Secretariat (23 page)

Turcotte was born in Grand Falls, New Brunswick, on July 22, 1941, one of fourteen children supported by a lumberjack in the small community of Davis Mill, in the New Brunswick parish of Drummond. While growing up, he saw his father infrequently. Alfred Turcotte spent many weeks of his summers lumbering in the woods. Ron left school in the eighth grade, to help support the family when their home burned down. He harvested potatoes and went to work as a lumberjack himself. He cut trees and hauled logs behind a team of horses and worked in a lumber mill. When he was eighteen, with a purse of fifty dollars saved, he went to Toronto to look for a job in construction. He was lonely and still looking, in fact, when his Toronto landlord told him he should try riding the runners at Woodbine. So he hitched that ride out of town.

He was extremely powerful, and he learned to use his strength to push and bounce a racehorse through the lane.

So he became known as one of the strongest riders in the game, steady and durable, and he earned early on a reputation for honesty, as a rider who would scrub and shove as hard with a $5000 claimer as with a stakes horse like Riva Ridge. He rode his first winner in 1962, two years later his first stakes winner. In 1965, he won the Preakness Stakes on Tom Rolfe. He rode Northern Dancer, too, and champions Arts and Letters, Fort Marcy, Damascus, Dark Mirage, and Shuvee in the years leading up and down to Riva Ridge. Yet Turcotte remained, despite the wealth and fame his riding brought him, utterly without pretensions. He never forgot that he grew up poor. When he made a name in riding in America, he returned to Canada, married a girl he’d known from childhood—Gaetane Morin—and bought a three-bedroom suburban split level in Valley Stream, Long Island. They had three kids and a Datsun station wagon; he came home at night, and Gae fixed him dinner.

Turcotte had been earning almost $200,000 a year even before he rode Riva Ridge. The horses he rode won $1,904,175 in 1970 and $1,989,306 in 1971. His finest year was 1972, when he was riding both Secretariat and Riva Ridge. His mounts earned $2,780,626, a figure that made him the third leading jockey in America in money won.

Yet through the years, too, he was the object of sharp criticism in the press, and he did not react well to it, growing sensitive and defensive. For months he held personal grudges against writers whom he thought had criticized him unfairly and thoughtlessly, and in one case he actually manhandled a reporter. He seemed to ride without confidence at times, without a sureness in himself, but the sharpest and most persistent criticism of his riding was that he had a way of getting a horse into traffic problems. He had come under especially sharp attack for his rides on Tom Rolfe in the 1965 Kentucky Derby, in which he finished third when many thought he should have won; on Damascus in the 1968 Charles Strub Stakes at Santa Anita, in which he had Damascus bogged down in heavy going on the rail while the inferior Most Host, the winner, was racing in firmer footing outside; and on Riva Ridge in the Everglades.

Lucien told him quietly how much the race meant to them and the colt. “I don’t care how far he wins by,” said Lucien. “I don’t care if he wins by fifteen. And I don’t care if he wins by just a length, just so he does it right. Ride him like you did last year. Give him some time. When you finish, I want you to work out a mile. If he’s not too tired. You’re on him, so you decide. And warm him up real good.”

They were speaking in the walking ring as newsmen gathered around them. A television crewman, wearing headphones, squatted down beside them holding a microphone shaped like a fungo bat. He held it up directly between Lucien and Turcotte. Nearby, Alfred Vanderbilt glanced over and frowned. Undaunted, Lucien and Turcotte swung into French Canadian, as they frequently did when they wanted to talk privately—in public.

“
Use ton propre jugement,
” Lucien said. In English, “Use your very own judgment.” And added, “
Use le pas pour rien.
” That is, “Don’t make excessive or wasteful use of him.”

“Riders, up!” called Lucas Dupps, a paddock judge.

Lucien bent down and grabbed Ron’s left boot, raising him aboard. As Turcotte gathered up the reins, Lucien reminded him, “Don’t forget to warm him up real good, Ronnie. He’s a little muscle tight.”

In front of them, trainer Woody Sedlacek lifted jockey Mike Venezia on Champagne Charlie, a roan son of E. P. Taylor’s Northern Dancer. He had just won the $25,000 Swift Stakes at Aqueduct two weeks before, a six-furlong sprint that was the first in the New York series of races leading to the Triple Crown. Venezia believed his roan horse was improving, and he believed he had a shot to beat Secretariat going seven-eighths. The Swift had been Champagne Charlie’s first race since November, and in it he had beaten Actuality, who had nearly broken a track record at Hialeah in the Hibiscus Stakes on January 20. In the Bay Shore, Actuality was back for more. The horseplayers were not as high on Champagne Charlie as Venezia, sending him off as third choice at $8:60 to $1.00. They were busy making Secretariat the prohibitive choice at $0.20 to $1.00.

As the post parade began, the file of six horses stepped up the ramp and toward the racetrack, and Lucien and Penny and the crowd around them headed for the box seats.

“Mrs. Tweedy, he’s the most beautiful horse I have
ever
seen,” someone said.

“He sure is a grand-lookin’ horse,” said New York Racing Association president Jack Krumpe.

Penny, laughing, stopped at the foot of the stairs rising to the clubhouse, held her hands a foot in front of her chest, and said, huskily, “I keep thinking of him as a large, well-stacked girl.”

Sweep, Jules Schanzer’s nom de plume in the
Daily Racing Form,
didn’t go as far as that, though he liked the red horse, too:

What more can be said for Secretariat after the reams of copy that have followed the Horse of the Year 1972’s doings since his return to training in Florida? The outstanding colt appears to have chosen an ideal spot for his seasonal debut and should enjoy an easy romp over moderate opposition in this renewal of the Bay Shore Stakes.

And so did Charles Hatton, as high as ever on his red horse: “Except for a few paddock provocateurs, nobody can imagine his Bay Shore rivals heading him off, unless they started last night.”

Lucien, climbing the two flights of stairs to the box seat section, passed by trainer Syd Watters, who smiled at him, reached as if to embrace him, and patted him on the arm.

“Good luck, my man,” Watters said. Watters had learned something in his life about luck. Two years ago he was the trainer of the three-year-old Hoist the Flag, the Kentucky Derby and Triple Crown favorite who won the Bay Shore Stakes in record time, then broke a leg before the running of the Gotham Stakes, the third race in the New York series. Hoist the Flag was saved to stand at stud at Claiborne Farm, but Watters never got over the blow. “You get one of those once in a lifetime,” he said. “I don’t think I’ll ever get over it.”

Lucien slipped into a seat. His hands shaking slightly, he raised his binoculars to his eyes. Nearby, Penny and Elizabeth settled into their seats, while on the infield the lights of the tote board flashed and Secretariat held at 1–5. The horses were at the gate. The red horse stepped into Post Position 4, Actuality on his left, and Turcotte could feel his anxiety and eagerness. Hundreds in the crowd of 32,960 were lapping up against the rail along the homestretch, craning necks. It was post time, and starter George Cassidy hit the switch.

They bounded from the gate, legs driving and whipping up the racetrack, hooves and metal plates slipping and splattering, jockeys pumping, goggles down.

Secretariat broke alertly, just as he had done last year, and Turcotte gave him time to collect himself. On his own, the red horse went to work setting his bones in motion. He had not changed in that. He was next to last within the first few jumps out of the slip, taking mud in the chest and face, while up on the lead Close Image charged up on the leaders and went to the front, racing for a daylight lead down the backside. Actuality tracked the pace from the outset. Impecunious lay third, Champagne Charlie near them on the outside. The red horse was just getting with it, through the first sixteenth of a mile, when an accident occurred. It took place unexpectedly, about 100 yards out of the gate, and it nearly ended it all for Secretariat.

Torsion, who had broken badly, sailing in the air, came down racing with Secretariat on the outside. He was racing down the backside when he shied from the stands on his right, moving over and slamming sharply into the red horse. Secretariat grunted, absorbing the blow. For an instant Turcotte thought he might go down. “Thank God he’s built like a bulldozer. He might have slipped and fell.” Secretariat wavered off stride for several jumps, then found himself again, and set out for the far turn in chase of the leader.

Close Image was a length and a half in front, dragging the field through an opening quarter mile in 0:22
1
/
5
. Secretariat, bounding along six lengths behind, was running it in 0:23
2
/
5
. He was moving and acting like the Secretariat of 1972. He had taken a hard shot from Torsion, then shaken him off and picked up the momentum of his stride again. And he was grabbing the bit, too, as he had done the year before, and he was pounding at the racetrack and barreling along almost as heavy-headedly as ever. Yet Ron had decided not to ask him for too much, not to risk riding him as if he were the same Secretariat of the year before. “Not after the syndication, the firing of the splint, the chance of the change between two and three. He was still maturing.”

Turcotte didn’t want the blame if Secretariat was beaten. So racing for the turn, having the choice of going either outside or inside of Champagne Charlie—of saving ground and risking traffic on the rail or taking the high ground and losing lengths, as he would have done last year—Turcotte decided to save the ground. “I didn’t want to run a mile while the others were going only seven-eighths.” He was also looking out for himself, so no one could accuse him of losing the race because he lost too much ground, of asking a $6.08-million racehorse to do too much his first start of his three-year-old year. So he risked the rail, keeping the red horse on the inside of the roan.

“I was protecting my ass,” Ronnie said. And that’s how he almost lost it.

Moving to the inside of Champagne Charlie, racing about ten feet off the gooey rail, he thus made the most serious mistake he ever made on Secretariat, an error that would lead to raised eyebrows and to a recounting of the old accusations that he knew how to put a good horse in a bad spot.

In seconds Turcotte saw his mistake unfold around him, but by then there was nothing he could do about it, for the moment nothing at all. Midway of the turn the colt was rolling, drawing up to three lengths behind Close Image while charging the second quarter in 0:22. He was flying. And Champagne Charlie was moving with him, staying outside of him. Venezia saw he had the red horse in a blind switch—that is, inescapably trapped on the rail—and he was determined not to let him free if he could help it. Turcotte’s dilemma grew clearer, more urgent, as the horses swept around the bend and moved for home. It was reminiscent of the Sanford Stakes, when the colt was faced with a wall of horses.

Turcotte couldn’t drive him through and he couldn’t lean on Champagne Charlie, illegally carrying him out and interfering with him. So Turcotte was on America’s premier racehorse, all dressed up with no place to go.

There was one chance, thought Turcotte, to shake free of the switch. And he thought he would try it.

He could ease Secretariat back and go around Champagne Charlie, losing a few lengths but not too many. So he took the red horse back at the turn. Venezia took back with him.

“Every time I eased back, Venezia eased back with me. It was the best race I ever saw Mike ride. I would have had to sacrifice six lengths to get around him.”

Turning for home, with Close Image having dropped out of it, Actuality was in front on the rail under jockey Bobby Woodhouse, Impecunious was on his right under jockey Jim Moseley. Venezia was outside of them, trying to keep them together in a three-horse wall blocking Secretariat’s path. The red horse, meanwhile, was breathing on Actuality, and Turcotte was hoping for an opening. The crowd knew Secretariat was in trouble, and they were already screaming on their feet as the horses neared the stretch. At the top of the straight, Venezia tried but couldn’t keep Actuality and Impecunious together any longer. His wall was crumbling. “I was trying to keep the hole closed but Impecunious was trying to get out,” said Venezia. “I had been keeping him in till the quarter pole. Then I couldn’t keep him in anymore.”

The three leaders—Actuality, Impecunious, and Champagne Charlie—drove through the upper stretch, heading toward the three-sixteenths pole with 330 yards to run. The breach began to open. Impecunious started to drift away from Actuality, opening a hole between them. Secretariat started to lunge for it, Turcotte pushing and clucking. As the red horse started to drive through, beginning his surge, Woodhouse suddenly reached back and strapped Actuality, left-handed, driving Actuality to the right, closing the breach.

Woodhouse heard Turcotte screaming, “Bobby! Bobby! Bobby! Bobby! Straighten up! Straighten up! Straighten up!”

The breach stayed open briefly. And Secretariat plunged through it near the eighth pole, brushing Impecunious and busting off for the wire 220 yards ahead. Quickly, he opened up three and a half lengths, then raced under the wire, widening the margin to four and a half in a clocking of 1:23
1
/
5
after running free for only one-eighth of a mile.

Up in the box seats, Roger Laurin shouted, excitedly, “He’s too much horse! They can’t stop him! They can’t even stop him with a wall of horses!”

Penny Tweedy looked up and lifted her hands in the air, as if in supplication.

Lucien lit another cigarette, accepting congratulations, beaming, with Penny and Miss Ham standing with the colt in the winner’s circle. Secretariat was blowing hard, his nostrils flared. Suddenly the inquiry sign flashed on the tote, and it sent a mumbling through the crowd. Jim Moseley, Impecunious’s rider, was claiming a foul against Secretariat for interference in the stretch drive. The crowd stayed draped around the winner’s circle, cheering the winner anyway.