"He Is Moving Like a Tremendous Machine!"

This week marks the 45th anniversary of Secretariat's epic win in the 1973 Belmont Stakes. Also on this day, forty-five years later, Chic Anderson's call of the 1973 Belmont Stakes for CBS Sports remains nearly as legendary as the horse who won the race.

His call perfectly captured the moment: "Secretariat is widening now. He is moving like a tremendous machine!" Everybody who was watching the race live on television remembers that call.

Anderson also called the 1978 Belmont for CBS, and his call was almost as great as his 1973 performance. Given it was the Affirmed and Alydar Belmont, the best contested race I ever saw in my entire life, nobody but Anderson would do calling it.

Anderson unfortunately died young, only 47, in 1979.

This article for Sports Illustrated remembering Anderson is great and almost looks like it was written by the late, great Bill Nack. A snip:

Two things: First, Anderson called that Belmont only for CBS; track announcer Dave Johnson called the race for the live audience. If you were at Belmont Park that day, you heard Johnson, not Anderson. Second, there seems to be little certainty as to where Anderson would have stood while calling the race that defined his career. Johnson would have been in the announcer’s stand at the top of the Belmont grandstand. Cassidy suggests that Anderson was probably beneath that position, in the clubhouse, but admits that’s just an educated guess based on where other announcers had been. The upper-levels of the Belmont grandstand are a labyrinth of hallways and small offices overlooking the track. Anderson could have been in any of them, always certainly wearing the ivory suit in which he did jockey interviews right before the race.

Yes, Dave Johnson called the race at the track that day, but unfortunately for him, nobody remembers his call. He peddled a recording of some of his calls for Secretariat years later, and his call of the race was nothing spectacular. Anderson's call, however, is legendary among not just track announcers but sportscasters.

The author of this article ought to write a book about Anderson.

Here is the FindAGrave memorial for Anderson.

40 Years Ago Today

marks what is perhaps the greatest single performance in the history of sports, and the winner of that event still casts a giant shadow over his sport.

The winning athlete, of course is Secretariat, and the event was the 1973 Belmont Stakes which he won in record time, just as he did with the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes. He also won by the biggest margin ever in a major American race, 31 lengths. He captured the first Triple Crown in 25 years, and utterly demolished the competition in doing so.

I remember it like it was yesterday. I graduated from high school the week of the race, but I was more interested--hell, obsessed is more like it--in the Belmont Stakes than I was in my high school graduation.

It is hard to overstate just how big a buildup it was in the three weeks prior to it. It was a national obsession, and Secretariat and his connections knocked the Watergate scandal right off the front pages of newspapers and newsmagazines around the country. He even scored a "triple" before the races with cover stories for Time, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated. After all, no horse had won the Triple Crown since Citation did the job in 1948, and many were wondering if it would ever be done again. Six horses had won the first two legs of the Triple Crown, but they came up short in the Belmont.

However, from the time Secretariat won the 1972 Hopeful Stakes, sports writers and other observers had already deemed him the second coming of Man O'War and a cinch to win the 1973 Triple Crown. Thanks to his owner, Penny Chenery, needing to raise money in order to pay the estate taxes after her father died, he was syndicated before he had even ran a race as a three-year-old, but enough people were confident enough to take a gamble and do it. While Secretariat had a couple of losses prior to the Kentucky Derby (and lost two times after the Belmont thanks to a virus in the Whitney and not being trained to his best in the Woodward thanks to his being a last-minute replacement for stablemate Riva Ridge), people still believed he had the ability to do it.

Secretariat did not disappoint, and it was almost he made sure nobody in future generations would approach his standards.

Although I have posted the race before on this blog, I'll do it again:





Some articles marking this occasion:

Owner Penny Chenery and jockey Ron Turcotte talk about Secretariat to the New York Times:

Q. What made Secretariat so special?

CHENERY What made him so special was that physically, he had no flaws. His conformation was about perfect. He got more out of his stride and was very well balanced. He didn’t get tired; he responded to it.

TURCOTTE He was a superstrong horse, superintelligent, you name it, he had it. He was great every which way you can think of. There’s nothing that any horse had over him. Every time he was right, he never got beat. He ran a couple times when he shouldn’t have run, and that’s how he got beat.

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Secretariat's exercise rider, Charlie Davis, but for some reason the writer keeps calling him Davies, just knew he was going to win the Belmont:

As his exercise rider, Davies rode Secretariat throughout the week heading into Belmont and saw a horse that was ready to take on the small field in that race and set the pace early. He remembers sitting with the other exercise riders, on their mounts, watching the race and he knew that the early push out of the gate was no fluke.

It was an improbable margin set by Secretariat at the first turn but even as others shook their heads, doubting that the horse could sustain it, Davies knew better. He remembers leaning over and telling one of the other exercise riders that he "knew it was all over. I knew it, it was all over. Fellas, he’s just cruising now.”

It was a premonition from a week’s worth of morning workouts that gave Davies such confidence.

“People ask me ‘How do you know he was going to win the Belmont?’ Well, he was training stronger and stronger each day,” Davies said. “Me and Secretariat, we had a bond. He watched my back, I watched his. He was telling me ‘I’ve got this.’ He sure did.”

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Here is a reprint of what sportswriting great Red Smith had to say about the race.
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Here is yet another piece about Chenery and Turcotte, this one from the Atlantic Monthly.

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2:24

There are few certainties in life. Taxes are a certainty unless you know all of the loopholes and are a member of the top one percent of the top one percent. Death happens no matter how much money you've got. The sky is blue on a sunny, unpolluted day.

And it is a dead certainty no horse will break Secretariat's record of 2:24 in the Belmont Stakes today. On that day exactly 39 years ago, the big red horse did something no other horse ever did before--or since. Or, for that matter, likely to EVER do because Secretariat was truly a genetic freak.

The most incredible thing about his race was that at no time was he ever pushed. He probably could have shaved another couple of seconds off his record and won by 100 lengths had he tried.

At least one observer agrees with me:

In an extraordinary effort, Secretariat, the ‘Big Red’ machine, won the in Belmont in a time of 2:24, or an average of 12 seconds per furlong. His average speed that day was 37.5 mph and he won the race by 31 lengths, the equivalent of 83 yards or 76 metres.

His final time was 13 lengths faster than Gallant Man’s previous record. It was 22 lengths faster than Citation and 42 lengths faster than Crusader’s original record in 1926. In a head to head matchup, Secretariat would have crushed the 2011 winner, Ruler On Ice, by 34 lengths.

To this day, it remains the world record for the distance. No horse, anywhere, has ever run a mile and a half as fast.

That's on a dirt surface. I believe Hawkster still holds the record on grass at a partly-downhill course in Santa Anita.

In case you've never seen it:



Interesting to note that the motel room I stayed in during my 1989 Kentucky visit had the number of "224."

1973 Belmont Stakes.

It was 35 years ago when Secretariat became the first horse in 25 years to win the Triple Crown in this race, the best single performance in horse racing, and perhaps in all of sports:



He continues to cast a giant shadow over the sport to this day.

A Few Months Ago,

I posted the YouTube of Secretariat's sensational 31-length victory in the Belmont Stakes. Another person posted the same race, but with some pre-race and post-race commentary.

It's great:




As I told Secretariat's groom back in 1989, there will never be another like him.

I decided to post the YouTube of Secretariat's 1973 Belmont Stakes win, even though I have the race on tape and on DVD.

I might add the Derby and Preakness as well.

For Fun,

here is a YouTube video of Secretariat's 1973 victory in the Belmont Stakes, a performance that is arguably the greatest single performance in the history of sports.

There will never be another one like him. He was a genetic freak.