05/07/2025
SECRETARIAT
MAKING IT ALL UP
AS HE WENT ALONG
We all followed him to Pimlico for the Preakness two weeks later, and he trained as if he couldnโt get enough of it. He thrived on work and the racetrack routine. Most every afternoon, long after the crowds of visitors had dispersed, Sweat would graze the c**t on a patch of grass outside the shed, then lead him back into his stall and while away the hours doing chores. One afternoon I was folded in a chair outside the c**tโs stall when Secretariat came to the door shaking his head and stretching his neck, curling his upper lip like a camel does. โWhatโs botherinโ you, Red?โ Sweat asked. The groom stepped forward, plucked something off the c**tโs whiskers and blew it in the air. โJust a pigeon feather itchinโ him,โ said Sweat. The feather floated into the palm of my hand. So it ended up in my wallet, along with the $2 mutual ticket that I had on Secretariat to win the Preakness.
In its own way, Secretariatโs performance in the 1 3/16-mile Preakness was even more brilliant than his race in the Derby. He dropped back to last out of the gate, but as the field dashed into the first turn, Turcotte nudged his right rein as subtly as a man adjusting his cuff, and the c**t took off like a flushed deer. The turns at Pimlico are tight, and it had always been considered suicidal to take the first bend too fast, but Secretariat sprinted full-bore around it, and by the time he turned into the back side, he was racing to the lead. Here Turcotte hit the cruise control. Sham gave chase in vain, and Secretariat coasted home to win by 2 ยฝ. The electric timer malfunctioned, and Pimlico eventually settled on 1:54 2/5 as the official time, but two Daily Racing Form clockers caught Secretariat in 1:53 2/5, a track record by three fifths of a second.
I can still see Florio shaking his head in disbelief. He had seen thousands of Pimlico races and dozens of Preaknesses over the years, but never anything like this. โHorses donโt do what he did here today,โ he kept saying. โThey just donโt do that and win.โ
Secretariat wasnโt just winning. He was performing like an original, making it all up as he went along.
And everything was moving so fast, so unexpectedly, that I was having trouble keeping a perspective on it. Not three months before, after less than a year of working as a turf writer, I had started driving to the racetrack to see this one horse. For weeks I was often the only visitor there, and on many afternoons it was just Sweat, the horse and me, in the fine dust with the pregnant stable cat. And then came the Derby and the Preakness, and two weeks later the c**t was on the cover of Time, Sports Illustrated, and Newsweek, and he was a staple of the morning and evening news. Secretariat suddenly transcended being a racehorse and became a cultural phenomenon, a sort of undeclared national holiday from the tortures of Watergate and the Vietnam War.