In the latest of his popular series, Steve Dennis recalls the day Secretariat erased the memory of a shock defeat with a spectacular world-record performance in a newly minted contest at Belmont Park
As summer slipped seamlessly into autumn, the incomparable, almost immeasurable Secretariat needed to get back on track in more ways than one.
The Triple Crown champion had been on the sidelines since suffering a shock defeat in the Whitney at Saratoga in early August, the longest period without a race in his life (apart, naturally, from his winter break), and there were those who wondered out loud whether he’d ever return to his best. A new start was what he needed, and there was a new race in which to make it.
Match race for monster pot of gold
The Marlboro Man – as well as being ineffably masculine, rugged, good-looking and undeniably prone to lung cancer – was the man with a plan.
He wanted to see the two most recent Kentucky Derby winners, barnmates Riva Ridge and Secretariat, take on each other in a match race for a monster pot of gold in a contest that bore his company’s name. He had the money, plenty of that, and he had a new race all ready to go. But he also had a problem.
The inaugural running of the Marlboro Cup was scheduled for September 15, 1973 at Belmont Park over a mile-eighth, and it carried a record $250,000 prize fund. It was even scheduled to be broadcast live to a grateful nation.
But the initial scheme of Jack Landry, vice-president of tobacco behemoth Philip Morris & Co. and a big racing man, foundered when both Secretariat and Riva Ridge were beaten at Saratoga.
The prospect of promoting a big match race when neither horse could win its last race was an unattractive one, so Landry drew hard on his filtered cigarette, blew out the match and made the Marlboro Cup an invitational race. The invites went out, and the best horses in the country RSVPd in the affirmative.
From California came the Charlie Whittingham pair Cougar II, the champion turf horse of 1972 and winner of the ‘Big Cap’ at Santa Anita, and Kennedy Road, former Canadian champion and winner of the Hollywood Gold Cup.
Then there was Key To The Mint, who had beaten Riva Ridge to the Eclipse Award for champion three-year-old colt of 1972, and the upstart Onion, who had famously upset Secretariat in the Whitney at Saratoga and shocked the racing world.
Magnificent seven
That defeat kept Secretariat out of the marquee Travers, and the Travers winner Annihilate ‘Em joined the party too. With Riva Ridge and Secretariat that made for a magnificent seven, and allowed Marlboro to publicise the contest as the ‘Thoroughbred Race of the Year’.
Since the Whitney, however, Secretariat had been a sick horse, and trainer Lucien Laurin had time to put only four works into a colt who normally thrived on a searching preparation. Big Red wasn’t thriving at all.
The works went by – ball one, ball two, ball three – and Laurin wasn’t happy about any of them, staring morosely at his stopwatch as though it had insulted him.
Three days before the Marlboro Cup, Laurin threw the final pitch, and Secretariat hit it out of the park. He went through five furlongs in 57s flat, the fabled ‘zinger’ workout that had always characterised his greatest performances, having needed such a stiff and congested schedule of exercise to whet that lethal edge on him.
“I knew he was ready,” said Laurin, later. “He was like he was before the Belmont.”
That was an awesome prospect. Ron Turcotte was given the choice between riding Secretariat or Riva Ridge, which of course was no choice at all, as no jockey would willingly get off Secretariat even for such a fine horse as Riva Ridge, winner of the 1972 Kentucky Derby and Belmont but since then eternally overshadowed by his extraterrestrial stablemate.
Eddie Maple was called up to ride Riva Ridge, who would carry the first colours of Meadow Stable, either through the old mantra of age before beauty or via the sympathy vote from owner Penny Chenery.
Turcotte would wear a distinguishing white cap aboard Secretariat, who was coupled in the betting with Riva Ridge – 4-5 on the morning-line, with Key To The Mint and the coupled Cougar II and Kennedy Road pegged at 3-1 – and bore a saddle towel emblazoned with 2B, like the pencil.
Under the saddle towel was enough lead to take his burden to 124lb, 3lb less than Riva Ridge and 2lb less than Cougar II and Key To The Mint. It was less than the normal 5lb allowance owed to three-year-olds competing against their elders, but it nevertheless seemed to add an extra veneer of difficulty to the near-impossible task faced by his rivals.
Before the race, the broadcaster CBS screened the big players commenting on the forthcoming showdown, like the trash-talk before a heavyweight title fight but everyone reading from the same polite, measured script.
Some considered it a pity that Pancho Martin didn’t have a horse in the race, as that irascible straight-talker, more than likely jabbing his cigar provocatively at the camera, would have made compelling viewing, and a nervy time for the TV executives.
This was the shape of things to come, the forerunner of all the banal call-and-response interviews that now precede practically every race, everywhere. History was being made.
A great deal
Willie Shoemaker smiled at the camera and told the viewers how he’d love to win the race not for himself but for Cougar II; Allen Jerkens, wearing a fancy hat and some luxuriant sideburns, hoped that Onion would run a good race; Charlie Whittingham talked up the quality of the field; Elliott Burch, reading from notes and turned out as immaculately as his Key To The Mint, told those sitting at home that he couldn’t pick the winner; and Ron Turcotte, looking slightly uncomfortable for a man with the best seat in the house, half-blurted “winning the Marlboro Cup means a great deal to me”, as though he had seen the future and was pleased with it.
Those at home, and the 48,023 rattling around in Belmont Park’s vast grandstands (20,000 fewer than on Belmont Stakes day), were left in no doubt about the importance and the magnificence of what they were about to see. This was almost entirely Secretariat’s doing, his remarkable ability and charisma shaping the racing world even as he galloped through it like a whirlwind.
Everyone wanted to see him, not Riva Ridge or Annihilate ‘Em or Cougar II. The Marlboro Cup was for him, about him, was reliant on his particular genius. And then the fanfare stopped and the gates opened – and Secretariat came out slowly. For all his indisputable greatness, Big Red was no gate horse.
Turcotte didn’t seem worried. After all, hadn’t he seen the future? He settled Secretariat in fifth place as first Riva Ridge (!) and then Onion laced through fast fractions, Onion playing the same game that had served him so well in the Whitney and Riva Ridge keeping him honest. The first quarter in 22⅗s, the half in 45⅗s, plenty quick enough.
Secretariat was moving much more smoothly, with far greater purpose than in that eclipsing Whitney. Turcotte attached him to the back of the leading group, three or four paths off the fence, the very image of barely restrained power. With a half-mile to run he moved easily into third place.
As the field circled the turn Riva Ridge drove to the front and Turcotte sent Secretariat after him, Onion dropping back, Cougar II moving up from the rear. Now the cards were on the table and this was all about just two horses, two jockeys in blue-and-white checks and stripes. Never mind the pre-race hassle and hustle, the Marlboro Man had the match he wanted, had paid for, after all.
At the quarter-pole, Secretariat joined Riva Ridge on the lead. There is a wonderful photo by Bob Coglianese of this instant that shows Turcotte looking over his left shoulder at a busy Eddie Maple, a lingering look, a goodbye glance. So long, Eddie.
“I wasn’t about to let him beat me,” Ronnie said, with slight emphasis on the ‘him’. “So I asked my horse for the first time and he was the old Secretariat. He just pulled out.”
Still more to come
At the three-sixteenth pole it was done. Secretariat had Riva Ridge cold, and he began to clear away. He went past the eighth-pole like Concorde going through the sound barrier, the timer showing the fastest mile ever run at the Big Sandy, and there was still more to come.
He barrelled through the final furlong, the howls of the crowd in his ears, another astounding time-twisting feat in his grasp. Under a hand-ride, unextended, unruffled, Secretariat smashed the world record for a mile-eighth by almost a second over a track labelled good rather than fast, the clock stopped short at 1m 45⅖s. And with his $150,000 share of the purse Secretariat became a millionaire, only the 13th horse to pass that seven-figure milestone.
Riva Ridge was second, beaten 3½ lengths, and – like poor Sham – slipped inside the old record too, but no-one noticed or cared. Cougar II came along late for third, and as Shoemaker slipped out of the saddle he was heard to mutter to the waiting Whittingham: “Charlie, those are two running sonofabitches that beat us.”
Such a hearty, heartfelt tribute, from such a man, was no more than Riva Ridge deserved for all his great endeavours, although it wasn’t news to anyone about Secretariat. Turcotte gave the cameras something a little more measured for public consumption.
“Oh, what a relief. The other one is a jet and that’s a superjet,” he said, safely ensconced in the future that he had foreseen. “It was a field of champions and he was just toying with them.”
Laurin, vindicated by his last-minute transformation of the colt, was looking further ahead. “I’m going to work him and Riva Ridge on the grass this coming week,” he said. “Secretariat should be a super horse on the turf. He can handle a sloppy track and horses that can do that usually do well on the turf.
“And I’ll put one of them in the Woodward [dirt, Sep 29] and the other in the Man o’ War [turf, Oct 8].”
We – and he – would see about that. Unfortunately, despite this initial unqualified success, the Marlboro Cup was a short-lived affair, running for just 15 years before it was stubbed out, largely because the Breeders’ Cup was becoming too dominant for it to hold a place in the schedule.
Secretariat was not the only stellar name on its roll of honour, with fellow Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew and Spectacular Bid up there alongside him. But he was unequivocally the most running sonofabitch.
• Visit the dedicated Secretariat website at secretariat.com
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Race 2: ‘I think we should send this horse today’ – time for a change of tactics in the Gotham
Race 1: ‘I made a mistake’ – more trouble than expected as Secretariat sets out for greatness
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