More from the Secretariat Chronicles

Abscess Makes the Heart Grow Fonder (excerpt from Will To Win, by Bill Heller with Ron Turcotte, 1992):

"Riding the elevator up to Penny's [Chenery, owner of Secretariat] suite, Turotte was optimisitc that he had an explanation for Secretariat's poor performance. The preceding Saturday at Belmont, he had encountered veterinarian Manuel Gilman, who asked about the abscess. The abscess? Gilman reported he had been an abscess when he was looking for Secretariat's tattoo number the morning of the Wood (each horse has a number stamped on his upper lip to ensure proper identification).

"'As soon as he said that,' Turcotte remembers, 'I said, 'That's it! Thank you!' Every time I had pulled on the reins, his head kept flying up.

"Horses are creatures of habit. When they feel pain, they turn away from it. When Secretariat felt the pull of the rein on the bit of his sore mouth, he jerked his head up, trying to get away from the pain. It was plausible, but hadn't anyone said anything?

"Turcotte walked into Penny's suite, where she and [trainer Lucien] Laurin were waiting. He closed the door. You could feel the tension in the air. They asked him what he thought of the horse. He told them Secretariat wasn't himself, but that the distance would be no problem because of his come-from-behind style. Confused as to why he hadn't been told of the abscess, Turcotte didn't bring the subject up: 'I didn't tell them. It wasn't my place. I said, 'If he's himself, he'll win. I'll let you know after I work him.'

"The next morning, Secretariat had his final work, five furlongs, three days before the most important race of his life [the 1973 Kentucky Derby]. The first thing [groom] Eddie Sweat said to Turcotte when he got to the barn was, 'The abscess is broken.'

"Sweat had known of the abscess. How could Laurin and Penny not? As far as Laurin knew, it never bothered the horse. 'If he had a bad lip, it didn't stop him from eating his dinner that night. He cleaned up everything. All his life, he could eat. Eat and sleep.

"As for Penny, in a conversation that took place in her house in the fall of 1973, Bill Nack asked her about the abscess. She gave him a startled look and said, 'What abscess? I didn't know anything about an abscess.' Nack thinks Lucien never told her: 'She looked genuinely surprised.'

"Gilman says, 'When I examine horses, I identify them. Part of it is reading the tattoo. The morning of the Wood, I lifted up Secretariat's lip and saw the abscess. It was quite sore. Looked a second time. It broke out. Some of the puss exuded. I told Lucien Laurin; showed him, and got hot steamers (rags used to hold against the affected lip).'

"The reason for secrecy? 'You don't want to advertise it,' Gilman conjectures."

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It's pretty obvious looking at Secretariat's career from the vantage point of 30 years later he never should have lost a race. The first race he ran, on July 4, 1972, he was knocked almost to the ground at the start of the race, putting himself out of contention though finishing a very strong fourth. His second loss was in the 1972 Champagne Stakes, when he was disqualified to second after bearing in on Stop the Music. Then the loss in the Wood because of an abscess, the Whitney that fall to the Allen Jerkins-trained Onion because he was sick with the flu, and finally the Woodward because the trainer put him in as a last-minute replacement for Riva Ridge (scratched because of an off track) and Secretariat wasn't worked like he should have been. It was a trainer error, and Secretariat lost to yet another Allen Jerkins trainee, Prove Out (both losses to Jerkins horses were instrumental in Jerkins winning the Eclipse Trainer of the Year award, though Laurin by rights should have won it).

The greats do eventually get beaten, but there never was a better horse. As Charles Hatton, the dean of turf writers told Bill Nack, "He's the greatest horse I've ever seen. He's the greatest horse anybody has ever seen. Don't let anybody kid you. He could do anything, and he could do it better than any horse I ever saw. No question about it in my mind. He should never had been beaten."

That's a sound assessment of the great horse's career.