The journey of getting to the Retired Racehorse Project’s Thoroughbred Makeover this year has been as unpredictable as the Colorado weather has apparently decided to be. As it was set, May was on par to be a productive month of getting out to clinics and schooling shows as the weather finally seemed like it might cooperate!
Month: June 2023
Ron Turcotte On Secretariat’s Historic 31-Length Belmont Triumph: ‘I Could Hear Them Fading Away’
On June 9, 1973 at Belmont Park, a crowd of 69,138 saw the epitome of athletic greatness on full display in the form of a well-built chestnut thoroughbred named Secretariat, who left his foes with broken hearts and those watching with mouths agape, winning the Belmont Stakes by an unprecedented 31 lengths.
Secretariat's pinnacle moment provided him with a sweep of the Triple Crown, a feat that had not been accomplished in 25 years. What made his Triple Crown run so significant was that he found a different way to impress in each race.
After rallying to win the Kentucky Derby in a record time of 1:59 2/5 while completing each quarter of a mile faster than the previous one, Secretariat showed new dimensions in the Preakness Stakes, making an early move around the first turn en route to victory. In the Belmont Stakes, jockey Ron Turcotte allowed Secretariat to showcase his full potential in a prominent performance likely never to be replicated again.
Known affectionately as “Big Red” due to his chestnut coat, Secretariat's Belmont win is regarded by many as the greatest performance a racehorse has ever displayed. It also is listed as No. 13 on Sports Illustrated's 100 Greatest Moments in Sports History.
For Turcotte, the memory of being the passenger aboard Secretariat is one that has an irreplaceable place in his heart, even 50 years later.
“He was such a magnificent horse,” recollected Turcotte. “He was such a ham, and yet so capable of doing anything on the racetrack. We were good partners, and we never fought each other. He loved to play. He was lovable. It was love at first sight when I first saw him as a baby when he came in from the farm.”
Secretariat was owned and bred by Penny Chenery's Meadow Stable and trained by Lucien Laurin, whose Turcotte-piloted Riva Ridge captured the prior year's Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes. Bred in Virginia, he was by influential sire Bold Ruler, and out of the Princequillo mare Somethingroyal.
Much of what made Secretariat and Turcotte a great combination was how they managed to be on the same page both on and off the racetrack. Turcotte and Secretariat even had their own way of greeting one another.
“Every morning when I walked down the shed row of Lucien's barn, I would take his tongue and shake it like I was shaking someone's hand and say, 'Good morning,'” Turcotte said. “That's how we would greet each other in the morning, he'd stick his tongue out and I'd shake it.”
Turcotte first got acquainted with Secretariat at Hialeah Park in Florida during the winter of 1972, where he made a good impression on the jockey before his racing career began.
“It was just a matter of taking our time with him,” Turcotte said. “When I got off the horse, [Laurin] asked me what I thought and I said, 'Mr. Laurin, if we take our time, take it easy with him and give him the time that he needs, we'll have fun next summer.'”
But they didn't have to wait that long to start having fun with Big Red, whose 2-year-old campaign saw him earn Horse of the Year honors.
He began his 3-year-old year winning the Bay Shore and Gotham at Aqueduct Racetrack before suffering defeat to stablemate Angle Light and future familiar foe Sham when third in the Wood Memorial, which later would be attributed to an abscess in his mouth. The losing effort was seen as a vulnerability to the public eye heading into the Kentucky Derby, but that didn't stop the betting public from making Secretariat the 3-2 favorite.
In the Derby, he broke last of 13 and picked off his competitors one by one to the outside down the backstretch before matching strides with Sham at the head of the lane. It only took light encouragement from Turcotte to get Secretariat in command and draw away to a 2 1/2-length victory over Sham. The record-setting win broke the previous record of 2:00 flat set by Northern Dancer [1964].
Secretariat showed how diverse his gears really were in the Preakness. To the surprise of many, Turcotte made an early move in the first turn of the Preakness, but it wasn't any deterrence to Big Red, who kept Sham at bay in the stretch under little urging.
“By making my move early, I could take control of the race and rate him the way I wanted to and he won the Preakness very easily. I told Lucien after the race that I thought I could have won by a good 10 lengths or even more,” Turcotte said.
Turcotte said putting Secretariat on the front end in the Preakness was good preparation for what he would face three weeks later at Belmont Park.
“The race was just longer and the turns are much bigger on that mile and a half track. It did help making that move around the first turn at Pimlico,” Turcotte said. “I was going to do what I did anyway. I won the Belmont the same way aboard Riva Ridge. I put him on the lead the same way and he galloped the rest of the race. I had my mind made up that I was putting him on the lead. That way, you can control the race better.”
While Secretariat's accolades leading up to the Triple Crown put him in the spotlight of horse racing, his dominant efforts in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness gave him attention on a national scale. With appearances on the cover of Time Magazine, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated, he became a pop culture phenomenon.
No horse had swept all three legs of the Triple Crown since Citation in 1948, but seven horses had won the Derby and Preakness en route to a Belmont Stakes loss. The drought made some racing fans wonder if a Triple Crown sweep was simply out of reach, but Secretariat winning the first two legs in such unorthodox fashion made believers out of most skeptics.
The stage was set for Secretariat's date with destiny as Sham and three others lined up to try and deny Big Red the Triple Crown. The other competitors were previous Kentucky Derby contestants My Gallant [ninth] and Twice a Prince [12th] and newcomer Prvt. Smiles.
Secretariat broke from the inside and maintained position alongside Sham into the first turn as the two separated themselves from the rest of the field. Secretariat put his neck in front passing the chute, and his advantage only increased going down the backstretch. Secretariat would lengthen his margin immensely passing each pole as Pincay, Jr. asked Sham for more run.
Reaching the far turn, track announcer Chic Anderson famously exclaimed, “Secretariat is widening now. He is moving like a tremendous machine!” By the top of the stretch, Secretariat was, in Anderson's words, “in a position that seems impossible to catch”.
“I kept hearing the hoofbeats from the others getting further and further back,” Turcotte said. “I could hear them fading away. He was just so relaxed the whole way that I knew he would run all day. He was a superhorse.”
Finally, Turcotte's curiosity got the best of him.
“I only looked back once around the turn when the announcer said he was 22 lengths in front. I just wanted to see what 22 lengths in front looked like,” Turcotte recalled. “I had to look across the track and that's when I saw the clock turn 1:59 [for 1 1/4 miles] which was faster than what he ran in the Kentucky Derby. The only reason I had turned a little bit was because I was watching the timer and what time it would stop. Every sixteenth of a mile, he was breaking track records all the way throughout the lane.”
Turcotte was neither coaxing Secretariat, nor gearing him down. Big Red ran evenly through the uncontested stretch drive and was met with a grandstand of applauding spectators. He stopped the clock in 2:24, not only breaking the record for 1 1/2 miles, but galloping out 1 5/8 miles in 2:37 3/5, which would have been a record for the distance.
While Turcotte relished allowing Secretariat to flaunt his natural abilities, he admitted to one minor regret.
“I wish I would have taken him back to the end of the grandstand and walked him in front of all the people to get a good look at him. But then, I don't know if it would have been the right thing to do either, making him do more than he had already done,” Turcotte said. “What's so amazing is when I pulled him up, he wasn't breathing too hard. And when I took my saddle off of him, he wasn't even wet. He didn't even break a sweat after what he had just did. It was just amazing.”
Turcotte rode one more race before going back to the barn to celebrate with the rest of the connections, but a swarm of fans waiting by his car kept him another hour or two.
“They were all waiting to have their tickets signed. I signed at least one that was about $200, and I signed a few that were $100,” Turcotte said. “I'd hate to think how many I signed. If my cousin from Ottawa hadn't pulled me out of there, I would have been signing tickets all night.
“Then, I stopped at the barn and had a little wine there,” Turcotte continued. “The first thing I did was look at the horse, made sure he was fine and talked to him a little bit. I went into the office, and they were all there celebrating. There were people telling their stories about the day and all that.”
Secretariat's career concluded with two victories on grass. He broke another track record over Belmont's turf course for 1 1/2 miles when capturing the Man o' War in a final time of 2:24.40 before going out a winner in the Canadian International at Woodbine.
As strange as it may sound, Secretariat was a far better horse during his post-Triple Crown days, according to Turcotte.
“Secretariat really matured when I was getting him ready for the Man o' War,” Turcotte recalled. “There was a big difference in him. I couldn't imagine what kind of horse he would have been as a 4 or 5-year-old. There's no telling.”
Secretariat retired to Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky, which also was once the breeding grounds of his sire Bold Ruler. Turcotte said he would go visit Big Red every time he rode in Kentucky.
“I can tell you that, yes, he remembered me,” Turcotte said. “I know one thing, I whistled at him, and I think he recognized my voice. He came straight over to me and stuck his tongue out, just like old times.”
The post Ron Turcotte On Secretariat’s Historic 31-Length Belmont Triumph: ‘I Could Hear Them Fading Away’ appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
Making Claims: Let’s Talk About That CNN Interview With Dr. Mick Peterson
In “Making Claims,” Paulick Report bloodstock editor Joe Nevills shares his opinions on the Thoroughbred industry from the breeding and sales arenas to the racing world and beyond.
National coverage outside of the three Triple Crown weekends has been coveted by horse racing for as long as I've been following the sport, but what we've seen over the past weekend is likely not what anyone had in mind.
Mainstream attention to equine safety at Churchill Downs ramped up in intensity in the days leading up to the Kentucky Derby, and once that crack in the armor was established at one of the sport's flagship tracks, every ensuing death became an easy story for a variety of outlets to write. As the number went up, so too did the public pressure to act upon the situation.
If and when Churchill Downs Inc. decided to do something significant with its ongoing meet, it was going to be national news, and that's exactly what happened last Friday when the company moved the remainder of its spring meet in Louisville to Ellis Park.
In the long-term, the move to sleepier Henderson, Ky., far-flung from the spotlight of a metropolitan area, should cool things down a bit. In the short-term, the relocation would mean one last trip through the media cycle (for now, at least).
One piece of that puzzle was an appearance by Dr. Mick Peterson, director of the University of Kentucky's Racetrack Safety Program, speaking to anchor Jim Acosta on CNN on Saturday. Let's take a look at a clip from that, and the full text from the interview can be read here.
“What do you say to folks who think this is just an inhumane sport…?” @Acosta asked the Director of Racetrack Safety @universityofky, He said, “This sport needs to get better.” #ChurchillDowns suspended all horse racing after 12 horses died
In the past month. pic.twitter.com/jNPXpJLJAV— Rebecca Aguilar (@RebeccaAguilar) June 4, 2023
Taking an informal straw poll of social media in the aftermath, I saw a fair bit of reactions dragging Dr. Peterson's responses, including some from people within the Thoroughbred industry. Those are the ones I found particularly disheartening.
If Dr. Peterson went out there with the hard-line stance of, “This is fine. Everything is fine,” he'd have been perpetuating the narrative that we truly don't care about the equine injuries and deaths that have occurred. That perceived refusal to address safety issues is part of what has gotten us into this public relations mess in the first place.
Trying to deny a problem, or discredit rational discussion on how to improve safety only furthers the “they don't care” argument.
On the other side of the coin, if Dr. Peterson, an expert in racetrack safety, went on CNN and said, “Yes, horse racing is inhumane,” he'd have signed the industry's death warrant on live television, giving anyone looking to kill a racetrack the exact clip they'd need to further their cause. Certainly, he knew that.
When I watched the interview, I noticed Dr. Peterson took his time with his answers, especially when Acosta dangled a pitfall-laden question like, “What do you say to people who think horse racing is an inhumane sport? Where it's gotten to the point where it's out of control?”
I think he realized the weight of his answers, given the medium and audience, and he chose his words carefully. It takes only seconds for words said out loud to appear on a chyron below your face on a news program, and he answered questions in a way that his words wouldn't get away from him. From the perspective of minimizing harm to horse racing's social license to operate, the interview couldn't have gone much better.
This is not a time for saber-rattling. If we only do that, we will lose, and we will eventually die. It's concerning how many people in this industry openly fail to acknowledge this. The situation with Churchill Downs has further displayed that the horse racing industry has lost control of its own narrative in the public forum – whether the people within it believe that to be true or not.
This is a time for making public, data-backed plans to improve, showing our work every step of the way, and following through on them. If we can do it without significant blocs of the industry trying to kick, scream, and sue their way out of it (further perpetuating the “they don't care about equine safety” argument), all the better. That's how we regain the narrative.
Support our journalism
If you appreciate our work, you can support us by subscribing to our Patreon stream. Learn more.Take note that I said nothing about capitulation. I get the impression a lot of the resistance against measures to make racing safer are rooted at least somewhat in a fear of caving to the anti-racing activists, who will never be satisfied. I get that. That's not what I want, either.
Industry-linked scientists aren't activists. Young people in racing who are afraid there might not be a major U.S. Thoroughbred industry for them in 20 years (myself included) aren't activists. There are trustworthy people with a vested interest in the future of the industry who have fact-based ideas to keep the business alive. Don't push them away.
Most voters aren't activists, but they want to see racing do better with safety. Most congresspeople aren't activists, but they're going to legislate where the votes and lobbying dollars guide them. There are people who know nothing about horse racing whose votes could one day save the industry or push it into oblivion. Bring the front row seat to them. The “if the naysayers only came to the backstretch and saw how well the horses are treated” mentality is as hollow as it is impractical. Hearts and votes are won by outreach, not invitation.
I'm of the mind that there is a path forward between “concede nothing” and “cave to the activists.” If we lean too far either way, we're done for. Finding that balance, and acting upon it with earnestness, is the key to survival.
I wish I knew what the answer was to achieving that balance, but right now, we're at a point where getting a little attention from cable news is potentially life or death for the business as we know it.
We're nowhere close to balance, and there are too many people proudly tipping the scale toward “concede nothing” to make me confident that we'll find it anytime soon. Dr. Peterson was correct: The sport needs to get better. But first, its population must want to get better.
The post Making Claims: Let’s Talk About That CNN Interview With Dr. Mick Peterson appeared first on Horse Racing News | Paulick Report.
2023 Triple Crown Prospect Profiles: Why Arcangelo Can Win the Belmont Stakes
Welcome to 2023 Triple Crown Prospect Profiles – updated after the first jewel of the Triple Crown from the previous title of Kentucky Derby Hopeful Snapshots – where we’ll take a look each week at a recent winner on the Triple Crown trail.
