A fond farewell awaited the Triple Crown winner as he went to Canada for the final race of a legendary career. One important member of the team that had rewritten racing history would be absent, however – as Steve Dennis explains in the latest of his brilliant series
He had come a long way, and now he would go just a little further. There was one more chapter in the great golden story of Secretariat still to be written, the coda to the fairytale of a Triple Crown and two Horse of the Year titles, and for his last trick, his last gift of magic, Big Red would travel across the border to Woodbine for the G2 Canadian International, the 21st and final race of his career.
The final act
To everything there is a season, and a beginning, and an end.
The spring, now no more than a memory of burgeoning warmth, was a time to build an empire at Churchill Downs. The summer, always deceptively timeless, was a time to conquer the whole world at Belmont Park. The fall, with its undertone of change and decay, was a time to consolidate and reflect. The winter, as ever, would be closure, an ending.
Secretariat was near the end. In one sense only, because there was a career at stud waiting, the chance to shape the breed, to transmit his innate, inviolable ‘wow signal’ to future generations, and life would go on, but it was the end of that which had made him what he was.
Let the arguments continue, even at 50 years remove, about who was the best, is the best. The comparisons are comparatively meaningless and infinitely inexact. In any case, Secretariat had stopped being a horse some time ago. He was an emblem now, a talisman, an image, a feeling. And now winter was here, and the great year was almost over.
Like all the entertainers, Secretariat would leave us wanting more, but all we had left was the Canadian International at Woodbine, a mile and five-eighths on turf, a discipline that would kill his stud career stone dead in 2023 but was all part of the game back then, back when.
His contract – Secretariat had a contract, like a person might – stipulated that he be at Claiborne Farm on November 15, ready for love or its close approximation, and this was all he had time for before goodbye.
Something came of nothing
Ron Turcotte had to say goodbye early. He would not ride Secretariat at Woodbine, the Canadian jockey denied the opportunity to complete the circle on his own turf, where it had all started for him, owing to a suspension incurred for causing minor interference in a nothing race on a nothing horse. This time something came of nothing.
The New York stewards stood him down for five days, and that meant no Secretariat. It was an unpleasant thing done unpleasantly, with a subtext of malicious indifference. Turcotte remembered the details, as anyone would.
“Frank Dunne, of the New York State Racing Commission, said to me: ‘We’ve already made up our mind, it’s been posted and sent to the papers, and we’re not changing anything. If you have a mind to appeal, we will hold your hearing the same day as the Canadian race’.”
‘It’s been posted and sent to the papers’. As though that was all that mattered. Turcotte took his medicine, screwed up his face at the taste, decided not to pursue the matter out of a respect for authority that seems admirable and dated in equal measure.
“We do need someone in authority,” he pondered, to his credit, even as the enormity of the sentence hit him. “You can never imagine the lump I had in my throat when they told me I could not ride Secretariat in his last race. It really hurts.”
Eddie Maple, a most aptly named man for the job, was substituted into the saddle for Big Red’s final flourish. Turcotte had to make do with a last racecourse workout, when 3,000 stood around on a cold and foggy morning to witness Secretariat sizzle through five furlongs in 57⅗s. It would have been yet another track record, had it counted.
It was the ‘zinger’ that trainer Lucien Laurin liked to see. It was the last one there would ever be, and perhaps now Laurin could finally feel a little of the weight lift from his shoulders, a diminutive Atlas beginning a delicious unburdening. At an unguarded moment following Secretariat’s Whitney defeat, he had opened a window on his soul and let something climb out.
“They talk about being a hero, but I tell you, I’ll be glad when Secretariat is retired. I swear to God, I’ll be glad.”
Keeper of the flame
He wouldn’t, not really. But there was always pressure, not just to win, but to embellish the legend at every step. The responsibility of being the keeper of the flame, charged with ensuring that the light that could never go out would never go out, was no sinecure of sunshine and sweet dreams. A little of the power and the glory that Laurin oversaw to his occasional anguish had a profound impact on Tom Cosgrove, who would become Woodbine’s historian.
Cosgrove was working as a groom when Secretariat came to town and looked after one of the colt’s big-race rivals Presidial. They ended up sharing adjoining stalls, and he experienced at first hand the raw and elemental charisma of the red horse.
“I truly felt something,” he told writer Emily Shields. “An aura? A presence? A strength? Something was coming off of that horse, something that I can only describe as strength, but I can’t really describe it at all.”
How Secretariat gave the Canadians something to remember for ever – Emily Shields
Presidial was one of 11 horses taking on the nonpareil over the Marshall Course at Woodbine, a lunatic circuit that started beyond the backstretch and looped around before crossing over the main track and joining the turf oval. None of this second XI was expected to trouble Secretariat, to spoil the final show, but there were one or two old friends in the party.
Big Spruce had run third behind Secretariat in the Man o’War, and the local champion Kennedy Road had chased his tail to no avail in the Marlboro Cup. Kennedy Road was the only rival to start at single-figure odds; Secretariat was a 1-5 shot despite being hung out wide in the 12-post. He would have been 1-5 if they had made him start from the parking lot.
The weather was foul, an icy wind whipping in off Lake Ontario and bringing water with it, although it takes more than weather to deter a Canadian railbird and 35,000 had crammed into the track to witness the last act of the great horse.
The conditions simply enhanced the fin de siecle feel, the electricity of this valedictory moment accentuated by the darkening sky and rain sleeting in sideways. It was a day dressed for drama.
A hiding to nothing
Laurin and Turcotte wrapped up against the elements and walked the track accompanied by owner Penny Chenery, and pronounced it fit for the king. Maple was described as looking ‘ashen’, as well he might, feeling for himself the pressure that Laurin had complained about, on the greatest horse in the world, on a hiding to nothing.
He needn’t have worried. Things had gone wrong for Secretariat before, and they hadn’t all been his fault, but there would be no more mis-steps.
Kennedy Road went out fast under Avelino Gomez and Secretariat, breaking adequately on this occasion, crossed over from his wide path and was soon in pursuit. They looped in off the Marshall Course and over the dirt and back on to the soggy lawn and Kennedy Road had two lengths on Secretariat. Behind them there was nothing, just the dying of the light.
Maple moved him up around the clubhouse turn and into the backstretch where Gomez, hailed by The Blood-Horse as a ‘crafty old fellow’, let Kennedy Road drift out and nudge Secretariat two or three times, like the clinch before the fight starts in earnest.
But it was only something and nothing, and a dozen strides later Maple opened the spigot on Secretariat and he eased past Kennedy Road and away, as swiftly and definitively as he had separated himself from Sham on that hot New York afternoon in June.
That move was the beginning of the very end. “There he goes, there he goes,” called track announcer Daryl Wells. And he was going fast.
Secretariat bucketed around the home turn and into the stretch, widening now, huffing his hot breath into the cold air like a steeplechaser in midwinter, his head haloed by it. He was ten, a dozen lengths clear, the end in sight.
Unwilling to let him go
“Secretariat, ladies and gentlemen, he’s all yours and he’s coming to the wire,” said Wells, and he was all ours for the last time, and the crowd called him home. People, children mostly, ran from the grandstands over the dirt track to be closer to him, to better see him in the gathering gloom, as though unwilling to let him go.
A day of drama as Secretariat delivers the ultimate sign-off – Emily Shields
The only light left in the day came from the radiance of the tote board, and as Secretariat crosse in front of it the TV broadcast showed him flickering in and out of its golden glow in the most eerie, most magical fashion, making a kaleidoscope of shine and shadow as he passed by, dazzling us right to the end.
Maple was easing him now, dialling down the power. He would tell Turcotte that “I’ve never been on a horse like that”. Not many had, or would ever be.
There would be no track record, not this time, the clock eventually showing 2:41⅘s, not even close to the unofficial mark Secretariat had set for a mile and five-eighths when galloping out after the Belmont on that day of myth and legend. His near six-figure share of the purse would set a new US earnings record for a single year of $860,404.
Behind him, somewhere far away in the half-light, out of sight, out of mind, 6½ lengths adrift, Big Spruce moved past Golden Don to take the place. Presidial ran fourth, and his jockey Sandy Hawley didn’t mind a bit.
“It was such an honour to be in the race,” he told Emily Shields. “You’re hoping to win, but you’re cheering for Secretariat too.”
Now there were just 50 yards remaining of a journey that had begun almost 16 months earlier, in the second race at Aqueduct on July 4, 1972, when the debutant Secretariat had finished a messed-around, troubled fourth. The beginning had long ago been relegated to insignificance, and now the end was upon him. What had happened in between will never be forgotten.
Secretariat galloped into the narrow strip of light at the finishing line, a red blur alight and alive for a fraction of a second, imprinting itself on the memory. Then he moved on into the darkness, away from us, and it was over.
• Buy race programmes and assorted memorabilia at the dedicated Secretariat website at secretariat.com
Race 10: ‘He definitely, definitely should not have run in the Woodward’
Race 9: ‘It was a field of champions and he was just toying with them’ – Ron Turcotte marvels
Race 7: ‘A lavishly paid breeze, a three-inch putt, a slam dunk, a gentle volley into an open court’
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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