starting gate up the backstretch, south toward Kennedy International Airport across the highway, toward Jamaica Bay. Bettors, some already moving to the rail on the homestretch, were busy making Secretariat the tepid $3.10 to $1.00 favorite.

Big Burn, jockey Braulio Baeza up, stepped into Post Position 1. An assistant starter took hold of Secretariat, who was wearing his blue and white checked blinkers, and led him into Post 2. The door slammed shut behind him. Feliciano patted the colt’s neck and waited. Strike The Line stood in gate 3 next to Secretariat, while Jacinto Vasquez sat on Quebec in Post 4. Binoculars rose to eyes.

Dave Johnson, the track announcer, looked through his binoculars toward the starting gate, clicked on the lever of the loudspeaker system, and drove his voice through the clubhouse and grandstand.

“It is now post time,” said Johnson.

It came all at once—the break, the sounds, and the collision—three seconds stitched into a triangle of time.

The gates crashed open, the bell screamed, and the horses vaulted upward and came down in a bound, Secretariat breaking sharply through one-two-three strides when Quebec sliced across Strike The Line and Vasquez hollered, but there was nothing anyone could do.

Quebec slammed dully into Secretariat, almost perpendicularly, plowing into his right shoulder. Like a fullback struck on his blind side, Secretariat staggered and fell left, crashing into Big Burn, and for several frames it appeared as if the red horse had two tacklers hanging on him. Quebec and Big Burn were leaning on him and trying to bring him down. Secretariat’s legs were chopping savagely and Feliciano heard him groaning as he was struck and worked to regain his legs. It was a wonder he didn’t go down.

He raced down the backside in eleventh place, next to Strike The Line, and Feliciano started scrubbing with his arms. Secretariat was digging, trying to pick up speed as they headed for the turn 300 yards ahead. He was not getting with it as fast as the others. Count Successor raced to the front, Knightly Dawn lapped on him in second, Calumet Farm’s Herbull third, and Master Achiever nearby in fourth.

The horses strung out charging for the turn when Secretariat started drifting aimlessly, his path a wavering line, his neck thrust out and pumping. Moving to the bend, he seemed confused as he drifted momentarily to the right, bumping a roan called Rove. Feliciano took back on the left rein, leaving the right line flapping, and the red horse leaned left to make the bend. There was nothing else Feliciano could do, nothing since the collision. Paul looked around and began seeing everything go wrong.

There was no place to run, and the rail was clogged up in front. Horses were pounding on his right, and they left no room for him to swing Secretariat out and get him rolling in the clear. A wall of four horses was shifting around in front of him. He had two horses beaten, racing for the three-eighths pole midway at the turn for home, and he had nowhere to go. The colt started to run up a hole opening in front of him, but that squeezed shut, too. He was working to get with it, as if looking for the holes himself.

Secretariat was a Cadillac in a traffic jam of Chevrolets and Datsuns, trapped hopelessly in the shifting, dimly unfolding mess around him. Lucien Laurin, looking through his binoculars, was astounded. Watching the break from the side, he missed seeing the crunch at the start. He was astounded because the red horse had always broken well in his morning trials, not slow like this and floundering rudderlessly. As the field made the bend, passing the five-sixteenths pole near the top of the stretch, Count Successor was still on the lead, Knightly Dawn beside him, Master Achiever now third, and Herbull on the outside fourth. The pace was not slow. The leader was carrying his field through a half mile in 0:461/5, brisk for two-year-olds, with Secretariat about ten lengths behind in 0:48. As the field straightened into the lane, racing past the grandstand bettors howling at them, it appeared for a moment as if Feliciano was going to swing the colt to the outside. Almost running up on horses’ heels, Feliciano had to slow the colt entering the lane, to check him.

Nearing the three-sixteenth pole, Secretariat suddenly veered on a sharp diagonal to the left, lunging for space as it opened on the rail, and took off. He was looking for spots, looking and moving for running room. Daylight in front of him, horses on the outside off the rail, scrubbing on the red horse furiously, Feliciano drove Secretariat down the lane. Secretariat gained, passing a tiring Knightly Dawn and then Jacques Who. He was gathering momentum, picking up speed, cutting into Master Achiever’s lead, from eight lengths nearing the furlong marker in midstretch to seven and then to six as Master Achiever raced for the wire.

The frontrunners were battling it out, and passing the eighth pole, the red horse appeared. He cut the lead to five lengths, then to four and a half, then finally to four lengths passing the sixteenth pole. He was in the hunt, and Feliciano was asking him for more steam, reaching back and strapping him once right-handed.

A small hole opened between Master Achiever and the rail near the wire. Feliciano drove the colt toward it. Secretariat was now running faster than all the others, closing the lane and cutting the lead to three lengths, then two lengths as the wire loomed, then one and a half lengths. Suddenly the hole on the rail closed as Master Achiever came over, and as the wire swept overhead Feliciano had to stand up and take Secretariat back again—“He gave me three runs that day! Three!”—to prevent him from running up Master Achiever’s heels. He closed about eight lengths on the leaders in a powerful run through the stretch, finished fourth, and earned $480, beaten only a length and a quarter by Herbull. As he crossed the finish line, the first thought that came to Paul Feliciano was, “God damn, I’m going to catch hell.”

Up in the press box, trackman Jack Wilson had already seen Secretariat’s run and sat down to write a brief summary of the race for the official chart, which read in part: “Secretariat, impeded after the start, lacked room between horses racing into the turn, ducked to the inside after getting through in the stretch and finished full of run.”

Down in the box seats, Penny Tweedy smiled as the colt raced across the line—she, too, was unaware of the collision—and told Lucien, “That’s pretty good for a first start.”

Lucien jumped from his chair in the box seat, kicked it, and growled, “He should have never been beaten!” His reaction startled Penny. Lucien had told her only that he thought she ought to be there for the colt’s first start—not that the colt was going to win, only that his workouts were impressive and he appeared to be learning fast. Lucien’s reaction made her realize for the first time how much he thought of Secretariat.

Feliciano pulled the colt to a halt at the bend, turned him around, clucked to him, and galloped slowly back to the unsaddling area by the paddock scale, where the jockeys weigh in after a race. As he galloped back, he happened to look over his left shoulder, toward the paddock, and as he pulled up he saw precisely what he expected—Lucien standing in the paddock waiting for him.

Jumping off Secretariat, Feliciano began preparing himself. All he could do, he thought, was tell the truth.

Feliciano weighed in at the scales, and turning around, he handed the saddle and pads to a valet and walked over to Lucien. The trainer waved a finger in Feliciano’s face. “God damn!” he said. “You sure as hell messed that one up.”

What was worse for the young apprentice was that he was scheduled to ride another horse for Lucien in a later race—Sovereign in the seventh. But between races, Lucien and Penny had seen the films, and as Paul came to the paddock for the seventh, Lucien was smiling. Quietly, Lucien apologized for yelling at him, and Feliciano recalled Laurin telling him he hadn’t seen the films then and didn’t realize the battering he’d taken at the start.

Yet, even with that, it surprised Paul when he picked up an overnight list of entries nine days later and glanced at it as he left the jockeys’ room. Under the entries for the fourth race on July 15, a three-quarter-mile sprint for colts and geldings, he read: “Secretariat … Feliciano, P.”

CHAPTER 11

Secretariat walked away from his first race staring, his eyes still wide open to the startling snap of the gate and to the collision—and no doubt to the suddenly quickening beat of his life.

Lucien did not hesitate to fuel his intensity, to keep him on his toes through July. Six days after his first start, Secretariat worked to three-eighths of a mile in 0:353/5 at Belmont Park. Four days later Lucien sent him out to zip three-eighths again, this time breezing in 0:36 on a sloppy track, the day before his second race on July 15.

Jules Schanzer didn’t abandon Secretariat July 15, writing in the Daily Racing Form:

Secretariat turned in a remarkable performance after being badly sloughed at the start of his rough recent preview. The half-brother to Sir Gaylord turned on full steam after settling into his best stride and was devouring ground rapidly through the stretch run. Today’s added distance is a plus factor that can help him leave the maiden ranks.

Nor did the bettors abandon Secretariat at Aqueduct, sending him off as the $1.30-to-$1.00 favorite over Master Achiever.

Paul Feliciano emerged from the tunnel by the jockeys’ room and walked to Lucien in the paddock. They huddled briefly. “Don’t do like you did last time. Just stay out of trouble and let him run. He shouldn’t get beat.”

Lucien then gave Feliciano a leg up on the colt, and to the sound of Sam Koza’s Aida trumpet signaling the field of eleven horses to the post, Feliciano was already thinking about what he would do. He was more nervous than usual that afternoon because he himself believed—as Lucien and thousands of bettors no doubt believed—that he should not have lost his first start, that he should not be beaten this time, and that he was sitting on a horse who needed only room to run. He thought about the opening jump from the gate, hoping the colt would break well and in the clear, not in a tangle of horses again, and he thought he would try to keep him on the outside where he would have room to move.