Some Sunday Reads

 Did Harry Kaplan and not Bob Coglianese take the famous photo of Secretariat at the finish line of the 1973 Belmont Stakes?

It is very possible and likely probable given photographers hired assistant photographers on jobs requiring multiple camera setups.

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Speaking of  Team Secretariat, here is a 2013 segment from 60 Minutes:

Remembering Ron Turcotte

 Today it was announced that Canadian-born jockey Ron Turcotte, 84, best known for having piloted Secretariat in the legendary 1973 Triple Crown series, died early today at his home in New Brunswick, Canada.  Turcotte, who was one of 12 children, with five of the boys having become jockeys though none of the others were as successful as he, first came to prominence as a jockey in the 1960s, with his first winner in the classics being Tom Rolfe, the winner of the 1965 Preakness.  A few years later, owner and breeder Penny Chenery of Meadow Farm hired Turcotte to ride Riva Ridge, and together they won the 1972 Kentucky Derby and Belmont. Of course, Turcotte gained international fame as the jockey of the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years and the greatest racehorse ever to step foot on a racetrack, Secretariat.  Turcotte had the easiest job of his life riding Red, for the horse did it all.  Turcotte simply sat on him.  He rode Secretariat from his third start through the Man O'War Stakes in 1973.  He had been suspended and couldn't ride Secretariat in his final start, the Canadian International.  Eddie Maple substituted for Ron in that race.

Turcotte loved to talk about Secretariat.  He probably knew the horse better than anybody else who was associated with him during his racing career.  Five or six years ago, he published a series of articles for the official Secretariat webpage called "Turcotte Tuesday" discussing his career and his most famous horse.  He could be found on various Secretariat Facebook fan pages engaging in conversations with fans about the horse.  

His riding career ended in a 1978 accident where a horse stumbled at the starting gate and threw Turcotte.  He wound up paralyzed from the waist down and confined to a wheelchair for the rest of his life.  He was in a great deal of pain and faced life-threatening infections over the years.  These setbacks didn't stop him at all.  He traveled a great deal, attending signing events, giving interviews, and even attending a few Triple Crown races in person.  He also raised money for injured jockeys.

With Turcotte's death, an era has ended.  All the people who were directly involved in the racing career of Secretariat, including the champion himself, of course, have passed away.  Penny Chenery, the owner and breeder; Lucien Laurin, trainer; Turcotte, jockey; exercise riders Jim Gaffney and Charlie Davis; and groom Eddie Sweat are all gone now.  Turcotte was the last living connection to Team Secretariat.

NYT obit:

“He was a superstrong horse, superintelligent — you name it, he had it,” Turcotte told The New York Times in 2013. “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.”

Ronald Joseph Morel Turcotte was born on July 22, 1941, in Drummond, New Brunswick, where his father, Albert, worked as a lumberjack. His mother, Rose (Devost) Turcotte, stayed home raising their 12 children, of whom Ron was the third, in a farmhouse with no central heating or running water. The family spoke French at home.

At 14, Ron dropped out of school to work alongside his father. Because he was too small to wield an ax or saw — he stood 5-foot-1 and weighed 130 pounds — he was put in charge of the horses that hauled the timber out of the forest, valuable training for his future profession.

Some Monday Reads

 This is a sad equine obituary to note:  Maritime Traveler, one of the oldest horses in the world at 35 and the last offspring of the legendary Secretariat, died yesterday in Ocala, Florida.  He, like Tinner's Way, was from Secretariat's last crop in 1990.

Although Secretariat died at the relatively young age of 19 in 1989, many of his offspring lived to a very old age of 30 or more.  Maritime Traveler had to be among the oldest living thoroughbreds in the world.

Snip:

Maritime Traveler made five lifetime racing starts, all at Canada’s Woodbine Racetrack, with his best finish being a fourth. He earned all of $1,572 and soon after his last start, on June 12, 1993, Appleton retired him to Bridlewood Farm. That operation, one of Ocala’s legacy thoroughbred farms, was founded by Appleton and his wife Martha in 1976.

George Issacs has a long history with Bridlewood Farm and Maritime Traveler. He was Bridlewood Farm’s stallion manager from 1989 to 1992, leaving to become the general manager of Allen Paulson’s Ocala-based Brookside South Farm. In 1996, Isaacs returned to Bridlewood Farm as general manager, remaining in the position through the death of Appleton in 2008 and the ensuing Appleton Family Trust ownership. In 2013, John and Leslie Malone purchased Bridlewood Farm and Isaacs remains the operation’s general manager.

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I haven't been there since 2009 or 2010, but I am very familiar with the Grand Sierra Resort.  Scary, scary stuff.

That resort wasn't too terribly far from where I used to live all those years ago.

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Fifty Years Ago Today

 It was fifty years ago, June 9, 1973, which marked the greatest single performance in the history of sports, never again to be duplicated (courtesy of NYRA YouTube channel):

Secretariat's name is literally in the pedigrees of thousands of thoroughbreds today.  His influence is felt largely through the daughters Secrettame (Storm Cat), Terlingua (Gone West), and Weekend Surprise (A.P. Indy).  Through A.P. Indy, his grandson Tapit has had an enormous influence on the Belmont Stakes in particular.

This article explains it.

Secretariat was hardly a dud as a sire.

He wasn't just the greatest athlete the state of Virginia ever produced, but he remains the greatest athlete, period.

His performance in that Belmont will never be duplicated.

Crackpottery for Tuesday, but Remembering the Incomparable Secretariat

 Peter Singer never should have been allowed in the United States to teach at Princeton, let alone be traveling everywhere peddling his "animal liberation" and euthanasia (for humans) bullshit.

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Another crackpot throws his hat into the ring running for president although he is going the third-party route.

West goes out of his way to piss people off.  It is to be hoped people simply ignore him.

Ditto for fellow crank RFJ, Jr.

By the way, West has been married five times and divorced four.  Like the crackpot Peter Singer, West taught at Princeton.  He also has an MA and Ph.D. from there.

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Later this week will mark the fiftieth anniversary of Secretariat winning the 1973 Triple Crown in his otherworldly performance in the Belmont.  This article in the Blood Horse marks it and CBS announcer Chic Anderson's legendary call of the race.  It might have been the best sports call in history.

It makes sense.  The greatest horse of all time winning the greatest horse race of all time and the greatest performance in sports history with the best call in sports history--a perfect combination.

Sadly, nobody remembers track announcer Dave Johnson's call of the race.  If you were at the Belmont track on June 9, 1973, you heard Johnson, not Anderson.  

Dave tried, though, despite not being a Chic Anderson.  He is 82 now.  Anderson was only 47 when he died from a heart attack in 1979.

Snip from the Johnson article:

"At the time in 1973 as a track announcer, you were paid to say what you see," Johnson said. "I had to shut my microphone off with about 70 yards left and I could not call the finish. We were told to keep going through the whole field and the only time you could call the finish was when it was on television or radio."

Due to those restrictions, Johnson's call was much more straightforward than Anderson's. For instance, while Pvt. Smiles, who was never a factor and disappeared from Anderson's call after the first six furlongs, Johnson's duty to his on-track listeners required him to still mention the well-beaten 14-1 longshot in the stretch .

Yet even with those shackles, Johnson still managed to capture the magnitude of what was happening as he spoke louder and quicker and with more emotion during the final stages.

Johnson was a good track announcer, but at that race he was 31 lengths behind Anderson.

Johnson's call can be found here. 

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Kentucky Derby 2023 Results

Mage has won the 149th Kentucky Derby.  He had only three starts coming into the race.   Jockey Javier Castellano won his first Derby.  Jockey Castellano and trainer Gustavo Delgado  are from Venezuela.  Shades of Canonero II in 1971.  He was 15-1.

Two Phil's was second, and co-favorite Angel of Empire finished third.  The time was 2:01.57, far off Secretariat's 1973 record.

Co-favorite Tapit Trice finished seventh.

Commonwealth Syndicate owns the horse.  There are 382 shareholders in Mage.  Mage is sired by Good Magic, sired by Curlin, (dam Glinda the Good), while his dam Puca is sired by Big Brown out of Boat's Ghost.

The race, thanks to NBC Sports:

Louisville Courier

Blood Horse

Blast from the past is NBC Sports rebroadcasting the original CBS Sports footage of Secretariat's 1973 Kentucky Derby win in its original condition, not the cheap-assed faded, bootleg kinescopes found on YouTube:

Earlier:  The current odds for this year's field, which had five scratches are here.

Forte was perhaps the best of the lot, but he was scratched.

Thursday Reads, Including Obits

 The big obit of today was politician-turned-infamous talk show host Jerry Springer, 79, who died after a short bout with pancreatic cancer.  He was once mayor of Cincinnati, but then he discovered there was much more fame and fortune to make in trash TV than in politics.  His talk show ran for 27 years before it ended in 2018.  It lasted way longer than shows with Geraldo Rivera or Morton Downey, Jr., the latter who didn't last that long literally.

Snip:

Gerald Norman Springer was born Feb. 13, 1944, in a London underground railway station being used as a bomb shelter. His parents, Richard and Margot, were German Jews who fled to England during the Holocaust, in which other relatives were killed in Nazi gas chambers. They arrived in the United States when their son was 5 and settled in the Queens borough of New York City, where Springer got his first Yankees baseball gear on his way to becoming a lifelong fan.

He studied political science at Tulane University and got a law degree from Northwestern University. He was active in politics much of his adult life, mulling a run for governor of Ohio as recently as 2017.

He entered the arena as an aide in Robert F. Kennedy’s ill-fated 1968 presidential campaign. Springer, working for a Cincinnati law firm, ran unsuccessfully for Congress in 1970 before being elected to city council in 1971.

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It was news to me he had a law degree. 

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The woman who was at the center of the Emmitt Till murder case in 1955, Carolyn Bryant Donham, 88, died in Louisiana according to a coroner there.

Snip:

Later, her husband, Roy Bryant, and J.W. Milam, took Emmett from his bed and ordered him into the back of a pickup truck and beat him before shooting him in the head and tossing his body into the Tallahatchie River. They were both acquitted of murder by an all-White jury following a trial in which Carolyn Bryant testified that Emmett grabbed and verbally threatened her.

Milam, who died in 1980, and Bryant, who died in 1994, admitted to the killing in a 1956 interview with Look magazine.

In 2007, a Mississippi grand jury declined to indict Donham on any charges.

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Secretariat's jockey Ron Turcotte, the last remaining member of Team Secretariat, remembers the all-time great fifty years after the legend won the Triple Crown.

Snip:

Turcotte credits his wife, Gaetane, and his daughters for treating him like "nothing happened to me — like I was the same man I was when I was riding." Lynn Turcotte has tried to get her father to slow down in his old age, but he tells her he'll keep going for Big Red, the horse with a supersized heart.

"He said, 'Secretariat was so good to me, the least I can do is let his memory and legacy live on,'" Lynn Turcotte said. "That's why he does what he does."

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Turcotte is 81 years old and been confined to a wheelchair since a racing accident in 1978. ____________________________________

Fifty years later, Secretariat remains the king of horse racing.

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Sham Pictures

Here are some pictures I took of Secretariat's old rival, Sham (1970-1993), at Spendthrift Farm on August 1, 1989:

Secretariat Photos

I was finally able to lighten up the somewhat underexposed pictures I took of Secretariat when I went back to Kentucky in 1989.  I will go ahead and share these photos today, since I am not posting many stand alone posts these days unless the mood grabs me:

The groom was Bobby Anderson, the date was July 31, 1989, only a little more than two months before Secretariat passed.

Only 7-2?

Since COVID-19 has forced cancellation of all sporting events, including the Kentucky Derby, Churchill Downs will instead for the first Saturday in May have a "virtual" Derby featuring the 13 Triple Crown winners to run a computer-generated fantasy race.

It seems rather pointless, as Secretariat, the genetic freak he was, would obliterate the rest of the field.  It would be criminal for the "fantasy" race to put ahead any other horse.  After all, Big Red II still owns all three stakes records of the Triple Crown races, some 47 YEARS after they were run.

The odds should be 1-10,000 or even more.  Secretariat's odds in the 1973 Belmont were 1 to 10.  A $2 win ticket, what few were cashed, would have paid only $2.10.  Uncashed 1973 Belmont tickets are worth today hundreds if not thousands of dollars.

The fun thing to do is simply have Secretariat "scratched" the day of the virtual race.  THEN it would get very, very interesting indeed.

Judging from what I know of the Triple Crown winners, only Count Fleet (1943) and Citation (1948) belong anywhere near the league of Secretariat.  They both are typically listed among the 10 greatest racehorses in American history.  Count Fleet,  the longest-lived Triple Crown winner who was still alive in 1973 when Secretariat won, was also the maternal grandsire of the legendary Kelso, also a Top 10 all-time great.   Kelso won Horse of the Year five consecutive years (1960-1964), the only horse ever to do so.  Count Fleet himself had a great career as a three-year-old who loved to outrun his competition.  He won his Triple Crown with the greatest of ease, with his victory margin in the Belmont 25 lengths.  However, this would prove to be his last race.  Sometime during the race he struck a foreleg, and apparently bowed a tendon or otherwise injured it.  Weeks of trying to treat the injury so he could run again proved futile.  He retired, just like Justify did.  Unlike Justify, there was no controversy over the retirement.

A clip of Count Fleet taken from an old ABC video called Jewels of the Triple Crown (the first 11, of course):



As for Citation, little more needs to be said.  He is usually ranked with Man O' War and Secretariat as one of the top three greatest racehorses in American history.  His three-year-old career was nothing short of sensational.  He won 19 of 20 races as a three-year-old,  including winning the Jersey Stakes within the time frame of the Triple Crown.  He was known as a highly intelligent horse, winning by just enough to finish first, with ears pricked forward when crossing the finish line.  He never exerted himself, at least as a three-year-old.  Jockey Eddie Arcaro never stopped singing the praises of his mount, calling him the best he ever rode.  He had a right to brag about Big Cy.  He was that good.

The only black mark in his career was the fact that because of some bone ossification, he had to sit out his four-year-old season.  His owners, the Wrights, wanted him to become the first thoroughbred millionaire, but it was much harder than it looked.  When Cy returned to the track as a five-year-old, he had to go up against a one hell of a runner by the name of Noor.  Many of Citation's losses were to this outstanding racehorse, so he had a legitimate excuse.  Eventually, though, Citation did become the first equine millionaire and retired shortly thereafter.

A newreel clip of Noor and Citation:




Anyway, without Secretariat in the mix, the race would have to come down to these two, but you never know with people who have no memory of these horses' stellar careers.  I would say after them, it would be a tossup between Seattle Slew (1977) and Affirmed (1978), then another group would be American Pharoah (2015), Justify (2018), Whirlaway (1941), War Admiral (1937), and Gallant Fox (1930).  The rest would be Omaha (1935), Assault (1946), and Sir Barton (1919).  Now these aren't in any particular order in how they would finish in a "fantasy" matchup.  These are just my classifications on their general quality.  Now I like all of them, and all of them had interesting stories and backgrounds and varying abilities.  It is just if I had to classify them, that is how I would do it.

Obituary: A.P. Indy

Belmont Stakes and Breeders' Cup Classic winner of 1992, A.P. Indy, whose wins in both races garnered him Horse of the Year honors for that year,  has died at the ripe old age of 31 (technically 30 as his birthday was in late March).  A.P. Indy was not only an outstanding racehorse with an incredible pedigree, he would also be one of the greatest thoroughbred sires in American history.

A.P. Indy was by far the best offspring of 1977 Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew, who, without  this great horse, would not have had as much influence on the breed as had been initially thought.  Slew had a great career as a sire, as we all know, but his sons have fizzled out in terms of impact on racing.  Except, of course, for A.P. Indy, whose influence has been tremendous over the past 20 or so years.

But it isn't just because he was a son of Seattle Slew.  A.P. Indy's dam was the great Weekend Surprise, also the dam of 1990 Preakness winner Summer Squall, among other offspring she had.  However, there is more, as we all know.  Weekend Surprise was one of the great broodmares sired by the incomparable Secretariat, in my view the greatest racehorse to have ever lived.  Secretariat, of course, was the son of Bold Ruler, the greatest thoroughbred sire of all time.  A.P., through both his sire's and his dam's sides, was Bold Ruler through and through.  He would be the horse who would carry the Bold Ruler influence into the 21st century.  It had gone dormant since the early 1980s, while the Northern Dancer and Raise a Native lines would ascend, but the line continued, thank God, and returned with a vengeance.

You can read more about A.P. Indy here.

A.P. Indy died peacefully at his home, Lane's End, in Versailles, Kentucky, yesterday.  He was a big attraction at the farm for visitors.  As a yearling he was bought by Japanese businessman Tomonori Tsurumaki, who named him. Breeders Will Farish and William Kilroy bought back part interest in the horse in 1992.

A bruised foot kept him out of the 1992 Kentucky Derby and Preakness, but he was fit for the Belmont, winning in the second-fastest time (tied with Easy Goer) of 2:26.  It seemed appropriate for a grandson of Secretariat.

A.P. Indy's offspring include Mineshaft, Bernardini, Honor Code, and Rags to Riches.

As important as this he was the sire of leading sire Pulpit, who unlike Indy did not live very long, and Pulpit in turn is the sire of one of the "hottest" sires in the world,  Tapit.

The strange irony here is both the sire of Pulpit, A.P. Indy, and the dam of Pulpit, Preach, both lived to  be 31 and both died within days of each other.


1992 Belmont Stakes:




1992 Breeders' Cup Classic:



And this tweet:

One of our favorite videos of A.P. Indy with his sons Mineshaft and Honor Code. It’s almost as if he looks at Mineshaft and says can you behave yourself please they’re taking photos 🐎#fathersonmoment #legend pic.twitter.com/6LYlgewyxV

— Lane's End (@LanesEndFarms) February 22, 2020

Thirty Years Ago

Today marks the  thirtieth anniversary of the death of racing legend Secretariat, who was put down in 1989 after a bout of laminitis.  He was only 19 years old when he died, but his legacy lives on forever.

He was called the "Elvis Presley" of horseracing.  I think it is apt.

I have written quite a few blog posts about the legend.  I wrote a long blog post back in 2003, one of the earliest posts in this blog's history (I can't believe I have had this blog for 17 years), and I thought I would repost it here:


As I Think of the 30th Anniversary

of the legendary Secretariat's sweep of the Triple Crown, I have to share what was certainly one of the high points of my life, when I finally got to see Secretariat "in person."

Although I graduated from high school in June of 1973, that was not the most important thing on my mind. Neither was the spiraling Watergate scandal. No, what I and millions of other people cared about in the weeks leading up to June 9 was whether or not Secretariat was going to win the Triple Crown. He was really the first horse in 25 years since Citation did the deed in 1948 to have a really clear shot at taking it. There were six other horses who had a shot in the interim, but all of them had chinks in their armor and failed. Secretariat, certainly in the minds of the media, was virtually guaranteed the victory.

Of course, as we all know, Secretariat didn't disappoint; in fact, he far exceeded expectations by winning the Belmont Stakes in the fastest mile-and-a-half ever run on the dirt and by the largest margin ever in a major race. He was, in Charles Hatton's memorable words, "a hero in an anti-hero age." I continued to follow the great horse's career through his wins and his defeats (which never should have happened). I vowed at that point someday I would get to see him.

Fast forward about 16 years later. I kept putting off seeing him, but finally in 1989 I planned to make the trip from Reno, Nevada, to Lexington, Kentucky. I had all of the arrangements made months in advance. Unfortunately, tragedy struck when my oldest brother, 56, was diagnosed with colon cancer. He was given only a few months to live. I seriously thought of canceling the trip, but when I saw my brother for the last time, about a week before he died, he insisted that I go and get a picture of Secretariat for his wife. It was literally a last wish. Two weeks after my brother died, I fulfilled that request.

It was July 31, 1989. As anybody who lives in that part of the country knows, summer is not the best time to visit because of the godawful humidity. It was perhaps 85 degrees out, not so bad except for the fact humidity was probably 200 percent. There was fog in the air, or what I would call fog not unlike what southern Oregon gets in November, and I was sweating buckets. Despite this, Lexington is surely one of the great showplaces in the United States, looking as it does like a giant golf course.

It was also very easy to get around, and I had absolutely no difficulty getting to Claiborne Farm on the Paris Pike in Paris, Kentucky. No difficulty except I had to drive perhaps 70 mph on a narrow two-lane road. Anyway, I met the groom at the parking lot, and after touring the stallion barns and seeing such greats as Danzig, Devil's Bag, Ferdinand, Forty Niner, Nijinsky II, Mr. Prospector, Private Account, and Ack Ack (to name just a few), I finally got to see Secretariat. Of course, I took many pictures, though there are none of me posing with him since I took them all and I was alone. After taking the pictures, I walked up to the great horse and petted him. I can't describe his appearance except that his coat was an unnatural red color--not golden chestnut but RED as in the color of a fire engine. He was also very serene. "There was never a better horse," as the groom described "Red," as Secretariat was called. After I said I felt there would never be another one like him, the groom led Red back to his stall, a stall that had his sire Bold Ruler's name on it and plaques detailing Red's racing career and Triple Crown sweep. There wasn't any doubt who the major attraction of that farm was.

While I was in the barn, the groom asked me if I would like to have a lock of Secretariat's mane. I said sure and also had the hair wrapped in butcher paper. That capped off what was truly an unforgettable day in my life, and the lock of Secretariat's mane remains a memento of that wonderful occasion.

I also will never forget when we walked to the stallion cemetery and visited the final resting places of some of the greats in the past: Princequillo, Reviewer (sire of Ruffian), Gallant Fox, Sir Gallahad III, Round Table, and Claiborne's own Swale, who died of a heart seizure days after winning the 1984 Belmont Stakes. I told the groom that I had traveled some 2,000 miles to see Secretariat, and I felt that if I didn't see him this year, I would never get another chance. The groom replied, "Well, he is 19."

And with that I left.

Never in my wildest dreams that the spot where I made that remark would be the very spot where Secretariat would be buried just nine weeks later. I was just devastated when I had heard the news Secretariat had to be put down because of incurable laminitis on October 4. He was still very healthy when I saw him, but he had his first attack about a month I saw him, and it finally recurred in all four feet. Of course, it was impossible to save him.

I can't explain the timing except perhaps it was meant to be, that Secretariat remained healthy just long enough for me to visit him, and then, after that, he had done his job and that was it. My brother's last wish fulfilled, my dream fulfilled.

So every time I think of Secretariat, I get tears in my eyes. I can't help it. He will always be a big part of my life.

Belmont Stakes Notes

Talk about an understatement:

"I wanted Secretariat to set a record that would stand a long time."

Jockey Ron Turcotte on his ride in the 1973 @BelmontStakes ▶️ https://t.co/p2LAQbAWar pic.twitter.com/fuN4Y7JUjm

— Horse Racing Nation (@HR_Nation) June 7, 2018

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Belmont Stakes Notes

Jockey Ron Turcotte, the last surviving member of Team Secretariat, remembers what it was like that day 45 years ago when he rode the great horse to his historic victory.
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Speaking of Turcotte, he believes Justify has what it takes to score a triple tomorrow.

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Despite Justify being a 4-5 favorite, he is still a longshot capturing the Triple Crown.
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Some Secretariat photos to savor from this link:

Out of  Sports Illustrated's vault . . . #FlashbackFriday #Secretariat45 📸https://t.co/ZTwoP9L11V

— Secretariat (@SECRETARIATofcl) June 8, 2018

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"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.

45 Years

Today marks the 45th anniversary--can it really be that many years--since Secretariat won the Kentucky Derby in 1:59.2, which all these years later is still the track record for that distance at Churchill Downs.

What was incredible about his race was he ran each quarter mile faster than the previous one, which is almost unheard of in horse racing.

This race was the beginning of the national obsession with this great horse.  He already had a huge following in racing circles, but it was television coverage of the Triple Crown that put this horse into superstar status.  I was no different than millions of other people obsessed with this horse.  At the time, I was 18 years old and about to graduate from high school.  I had to have tons of dental work done on my mouth (I need to have it done now, years later, but I can't afford to do it) because I believe I was grinding my teeth too much thanks for having had to wear a brace previously because of scoliosis.  I think it ruined my mouth, and it never recovered.  Anyway, I was going through a lot of pain with root canals and such, and Secretariat was a great diversion.  I also missed some school because I had wisdom teeth extracted, and I was under pressure to get all my credits in order to graduate. 

The week I graduated in 1973 was the week leading up to the 105th Belmont Stakes.  The country's fascination with Secretariat was at a fever pitch, and his connections felt tremendous pressure to do what hadn't been done since Citation won the Triple Crown in 1948.  Quite honestly, the only thing I cared about that week was not my graduation, which was a knock-down, drag-out fight with my mother about what clothes to wear to graduation, but whether Secretariat would win the Triple Crown.  He certainly didn't disappoint and vastly exceeded expectations.

Anyway, enough of that ramble.  Secretariat was the subject of a celebration this week.

The race:



Today's Derby winner, Justify, is a seventh-generation descendant of Secretariat on both sides of his pedigree.  Not that it matters all that much that many generations removed from the champ.  Literally thousands of thoroughbreds are descended from him.

For fun, here is Bill Nack's article about the Belmont, when he worked for Newsday.

Obituary: William Nack

One of the great sportswriters of all time, Bill Nack, who worked for years for Sports Illustrated and best remembered for his work on Secretariat, has died at the age of 77.

Nack, then employed by Newsday,  spent practically 24/7 with the Secretariat crew during the 1972-73 years, and he documented their story in the outstanding Big Red of Meadow Stable, later titled Secretariat:  The Making of a Champion.  The fact few books have tried to tackle the Secretariat story since says it all about Nack's incredible writing skills.

Nack was also celebrated for his writing an obituary of Secretariat in 1990, a few months after the champion died, for SI called "Pure Heart."  It might be the best sports feature ever written.  This was the essay where it was revealed how large Secretariat's heart really was at the time of his death.

Great article.  I had visited Secretariat just 9 or 10 weeks before he passed, so I knew exactly how Nack felt.

More:

Nack was born in Chicago in 1941 and then moved with his family to Skokie, Ill., at the age of 10. After graduating from the University of Illinois in 1966 and serving in the army, he moved to New York and worked with Newsday, covering sports, politics, and the environment for 11 years before joining Sports Illustrated, SI.com reported.

Among the many awards Nack won throughout his career were the ESPN Lifetime Achievement Award for Literary Sportswriting in 2017 and the 1992 Walter Haight Award for career excellence in turf writing presented by the National Turf Writers Association. He was inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame's Joe Hirsch Media Roll of Honor in 2010.

Sports Illustrated as an obituary of him up:

William Louis Nack died Friday, at the age of 77, at his home in Washington, D.C., of complications from the cancer that he had been fighting for several years. He is survived by his wife, Carolyne, four children and several grandchildren. Nack was a towering figure in the history of sports journalism, a literary wordsmith and tireless reporter whose distinctive and soaring prose is revered by his peers and generations of younger writers. He stands among the best sportswriters in the history of the genre, and in many ways, among the best writers of any kind. When he stopped typing, he was a giant personality, full of endless good charm, disarmingly well-read and all times, given to entertain.

 The palette upon which Nack painted his most vivid portraits was horse racing, in particular, Secretariat. His story entitled Pure Heart, published in the June 4, 1990 issue of SI, was an emotional remembrance of the horse and the story that was the centerpiece of Nack’s career, Big Red’s run to the Triple Crown in the spring of 1973. Pure Heart, written several months after Secretariat was euthanized, was a passionate remembrance of a transcendent racehorse, but also of a man who had immersed himself in the story, and now found himself counting the passing of years and tasting the familiarity of his own tales.

Obituary: Penny Chenery

Penny Chenery, forever to be identified as the owner of 1973 Triple Crown winner Secretariat and the face of horse racing thanks to her personality, has died at the age of 95.

As everybody knows, Penny Chenery, then known as Penny Tweedy, had to syndicate her two top horses, Riva Ridge and Secretariat, in order to pay the taxes on her late father's estate. Secretariat was syndicated for a then-record $6,080,000 before he ever ran as a three-year-old. She worked out a deal with the young Seth Hancock of Claiborne Farm, who recently retired from running the farm and turned it over to his son. The gamble, as we know, paid off tremendously. Secretariat not only won the Triple Crown, but he became a world-class broodmare sire. His bloodlines run through numerous top racehorses today, including 2015 Triple Crown winner American Pharoah, who Penny was lucky enough to see win the Belmont in person.

Penny was part of the Secretariat team, which included Red himself, Chenery, trainer Lucien Laurin, jockey Ron Turcotte, and groom Eddie Sweat. Of this crew, only Ron Turcotte is still alive. He is about 76 now and has been in a wheelchair since 1978. Of the human members, Penny was the most visible. She became almost as famous as the horse she owned.

Being in the spotlight like she was, she handled the pressure extremely well, although her marriage was already in the crapper and she would later divorce, remarry, and divorce again. She had four children. What wasn't known at the time, until she revealed it a couple of years ago for a video documentary, she had a torrid affair with married trainer Lucien Laurin. She must have been a foot taller than he was (Laurin had once been a jockey, as I recall, until he got too heavy for the job), and watching the pair in videos at the time, you would never, ever have known they were messing around many a late night in the stable area. Things were hot and heavy throughout the 1973 year, until Secretariat retired after the Canadian International, after which the affair ended. For his part, Laurin stayed married to his wife until he died in 2000. Penny didn't reveal the affair until after his widow died; she died at an even older age than Penny.

It was such a secret affair that Secretariat biographer William Nack, who spent around two years of his life following the great horse and thought he knew everything there was to know about Team Secretariat, didn't know the half of it. He was as shocked as anybody over the revelations.

Chenery would later become the focus of the 2010 movie Secretariat, a film I reviewed a few years back.

My take on the Chenery-Laurin affair is here.

She died yesterday at her home in Boulder, Colorado.

From the obit:

In the 2013 documentary “Penny & Red: The Story of Secretariat’s Owner,” produced and directed by Ms. Chenery’s son John Tweedy Jr., she revealed that she had an affair during that racing season of 1973 with Laurin, the trainer, arising, she said, from the crumbling of her marriage to John Tweedy (they would be divorced late in 1973) and her feeling of isolation in facing the pressures of the time.

“It may spoil my image,” Ms. Chenery told The Lexington Herald-Leader in discussing her revelation of the affair with Laurin, who died in 2000. “I don’t know, and at this point I don’t care. It was a tremendous experience for me to go through the Secretariat years, and I just really wanted to let people know what it’s like to have a top horse and no one to turn to.”

Helen Bates Chenery was born in New Rochelle, N.Y., on Jan. 27, 1922, and grew up in nearby Pelham Manor, a daughter of Christopher T. Chenery, who made his fortune organizing public utility holding companies. She rode in shows as a youngster, developing a love for horses from her father, who took part in polo matches and fox hunts.

Warts and all, people loved her just the same.

The Blood Horse:

"We are deeply proud of our mother, her accomplishments, and her courage." said daughter Kate Tweedy. "As we mourn her loss, the example of her strength, her intelligence, and her enduring spirit continue to inspire us."

While the family requests that its privacy be respected for an initial week of mourning, Lusky says that plans for a future public memorial service will be announced soon.

"We have always been overwhelmed and amazed by the love and support Mom received from her many fans," John Tweedy said. "We look forward to a time soon when we can celebrate her life in a way that honors that legacy."

In lieu of flowers, the Secretariat Foundation is offering special Penny Chenery Memorial fundraising projects on behalf of selected equine-related charities. For details, visit Secretariat.com.

Associated Press obituary can be found here.

This on Facebook:

Will Sports Illustrated Once Again Shaft Horse Racing

and give its "Sportsman of the Year" to somebody else? That is what that magazine did back in 1973, when it shafted Secretariat, the greatest racehorse of all time, in favor of race car driver Jackie Stewart, who was great in his sport, but the reason for his getting the award over Big Red was NOT deserved.

American Pharoah, the first Triple Crown winner in 37 years, handily won the readers' poll for sportsman of the year, but what really counts is what the editors think.

The editors will announce their choice tomorrow on the Today show and on its website.

Edit: At least one billboard says that indeed he won the award:

Secretariat Got the Sportsman of the Year Shaft From SI,

so I am not optimistic the magazine will give the award to American Pharoah.

Some out there are squeamish a horse would be given an award that supposedly belongs to HUMAN endeavors.

Remember if you will Secretariat, the greatest of them all, got passed over in favor of race car driver Jackie Stewart in one of the worst oversights ever. I NEVER forgave SI for doing that, but they had a blind spot with regard to this horse. When Big Red won the Kentucky Derby in record time, do you think SI would put him on the cover? No. Instead the magazine editors put Olympian Mark Spitz and his new wife on the cover (they are still together). The magazine rectified this oversight a couple of weeks later with a cover story. As for Sportsman of the Year, Stewart got the award simply because he retired from a dangerous sport. Not that many people remember Stewart today outside of car racing circles--EVERYBODY remembers Secretariat.

Not holding my breath they will honor AP if they shafted the greatest horse in racing history previously.


For fun, here is a representative response of the selection of Jackie Stewart.