Secretariat (16 page)

Leaving the backstretch and heading into the far turn, Ron let out a notch, chirping to the colt, and he closed ground quickly. His neck outstretched, still pounding heavy-headedly, his legs smashing at the slop, Secretariat banked around the turn for the leaders. Rocket Pocket was tiring through his third quarter in 0:25
3
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, and Secretariat was just three lengths behind him. They were turning into the stretch. Rocket Pocket quit suddenly. Stop the Music lay third coming to the lane, and Turcotte still had not let his red horse loose. He was a length astern of Stop the Music, who was closing toward the lead. Then Ron chirped to him, let out a notch of line, and felt the colt reach out, blowing past Rotz and Stop the Music with a tremendous rush. He opened one, then two lengths, then three through the lane, five as they reached the eighth pole. Turcotte had stopped clucking by then and was taking the colt in hand as the youngster stretched his lead to six lengths nearing the sixteenth pole, to seven passing it, and then to eight as he raced for the wire. It was his easiest victory so far, and Turcotte would believe later it was his finest performance as a two-year-old. The colt lagged far behind early, but Ron sensed he could have made the lead when he wanted to make it, no rush—untouched by the whip, winning easily in hand, Secretariat raced the mile and a sixteenth in 1:42
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, just a fifth off the Laurel track record, and won $83,395.

Riva Ridge ran progressively worse. He was shipped to Laurel for the $150,000 Washington, D.C., International Stakes on November 11, over Laurel’s soft turf course, so-called, at one and one-half miles. He went to the lead under Velasquez and promptly bobbled in a hole going into the backstretch, almost falling. But that only hastened what already appeared inevitable that afternoon. He finished sixth, some thirty-eight lengths behind Droll Role. Riva Ridge was returned to The Meadow not long after the Washington fiasco, earning a long rest but no titles that year, and kept from the races for six months.

Secretariat, in spite of the growth of a small splint on one foreleg—probably the effect of hard pounding on hard racetracks—was shipped off to Garden State for the $298,665 Garden State Stakes at a mile and a sixteenth. Splints, which can be painful, are small, round, bony growths that occur between the splint and cannon bones. They are not unusual in young horses, and Secretariat’s was extremely small, giving no one any special concern. The red horse appeared to have the race at his mercy, with $179,199 going to the winner, and the treatment could certainly wait for that, for when the colt began his long winter rest.

Not all went smoothly at Garden State Park. Lucien, at his best when forced to improvise, was at his best again. He put Ron’s brother, Rudy, on Secretariat for a three-quarter-mile workout. Lucien wanted the colt to run the last part of it, to finish out in about 1:15. He was nowhere close. Fearing Secretariat might work too fast, Rudy broke him off cautiously, taking a strong hold of him. Secretariat took himself back, almost to a gallop, and finished out the work about four seconds too slow and not nearly sharp enough.

Lucien arranged for Ron to be in Garden State to work the red horse seven-eighths of a mile just four days later. Thus Lucien improvised. Lucien had his champion walk two days, gallop two more, and on the Wednesday before the Saturday, he wound him up tighter and Secretariat woke up ticking on Saturday.

Angle Light joined Secretariat in a race for the third time that year, and the customers sent them off at 1–10 against four others. Both were ready. Angle Light had worked sharply for the race, actually beating Secretariat in their final half-mile drill, just as he had been doing, off and on, since the winter past. Rudy Turcotte was on him in the Garden State, and when the gates sprang open he let the youngster breathe on the pacesetting Piamem from the outset.

The two ran head and head through a casual first quarter at 0:24
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, relaxing around the first turn. Ron Turcotte, meanwhile, was taking ahold of Secretariat through a galloping first-quarter in 0:26
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, trotting-horse time, when it dawned on him that he might have blown the race already. He thought he had taken Secretariat too far back behind too slow a pace, and began to hope he could gain on speed horses, like Angle Light, whose edges had not been dulled by a quick opener. Secretariat was ten lengths behind at the end of that trotting-horse quarter, but Ron was chirping and feeling him pick up speed through the second 440 yards. He dashed through it in 0:23, a move that left him eight lengths behind Angle Light, who was also accelerating his pace. Angle Light pressured Piamem as the two went the half in 0:47
2
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. The pace was realistic now. Holding the tempo, sustaining his speed, Secretariat moved past Step Nicely and Knightly Dawn down the backside.

Going into and around the turn, Secretariat never eased off, shaving the lead to seven lengths, then to six, five, four, and finally to three as he raced through the third quarter in 0:23
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. Running past a tiring Piamem, Secretariat was in pursuit of Angle Light. He closed ground on the Whittaker colt, passing Impecunious near the turn for home and setting out for him. Angle Light was leading by three at the turn. Ron, moving on the outside, cut into that lead quickly as they ran down the lane. He ranged alongside the bay.

Ronnie was on the outside, brother Rudy on the rail.

“All right, brother, I’ve got the other end here,” yelled Rudy. “I’ve got second.”

Ronnie went on with his horse.

Secretariat was in front by a length and a half with 220 yards to run, leaving Angle Light to slug it out for second with Step Nicely. The red horse won it finally by three and a half. Angle Light held on to second, worth $59,733 to Whittaker, in what was the sharpest race of his two-year-old year. So Penny worried about Angle Light, respected and feared him in the fall, while Lucien told her not to worry about him. Angle Light, after all, was cheap speed.

Thus for Secretariat it ended in a romp in Cherry Hill, New Jersey, of all places, nine months after Gold Bag beat him by fifteen at Hialeah, four months after he broke his maiden, two months after he divided horses in the Sanford Stakes and looped them in the Hopeful.

He won seven of nine races for the record, and began it all nearly on his knees at Aqueduct, no way to get involved in a 1210-yard sprint in a twelve-horse stampede. He crossed the finish line first in eight of the nine, losing one officially, by Order of the Stewards, and no doubt he would have won it if he hadn’t intimidated Stop the Music. He won $456,404, winning from six furlongs to a mile and a sixteenth. He relished the mud at Laurel, the fast tracks at Belmont Park, Aqueduct, Saratoga, and Garden State. It was a tour de force, and he emerged from it the strong winter book favorite to win the mile-and-a-quarter Kentucky Derby May 5, even though, by all odds, he wasn’t bred to run so far so soon. No son of Bold Ruler ever had, even with Princequillo holding up the bottom side.

Secretariat was voted America’s 1972 Horse of the Year in the combined poll of members of the National Turfwriters Association, staff members of the
Daily Racing Form
, and a board of selection from the Thoroughbred Racing Associations. Since the divisional champions and horses of the year were first chosen in 1936, Vanderbilt’s Native Dancer and Bull Hancock’s Moccasin were the only two-year-olds ever voted Horse of the Year, both in the TRA polls. The honor usually goes to an older horse, as the Heisman Trophy goes to a running back.

For the Meadow Stable it had been a million-dollar year, the first in its history, despite Riva Ridge’s coming down with the droops. Upper Case, before he tailed off and Penny sold him for $750,000, won $234,270. Riva Ridge won $395,632. And a third Meadow three-year-old, Quill Gordon, won $50,226. The four horses won a total of $1,136,532.

Lucien Laurin received his 10 percent not only of purses but of the sales, and for the second straight year he would go to Florida with the two-year-old champion in his barn, the Derby favorite.

Penny spent December in Vail, and it was a cheerful Christmas. “Everything was looking up.” She gave Jack a hand-knitted sweater, he gave her a piece of jewelry, gold and sapphire. Her father had lived through the year, as she had wished he would, and the colt had grown enormously in value, as she thought he would. And now she could race him his three-year-old year. Events were still breaking for The Meadow.

Ron Turcotte returned home to New Brunswick, Canada, December 6, to watch his father butchering moose and venison in a store in Grand Falls, to Christmas lunch at his parents’ home in town, to Christmas dinner with his wife and three children at her parents’ home six miles outside town, in the parish of Drummond, then out to the wilds on his jet black snowmobile, visiting hunters’ camps deep in the woods and talking to the old French trappers.

Secretariat was shipped to Florida November 27 and treated for the splint at Hialeah on December 9. Dr. Mark Gerard, Lucien’s veterinarian, fired the bony growth—inserting hot points into it—purposely causing acute inflammation to quicken the healing process. The colt would walk for two weeks, then jog five or ten minutes from December 24 through 26, and start galloping on the racetrack again December 27 under Jimmy Gaffney, whose wife Mary had been asking him to quit. They had both been disturbed by the size of the yearly bonus Lucien had given him, $500 for galloping a horse that won almost $500,000, and she sensed inside that nothing good could come of Jimmy’s staying there. But he refused to quit. “I’m going to go all the way with him,” he told her. “I’m going to retire on the winner.”

The march of things went on, leaving footnotes to a larger past behind.

Imperatrice died on October 25, the Thursday before Secretariat’s Laurel Futurity. She was buried near Hildene and Hill Prince.

In November, as a result of Bull’s death, there was a dispersal sale of his racehorses at Belmont Park. There, New York construction and real estate magnate Sigmund Sommer, of Great Neck, Long Island, brought Bull’s promising if lightly raced two-year-old colt, Sham—a son of Pretense from Princequillo’s daughter Sequoia—for $200,000. Sham was still a maiden at the time.

After finishing third to Angle Light August 28, beaten seven and three-quarters lengths, Sham finished second in his next start September 13, the day before Bull died in Tennessee. Ten days later, the rangy bay raced a flat mile at Belmont Park, and he just got nipped, coming to the eighth pole a length in front and missing by a head for all of it. That was his last race before the dispersal. After it, Sham came under the artful watch of trainer Frank (Pancho) Martin, Sigmund and Viola Sommer’s private trainer. Martin was impetuous, emotional, moody, and brilliant, speaking with a pound of gravel in his voice, his English cracked up in the magnificent grinder of his Cuban accent.

On December 9 at Aqueduct, for Sham’s fourth start, Pancho sent him a flat mile against maidens, and he won by six. On New Year’s Day, at Santa Anita Park in California, he won by fifteen.

Chapter 17

On the evening of January 3, 1973, Jack Tweedy was working late at home in Laurel Hollow, counseling a neighbor who was having legal problems, when Penny and their son, John, drove up.

It was almost ten-thirty. They had driven from Vail to Denver earlier in the day, then flown to New York and then driven along the North Shore toward Oyster Bay. Penny was tired as she walked into the kitchen. Jack met her there to tell her that her father had died.

She showed no visible emotion and even some relief. Yet months later Penny would remember her feelings of resentment at the presence of that neighbor seeking legal counsel in her house—at that hour and that time in her life.

She unpacked the car, brought in the luggage, and called Elizabeth Ham.

The two women made plans that evening to go to The Meadow—Chris would be buried in Virginia, next to his mother and father—and decided to meet in New Rochelle in the morning to pick out the casket, a simple mahogany one without brass.

In the hollow of the chapel of Saint James the Less Episcopal Church in Ashland, Virginia, the Reverend H. Carlton Fox conducted services before the mourners—horsemen like Seth Hancock and William Haggin Perry, Howard Gentry and Meredith Bailes, whose own father Bob had just died.

The service lasted almost half an hour, and at the close the church doors swung wide open to the snowstorm blowing fitfully outside. The procession edged its way the three blocks to Woodland Cemetery. Lucien was there, and so was Chris Chenery’s former trainer, Casey Hayes. They walked bareheaded through the storm and Penny thought that, because they’d flown up from Florida, they must have forgotten to bring their hats.

The friends and family collected in the big house on the hill, with fires crackling in the two fireplaces in the living room, with pink-colored walls and hunting lithographs and a Gainsborough called
The Watering Place,
a Duncan Phyfe dining table, Chippendale chairs. In the dining room, above a carved mantel and a fireplace, hung a full-length portrait of Helen Bates Chenery. She was dressed in blue and wearing a string of pearls, her hands resting gently on her lap. She was a handsome woman, and she was looking toward the front door. In the living room hung a large portrait of Chris Chenery, done in 1946. He wore riding breeches, held a whip, and sported a vest and tie. Down the staircase was the trophy room, its cabinet filled with rows of golden cups and vases etched with scrolls, of silver trays and shining plates and bowls, a room embracing a hundred winner’s circle scenes, of blue and white silks billowing on the turn, of bedlam and champagne. Chris Chenery had built this room, a testament to his youthful dreams, and his mares had furnished it.

Stomping their feet inside, the guests entered a festive, cheerful reception following the services, with drinks and a lavish buffet of sliced turkey, Virginia ham and beaten biscuits, cheese and salad.

Throughout the day, Penny didn’t dwell on thoughts about the future of the horses and the farm. But by five o’clock in the afternoon, most of the guests had left the manor house at The Meadow. Now there would be time to deal with questions raised by Chenery’s death and the disposition of his estate. There would be time to have meetings with consultants and accountants, meetings with family members and beneficiaries, meetings with representatives of the estate. And there would be time to make the big decisions on the sale of the bloodstock.

Penny knew that the estate of C. T. Chenery would have to sell some of the horses to pay inheritance taxes amounting to several million dollars. The question was, which horses? She knew that Riva Ridge’s value had declined through his last five races—each race was a desperate, lurching attempt to regain for him his lost prestige—and she knew that he was nowhere near his peak, that he was capable of running as well as he’d already run. It was no time to sell him. There were the mares on the farm, too, the mares that build such places as this, and the crops of yearlings and two-year-olds and the upcoming foals of 1973. There were eighty Meadow horses in all, and some of them would have to be sold to save the farm as well as the others on it, eighty of them including Secretariat. He remained the single most valuable asset.

Soon after the funeral, the search for options began. Family counsel John Fager contacted the house of Fasig-Tipton in New York, the thoroughbred auctioneers, consultants, appraisers, and bloodstock agents, and retained their services for the estate.

Humphey Finney and his son John of Fasig-Tipton agreed to work for the Chenery estate as marketing consultants and appraisers of the bloodstock, and they got immediately down to the business of it. Before the end of the month, in fact, a meeting in Los Angeles had been arranged between the firm and members of the estate. The time and place were convenient for all parties.

So, on Saturday morning, January 27, in Fasig-Tipton’s suite of rooms on the seventeenth floor of the Century Plaza Hotel, the Finneys sat down with John Fager and Penny and Elizabeth Ham to talk about the value of the horses, courses of action open to them, and questions bearing on the future of the Meadow Stud and Stable. In a cordial but businesslike atmosphere, the central problem surfaced, and Finney posed it based on his assumption that the death duties would have to be paid in the 70 percent tax bracket. “The problem was how to use the horses to liquidate the inheritance tax problem, and basically I told them that what they had to do was sell $10 million worth of bloodstock to protect $3 million.”

He remembered feeling relieved that Penny and Elizabeth were opposed to complete dispersal. In recent years there had been the dispersal sales of George D. Widener, William S. Du Pont, and Fletcher Jones, and in each of them a number of prized mares were bought by foreign breeders, including the Japanese, who had become especially bullish on the world bloodstock market. With complete dispersal rejected, the point of the meeting centered on alternative ways of raising cash for taxes.

The conversation dwelled on the sale of the two half brothers to Secretariat and Riva Ridge. They had just turned two years old on January 1, the official birthday of all thoroughbreds. One was Capital Asset, the colt Somethingroyal was carrying when Secretariat was weaned, and the other was Capito, a son of Riva Ridge’s dam, Iberia. Capital Asset was by First Landing, Capito a son of Sir Gaylord. They also talked about the value of other individuals—the broodmare Barranca, a daughter of Sir Gaylord and Iberia; the filly Long Stemmed Rose, by Bold Ruler’s son Jacinto out of First Flush; and Madrid, the bay horse who was born the same year as Secretariat. The Meadow eventually did sell them—Barranca for $100,000 and Long Stemmed Rose for $74,000, Madrid for much less.

They talked further about selling the yearling colts while keeping the yearling fillies for breeding stock, and in fact they nominated the colts for the Saratoga yearling sales scheduled for August by Fasig-Tipton. And, too, they discussed the possibility of selling the unborn foals of 1973 in the weanling sales that fall. For a time, the meeting pivoted on the idea of selling most of the stock in a sale while holding especially valuable broodmares back.

“How much do you get hurt by holding back certain individuals?” Penny asked John Finney.

She wanted to consider selling most of the Meadow bloodstock while, at the same time, keeping seven of the Meadow’s most prized and valuable mares, including Conversation Piece, Bold Matron, Bold Experience, Syrian Sea, and Gay Matelda, all beautifully bred mares. Finney advised her that potential buyers would look askance at the mares chosen for sale, wondering why
they
were not retained with the seven others, wondering what was wrong with
them.

They also talked of Secretariat and Riva Ridge. The two were the most responsible for inflating the worth of the estate and hence the taxes on it, so they were the most eligible for the block. Finney laid out the financial profiles of each, first outlining Riva Ridge’s decline in value, to his present worth, then his potential future. Everyone listened as Finney set forth his findings:

“Riva Ridge is now worth about $2.5 million. After the Belmont Stakes he was worth about $4 million. Because he was a champion two-year-old and because he won the Derby and the Belmont Stakes—even if he never wins another race as a four-year-old, even if he falls flat on his face this year—he’ll never be worth less than $2 million. So you are looking at a downside potential of a half million dollars. Now, if he comes back and shows good form as a four-year-old, which we have every reason to believe he’ll do, he could go back to $4 million, maybe $4.5 million. So he has a downside potential of a half million and an upside potential of $2 million.”

Since his potential for growth in value was so much greater than his potential for decline—he had already reached ground water after losing five races—and since there was no reason to suggest he would not come back after a rest, Finney recommended that they keep Riva Ridge until he had the chance to make his comeback at the races. Elizabeth Ham and John Fager sat taking notes through the discussions.

“Right now,” Finney told them, “Secretariat has a value of between $5 million and $7 million. He is the Horse of the Year, he’s expected to win the Triple Crown, and if he wins the Triple Crown his value will go up to perhaps $8 million. Now, if he doesn’t train—and many Bold Rulers have failed to train for their three-year-old season—if he fails to train, if he falls on his face, his value will drop from between $5 million and $7 million to $3 million very quickly.”

“How quickly?” he was asked.

“Like that,” he said, snapping his fingers. “So he has a $3 million downside potential, maybe a $4 million downside potential, from $5 million or $7 million to $3 million. And he’s got a possible $2 million upside potential if he does
only
what he is supposed to do, which is to win the Triple Crown. So you’re gambling with a $3 million differential, which you have in the pocket right now, if he does turn out to be a top three-year-old; and this against $2 million if he carries on and performs as expected.”

That posed a central question. Penny Tweedy didn’t believe Secretariat would win the Triple Crown, didn’t think he’d perform as expected, believed he had too much to overcome in terms of pedigree and style of running. She knew how so many Bold Rulers had failed to train at the age of three and, of all the Bold Rulers of promise, not a single one had trained to win the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, or Belmont stakes. So why should there now be an exception to this rule, a Bold Ruler who would win all three at that? So she feared he might trip and fall on his pedigree, so to speak, that he might suffer from the rheumatism running in his male line. But more than all these things, more than the pedigree and the streak of rheumatism in the line, Penny feared he might break down—fracture a sesamoid bone, a little pivot bone in the ankle, or chip a knee. This fear traced to the style of running that he had: he ran hard and pounded the ground hard.

Secretariat was nothing like the airy, floating Riva Ridge, who skipped across the ground. Secretariat struck it like a hammer, running with his thick neck stuck out and battering along heavy-headedly. She could not envision him running a mile and a half in the Belmont Stakes, not the way he ran.

John Finney recommended that they syndicate Secretariat. At one point, Penny sought to explore the idea of standing Secretariat at stud in Virginia and of actually putting the syndicate together by herself. She wanted to consider sending him to stud at The Meadow because, she believed, his presence there would ensure the continuance of the farm. The Meadow needed a young stallion. Sir Gaylord, who was sent to the stud at Claiborne Farm, had been leased to stand in Europe. First Landing, then seventeen years old, was beyond his prime.

“You’ll lose some of your top investors,” John cautioned her, adding that it could be done but that the horse’s career would have to be supervised by a management committee, a panel of experienced breeders.

“In fact,” he said, “you are taking a chance on the horse’s career down the road if he isn’t an unqualified success. Kentucky breeders will desert him more quickly if he isn’t an instant success. They wouldn’t do that if he were standing in Kentucky.”

There were financial advantages in her handling the syndication, perhaps the chief of which was that the Chenery estate would not have to give away four free stud services a year to the farm syndicating the colt—the usual fee. In effect, The Meadow would get the shares. But that raised problems, too. Penny thought that standing Secretariat at The Meadow might put too much of a strain on the farm workers. They would be forced to handle a parade of extremely high quality mares, higher in quality than ever visited the court of First Landing, Tillman, or Bryan G. She was concerned that this might put too much pressure on Howard Gentry, who was having trouble with his eyesight.

The meeting between Fasig-Tipton and the estate of C. T. Chenery lasted perhaps two hours, and it was convened on a morning when Secretariat galloped casually at Hialeah and just three days after he worked a brisk half mile in 0:47
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, galloping out an extra eighth in 0:13
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. Three days after the meeting the colt worked a half mile in 0:49, and on February 3, he went an easy five-eighths in 1:01
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. The clockers noted in the
Daily Racing Form
the next day: “Secretariat was only breezing.” Lucien turned the screws then. With Ron on top, the colt raced through five furlongs in 0:58
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, ripping off the first three-eighths in 0:34
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, the next eighth in 0:12 for a half mile in 0:46
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, and the last eighth in 0:12
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. It was one of the fastest moves of the day.

On these winter mornings at Hialeah, Turcotte began to notice something different about Secretariat, something barely detectable at first but which grew increasingly apparent to him as time went on.