Fifty-two years ago this week, a good-sized bay mare was heavy in foal. The mare was 18, and there are people who'll tell you an older mare cannot produce a good foal.
Somethingroyal, however, was not your average mare. Already the dam of three stakes winners and a trio of stakes-placed racers, Somethingroyal put a lot into her foals, and the chestnut colt to be born on March 30 was her crowning glory.
The colt yet unborn was a full sibling to one of the mare's previous stakes winners, three-time stakes winner Syrian Sea (Astarita, Selima, and Colleen), and expectations were high for a youngster from an 18-year-old mare and by a 16-year-old stallion by the name of Bold Ruler.
In addition to Syrian Sea, Somethingroyal already had produced Sir Gaylord (by Turn-to) and First Family, by Turn-to's champion son First Landing.
Unlike First Landing, who won 10 of 11 races at two, Sir Gaylord won a half-dozen races, then was third in a quartet that sealed his fate as “one of the best” juveniles after third-place finishes in the Hopeful, Futurity (a neck and a head behind Cyane and Jaipur), Cowdin, and Champagne.
The juvenile season in 1961 had been topsy-turvy, with first one colt, then another, appearing the best. Crimson Satan had taken the championship with a victory in the Garden State Stakes, an extremely valuable end-of-season race that often determined the divisional champion in a manner similar to the contemporary Breeders' Cup Juvenile.
Sir Gaylord, however, matured like a classic colt over the winter. He won each of his four races at three in 1962, defeating Crimson Satan, Ridan, Decidedly, and Jaipur, who won most of the major divisional events in 1962. By Kentucky Derby time, the dark bay was the morning line favorite for the classic at Churchill Downs.
In a half-mile work on the morning before the Derby, the son of Turn-to came up with a hairline fracture of the right front sesamoid and was scratched from the big event. Sir Gaylord never raced again but went to stud at Claiborne Farm. From his second crop, he sired Sir Ivor, winner of the 1968 2,000 Guineas and English Derby, and from his third crop came Habitat, who was the top miler in Europe of 1969. Both became top international sires.
Although closely related, being by Turn-to's son First Landing, First Family was not as good a racer as Sir Gaylord. First Family won four stakes at three and four, including the Gulfstream Park Handicap, which was a Grade 1 race for many years. The colt also had four placings in stakes, including the 1965 Belmont Stakes.
Eight years later, Somethingroyal's most famous offspring won the 1973 Belmont Stakes in record time by 31 lengths to take the first Triple Crown in 25 years, and Secretariat went down in history as one of the greatest Thoroughbreds in the history of the breed.
The Great One was foaled on March 30, 1970, and 50 years ago, in the spring of 1972, the striking chestnut that Penny Chenery labelled her “Wow” horse was a 2-year-old in training who had plenty left to prove. As Timothy T. Capps wrote in his volume on Secretariat, “the steady improvement in his morning workout times came more as a relief … than a revelation.”
The revelations were yet to come, and the flashy colt who raised pulses with his looks alone lost his first start in a very eventful introduction to his sporting career. For the rest of his juvenile season, however, Secretariat conceded lengths to the opposition in the early running, then swept by them later, moving like a god on hooves.
Before long, Secretariat became his dam's fourth stakes winner. Then he developed into her most distinguished racer, and before his career was over, Secretariat had become a legend.
Racing in 1972 and 1973 during the grim days of Watergate and Viet Nam, the glorious golden colt offered a lift to the spirits of racing fans, and then that sense of amazement and exhilaration spread to millions of people who never before had watched a race or made a bet.
Secretariat was a gift to the sport, one that was not wholly squandered. Both the sponsorship of major races began seriously to increase, and the availability of national television coverage for the sport improved and set the stage for the wide visibility of Forego, Ruffian, Seattle Slew, Affirmed, and Alydar, as well as Spectacular Bid.
All this began with the simple foaling of a chestnut colt from a bay mare on a pretty farm in Virginia.
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