I deeply regretted that Eddie Sweat was not around to offer the image of Secretariat he most treasured. I suspected his choice would have mirrored Wade’s. We on the periphery gravitate to the classic images of victory: the great horse coming down the stretch, in the winner’s circle, the jockey’s hand raised in victory. The groom treasures the quieter moments, when the charger is at peace.
For twenty years, Tom Wade was at Slew’s beck and call, and I know he counts it a privilege. But if things had gone differently, if there had been no pot of gold at the end of the rainbow, would he be as content now? The groom just shook his head and said, “That’s new ground,” and we left it at that.
“I think, therefore I am” was Descartes’s line. “I ride, therefore I groom” might as well be mine, and thus I feel a small kinship with Eddie Sweat and his work on the ground with horses. I own a horse and typically ride him up to four times a week—always grooming him beforehand and afterward. Grooming can seem ritualistic, and sometimes riders forget why they groom and simply do it out of habit. But the habit, as Eddie well knew, is rooted in the safety and comfort of the horse.
Grooming means brushing away mud and dirt, which, if pressed under saddle or girth, could discomfit the horse and, worse, land the rider in trouble—hence the expression “You got a burr under your saddle?” The action of the brush enhances blood circulation, and cleaning out the hoof is a wise precaution—especially if there is a stone jammed in beside the shoe or in the frog (the V-shaped underside of the hoof). Not to clean hooves before and after the ride is to risk lameness. “No foot, no horse,” another saying goes. The ritual of grooming also helps forge a bond, and a trusting horse soon abides his rider cleaning sleep from his eyes and even attending his private parts with sponge and soap and water.
My horse is a burly Canadian, a handsome dark bay born in the spring of 1994 and named, in full, Saroma Dark Fox Dali. Sometimes I will be riding Dal on the trail and feel a powerful sense of harmony and equilibrium with him. The feeling comes most readily when we’re moving over snow, which can be like riding on air. I can imagine that I have found the sweet spot in the tension on the reins, that the barrier between the flesh of my arms and the leather of the reins has disappeared: I am directly connected, or so it feels, to my horse’s mouth. He will make a little chuffing sound with his nose as he goes, and I take him to be humming. His stride is strong and even and effortless, and I can tell by the position of his head and ears that all is well in his world. I know without really thinking about it when he is about to drop a load of manure, and I rise in the saddle as a courtesy. I think I know my horse, and then I think of Eddie Sweat and what he knew about Secretariat, and a little humility sets in.
Whatever transpired between Eddie Sweat and Secretariat operated at some other level, with each bringing to the table far more than I bring to my stable or my horse offers to me. But the more I care for my horse and feel for my horse, the more Eddie-like I am around him, the closer Dal and I seem to get to the kind of communion that Sweat and Secretariat enjoyed.
Someone who was there that cold, drizzly day (October 28, 1973) at Woodbine in Toronto remembers Eddie leading Secretariat around the clubhouse turn and back to the race barn. Eddie, the observer noticed, kept patting the big red horse on the withers as they walked in the gathering darkness.
What, I wonder, was the groom thinking at that moment as he led the horse, his horse, still warm from the last race he would ever run? Eddie, almost surely, would have been talking as they walked. He was always addressing Secretariat, who always seemed keen to listen. This moment marked the virtual end of their remarkable partnership, so perhaps Shorty Sweat was looking back at its beginning, when he tacked Secretariat up before his maiden race on July 4, 1972. It seemed like only yesterday, yet they had come a long way.
On that day, Ol’ Hopalong was up against Herbull and Master Achiever, Fleet ’N Royal and Big Burn, Burgeon and Count Successor, Rove and Knightly Dawn, Strike the Line, Quebec, and Jacques Who. Who indeed. All those horses, and all the other horses Secretariat raced and defeated in the sixteen months that followed, are pretty much forgotten now. The name Secretariat lives on.
A PARADE OF STALLIONS
One time in Ocala, Florida, a friend took me to a celebrated Thoroughbred farm nearby for a free and lavish lunch—soup in silver tureens, breaded chicken on skewers, fancy cakes, all under a massive white tent. The only requirement for the hundreds gathered was that we sit in lawn chairs and watch as each of the farm’s several dozen studs were paraded before us, maybe ten feet away, and their records read, their virtues extolled, their beauty taken in.
I remember how haughty these horses looked, how they taxed their handlers, how they danced on their toes and floated over the grass. The term blood horse perfectly describes a Thoroughbred stallion.
Many of us, myself included, had bought a raffle ticket. If your name was one of the dozen or so drawn, you got one free “cover”: You could bring the mare of your choice to the farm, and the sire of your choice would be bred with her. My friend, it turned out, was among the winners. What was shocking to me was how much I wanted to win. I had managed to put aside all the logistics that winning would have entailed, feeling some primal urge to own a Thoroughbred racehorse.
Everything about this sport—the romance of dawn workouts, the thrill and danger of racing, the little high that comes with owning even one of these stunning horses—is addictive.
5
“FULL OF RUN”
LUCIEN LAURIN WANTED the horse’s owner to be there when Secretariat ran his first race, and he even delayed the occasion to accommodate her schedule. The trainer was sending a signal: This horse is going to be something. The owner should be on hand to watch his journey begin.
But preparation for racing had gone slower than anticipated, and though the colt was starting to turn heads with his morning workouts, there were still doubters in the Meadow camp. Some harbored suspicions against chestnuts, especially Bold Ruler chestnuts. Some, like jockey Ron Turcotte, complained that the mischievous young horse thought it a lark to bump other horses walking out to the track in the morning. And both the jockey and the head groom still struggled with their first impressions of the horse.
Too pretty, Eddie had said. “Too big an’ fat.”
Turcotte called the new horse “Pretty Boy,” and the rider, too, remarked on his fleshiness. “Kinda fat, ain’t he?” he said to Lucien.
The trainer had to agree, and he tailored the clumsy colt’s workouts to avoid stressing him while he worked the pounds off and found his stride. At last, Secretariat did lose weight, and his morning numbers likewise tumbled. Eddie Sweat agreed to take him on, though Riva Ridge remained his favorite and another Meadow groom, Mordecai Williams, would sometimes fill in for him and groom the new horse. Time would tell. They would see what the summer would bring.
July 4, 1972, Aqueduct. Secretariat’s first race (every race is a “maiden” race until the horse wins) starts badly when he is bumped hard by a horse called Quebec. Jockey Paul Feliciano will later report that only Secretariat’s great strength stopped the horse from going down. The chestnut seems out of the running—he is tenth of twelve horses—but he soon begins to gather himself. Feliciano finally finds a hole in the wall of horses in front of him, takes Secretariat to the rail, and the horse finishes fourth—just a length and a quarter behind the winner.
After the race, Secretariat attacks his food, unlike most horses, whose appetite suffers in the wake of competition. Neither does he exhibit any of the classic signs of exertion: a tightening of the muscles, rapid breathing, lather on his chest and loins. It is as if he had gone for a jog and the little run had drawn off only a bit of his go.
The Daily Racing Form gushes over him, says he finished “full of run.” The race was only five and a half furlongs. Despite the horrific start, he was charging at the end and doubtless would have won a longer race. All in all, a fine debut.
July 15, 1972, Aqueduct.
Six furlongs this time, and in this race Secretariat goes off as a six-to-five favorite (that late charge in his first race has not gone unnoticed by the handicappers). He is slow to start, but Feliciano will later report that once the horse found his gear, he “went past everybody else like they were walking.” He wins by six lengths.
Secretariat, says the Daily Racing Form, “drew off with authority.” Eddie Sweat, meanwhile, has warmed to the horse in their five months together, warmed to him in a major way.
July 31, 1972, Saratoga. Another six-furlong race, featuring horses who have yet to win two races. Another slow start, with Secretariat last at the quarter turn. He has a new jockey now, Ron Turcotte, who follows precisely Lucien Laurin’s advice not to rush the colt but to let him “feel his way, then come on with him.” And feel his way he does, taking command down the stretch and winning by a length and a half. Once again, he had been the favorite.
Turcotte likes how the new horse keeps his ears back as he runs, not from anger, but because he’s attentive to his rider. The jockey echoes what Feliciano had said, that the big colt’s speed is deceptive, his stride easy and seemingly effortless. “He just floats,” says Turcotte.
Racing writer Charles Hatton would later observe that in Secretariat’s first year of racing, he was inclined “to pound his forefeet when extended,” leading to fears that he would ruin his legs. But in his second year on the track, Hatton wrote, Secretariat ironed out that kink. Or nature did. Secretariat’s conformation softened and grew refined by the time he was three. All the pieces now fit perfectly, divinely, and, as Hatton so gracefully put it, “his action was a buoyant, kinetic pleasure, and it was remarked, ‘He wouldn’t break an egg.’”
August 16, 1972, Saratoga. Up another notch, this time to his first stakes race, the Sanford. The favorite in the race is Linda’s Chief, who has won five straight.
It seems that Secretariat has learned from previous races. He hangs back at the start, avoids traffic, and makes his move heading into the turn before the homestretch.
Linda’s Chief, the Daily Racing Form reports, “loomed boldly . . . but was no match for the winner.” The winner’s purse is $16,650, the margin of victory three lengths.
August 26, 1972, Saratoga. The winner of the Hopeful Stakes will earn for his stable $51,930. Bigger money, but the strategy is becoming old hat for Secretariat: Let the other horses blast out of the gate, then attack from the rear. He once again turns on the jets, goes wide and takes the lead by the halfway point, and surges ahead to win by five lengths. And despite covering more ground by using an outside lane, he still manages the six and a half furlongs in 1:16 1⁄5—three-fifths of a second off the track record.
Before the Hopeful Stakes, Secretariat had dumped exercise rider Jimmy Gaffney following a workout. Henceforth, Eddie would always come out and lead the horse from the track after his morning exercise. (That was highly unusual. Most horses inclined to act up after a workout would have been given the company of a well-behaved track pony. Not Secretariat.) To illustrate the point, Gaffney sent me a black-and-white photograph taken at Belmont of himself, Eddie, and Secretariat. They’re all walking back to the barn after a workout. The rider’s gaze is toward something beyond the camera’s frame, but he’s attentive in the saddle. Eddie, in porkpie hat and jacket, looks a little sleepy as he leads Secretariat, but he is also watching the horse. Secretariat is wide-eyed and is looking off in the same direction as Gaffney, so there must have been a commotion over there. I would say the horse was scheming, but if he was, Eddie was set—right hand on the chain, left hand on the leather end of the lead.
“Secretariat was just so full of himself,” Gaffney said, “and always felt so good that he would raise hell at the gap. The day he dropped me at Saratoga before the Hopeful was the last time he ever came out the gap without someone meeting him.”
September 16, 1972, Belmont. Many people have now taken note of this huge chestnut horse, not least among them other trainers. Prior to the Belmont Futurity, with an $82,320 purse going to the winner, several trainers scratch their entries.
Frank “Pancho” Martin withdraws his horse and jokes that he does not want his colt to be in the way when the big horse makes his late charge. “I’ve never seen a more perfectly balanced colt,” he says, “so large and with such a perfect way of going.” Another trainer, George Poole, says that Secretariat’s late dramatic rushes remind him of Native Dancer.
Woody Stephens, a Hall of Fame trainer, keeps his horses right next to Lucien Laurin’s at Belmont, so he has ample chance to watch the horse that everyone is talking about. “The thing I’ll remember about him,” he will say later, “is his disposition. You never had to worry about him causing any trouble. Calmest horse I ever saw. You could let him stand by the rail and graze while the races were going on, and he wouldn’t even turn his head. That’s how calm he was. Nothing bothered him. He knew he was a champion.”
The Belmont Futurity, a six-and-a-half-furlong race against just six other horses, unfolds much like the others. The Daily Racing Form remarks that Secretariat was “unhurried following the start.” He is still fifth at the halfway point in the race; then he draws away and wins by almost two lengths.
In his book, Ray Woolfe reports that an unusual thing happened after the race. As Ron Turcotte and Secretariat neared the winner’s circle, a woman in the crowd (and New York crowds can be tough) started clapping and urged everyone to do the same. And they did, until the whole place was cheering for the tall red horse.
October 14, 1972, Belmont. Another step up in class, the fattest purse to date ($87,900 to the winner) and, in every way but one, the same outcome as the previous six races. Secretariat enters the one-mile Champagne Stakes as a seven-to-ten favorite. True to form, he is slow off the mark (“void of early foot,” as the poets at the Daily Racing Form put it), then charges home on the outside and wins by two lengths.
But the cheering soon fades as inquiry goes up on the tote board. Stewards rule that Secretariat brushed Stop the Music near the 3⁄16 pole, and the latter horse is given the win. Secretariat—to the dismay of many—is disqualified and officially places second.
Ask Ron Turcotte and Bill Nack about that ruling now and both will shake their heads. They have watched the films and say that the brush was a dubious judgment and would never be called today.
October 28, 1972, Laurel. During a downpour, Ron Turcotte guides Secretariat to victory in a manner that is becoming almost formulaic. A Raymond Woolfe photo taken after the race suggests that both horse and rider have been to the mud baths, so how did the horse—despite the gumbo, despite his wide route to the wire—manage to come within a fifth of a second of the stakes record time?
Stop the Music is in this race, too, but four lengths back. He was, says the Daily Racing Form, “easily second best.” This year, almost every horse is just that when Secretariat is in the running.
November 18, 1972, Garden State. The distance: a mile and a sixteenth. The purse heavy: $179,199 to the winner. The result: same old, same old. A three-and-a-half-length victory, with the horse only truly accelerating in the homestretch.
Secretariat will winter in Florida, where Lucien Laurin gets the news that his sprightly colt has been voted Horse of the Year, the first time a two-year-old has won the honor. Laurin himself is named Trainer of the Year.
After nine starts, Secretariat has finished the year with seven wins, one second, and one fourth and he has contributed $456,404 to the Meadow’s coffers. Riva Ridge, meanwhile, has brought home almost $400,000 and is being syndicated, his breeding rights sold to shareholders—for $5,120,000. That winter, Secretariat is also syndicated, for $6,080,000, then a record. What a difference a year, and a horse or two, can make in a farm’s fortunes.
March 17, 1973, Aqueduct. His first race after a relaxing winter in Florida. In the Bay Shore, a short (seven furlongs) race, there is no late charge on the outside. Secretariat and Turcotte come up behind a wall of horses but somehow cut through, win
ning by four and a half lengths.
April 7, 1973, Aqueduct. The Gotham Mile is like the Bay Shore in that the imposing red horse departs from his usual come-from-behind tactic. In this race, he takes the lead from the start, winning by three lengths and equaling a track record that has stood since 1968. Charles Hatton remarks on how “frightfully keen” the horse is—after the race. It takes two lead ponies and an outrider to break the Secretariat express. Says Hatton, “He constantly overran his finishes and wags were fond of saying, ‘He pulls up going faster than former champions ran.’”
April 21, 1973, Aqueduct. The Wood Memorial is supposed to be just one more prep race in Secretariat’s run for the Triple Crown. The Kentucky Derby is only two weeks away.
The mile-and-an-eighth race starts like so many others, with Secretariat sitting in the reeds. But when Ron Turcotte chirps to his horse in the late going, the rocket thrusters don’t kick in. Whether due to an abscess in the horse’s upper lip, his jockey’s working him slowly in a prerace workout (a riderless horse on the track provoked the caution), or some other mysterious circumstance, Secretariat is not himself today.
Eddie Sweat will later blame the abscess, caused by a burr in the horse’s hay. “It bothered him a lot,” Eddie will tell the Thoroughbred Record six years later. “On the day of the Wood, I went to get him for the race and when I put the bridle on, he wouldn’t let me put it in his mouth. It took me a long time before I finally got it on.” In fact, it took him a full five minutes.
The Horse God Built Page 14
