"Secretariat" - Bill Nack

her to write us a note there'll be a notepad and pens on a table as you exit the building your attendance and feedback help shape future program before we begin tonight I'd like to remind you to please turn off your cellphone's after the interview we will have some time for audience questions and answers if you have a question please raise your hand and a student helper with a microphone will come to you please ask just one brief question and now I'd like to introduce you to a director of the Dolans to Bill Lacey thank you very much Joe thanks to all of you for coming out on a Sunday afternoon we're delighted to see everybody here for what is going to be a very exciting and interesting program it's part of our leadership and globalization and sports series that we created a few years ago so we could do programs like this which are a little bit outside our normal scope of program before I bring our introducer up though I wanted to tell all of you about a couple things one we do have our guest book available on sale by the kayuu bookstore you can pick that up in the back Lisa wave Lisa okay Lisa I'd be delighted to sell you one copy two copies or even three copies makes great Christmas presence that's only a few months away so you can start planning right away and also also Bill will be signing copies of books immediately after and also we will have a reception that is open to the public immediately after our program today in the Symons media room we actually are kind of adopting a little bit of a Kentucky Derby theme we will be serving mint juleps if you're old enough so take advantage of that and thank you all for coming out one of the great things about the Dole Institute is that we get so much incredible help from so many different people on campus and one of our good friends here at the Dole Institute is Professor Burdette Loomis who all of you know teaches in the political science department and Burdette is not only an expert on on politics but he happens to know a lot of other people as well and he approached me pause that Byrd maybe two years ago and had this idea for this program and it took us a little while to put it together and make it happen but we're very excited that we were able to get it done so please welcome a good friend of the Dole Institute professor political science Burdette Loomis thanks very much bill and I just got right but right back at you with Bill Macey it's it's always a pleasure to work with him he's really receptive to ideas of one sort or the other and he helped facilitate this in his usual easy away it also like to give a little shout out to Frank and Janie Kerry who that's the original connection to Bill nack and probably the reason that that he is here um in 1954 I received a present from my father it was a subscription to a new magazine not been tried a weekly sports magazine called Sports Illustrated 1954 I am a charter subscriber and I was hooked immediately it was it was just a revelation I think in many ways it was a revelation in the magazine business and so for the rest of my life I've looked forward to Thursday's the day that Sports Illustrated usually arrives it's always been known for the quality of its writing and the list of its best writers are a who's who of nonfiction and that to say nothing of the superb photography so it's my great personal pleasure to introduce one of those writers who have made my Thursday is so enjoyable for so many years this afternoon's guest bill nack now stands among the very best of Sports Illustrated writers and indeed of nonfiction writers in the country today especially making his mark on the work on horse racing and boxing to sports and decline over the last 50 years but rich in drama and personality aside from the Great's Secretariat and superb if tragic filly ruffian bill is written on Mike Tyson Rubin hurricane Carter and a wholly different kind of warrior but no less interesting chess master Bobby Fischer as a fan of great narratives I'm in awe of Bill's ability to find just the right way into his characters minds and actions the story unfolds as if it were there all the time of course it wasn't rather bill has found the thread and then constructed the story Bill's career is long distinguished from his days at Newsday to Sports Illustrated to the writing of numerous books to his various roles in bringing Secretariat to the screen for many of us the Secretariat story is familiar and romantic yet like any great story it gets better with retelling and for those of you with just passing familiarity with this great horse you're in for a treat indeed this afternoon we're all in for a treat as a remarkable storyteller gets to talk about an even more remarkable athlete please welcome Bill nack thank you very much I am here because of Janie and Frank Carrie but also it really all started a kind of a remarkable thing that I found out there's a five-minute window in my life through which I crawled to literary freedom in 1968 I got back from Vietnam I was a soldier over there work for general Westmoreland in the infantry and when I got back I came to work at Newsday Bill Moyers was the publisher and a wonderful editor there named David laventhol and at the time between like 1968 to 1970 I covered town government Islip town eventually covered County government and I very slowly migrated over to invite environmental stuff and what I was in 1971 was really a sewer writer Long Island Long Island was building a Suffolk County was building a very large sewer system and so I was enlisted to find out as much as I could about tertiary treatment phosphorus removal nitrogen removal etcetera I can still today hold dinner parties enthrall the stories about activated sludge and things like that but I was not happy doing that I didn't find any kind of a literary future and I really loved writing and I loved reading and I couldn't imagine F scott Fitzgerald writing about it and he was my my literary mentor and so uh but when I was a kid I took up horse racing as a hobby I found the lure of it the Damon Runyon aspect of it to be completely compelling and really fell in love with a horse named swaps who won the Kentucky Derby in 1955 in fact he so swept me away that I am I went and I memorized all of the Kentucky Derby winners from 1875 the first running to the then present which was 1955 and I just knew them by heart and I just I'd love their names the way they rolled off the tongue and at at the Newsday Christmas party by the way I went on to become a groom hotwalker I worked at the racetrack I rubbed horses I took one to the post I took one horse racehorse to the post in my life as a groom her name was queen of turf and she won and then I went off to college and I became a journalist in college I was the editor of the daily Alana the sports editor under Roger Ebert and really got into it but I never lost my love of horse racing and during the summer I'd go to the racetrack with my father most boys bonded with their dad over baseball games I did not do that I did with at the racetrack I cannot go to a racetrack today and smell a cigar without thinking of my father and so anyway I got up to the there was a Christmas party at Newsday in 1971 and at the urging of my colleagues who knew my love of horse racing everybody was pretty well into the eggnog they said bill get up and recite all those Derby winners so I think I'm the only person ever involved in a newspaper whoever did this but I got up on the desk in the middle of the city room and I started out Aristides vagrant baden-baden day star-lord murphy Fonzo hindu a polar Leonidas Buchanan Joe cotton Ben Ali Montrose Macbeth Spokane Riley Kingman Ezra Lookout shanty Alma Ben brush typhoon the second plot at Manuel and lieutenant Gibson lieutenant Gibson won in 1900 I just gave you the 19th century I will spare you the 20th and when I dismounted from the table after I got through 1971 which was cannon arrows year David laventhol the editor of the paper happened to be at that party and Suffolk came up to me and he said why do you know that what I didn't know is that David was a closeted horse player he loved he loved horse racing but nobody knew he was a better in fact it was wasn't for a year later that he started picking horses in Newsday the editor under the nom de plume clocker Dave and so I said well David I said I know that because I everybody knows that don't you don't they had that I learned that in the second grade as part of the Catechism in grammar school and he said no seriously and I said well I told her my history what I just told you and he said he said you're not happy doing your job you're not happy covering fresh water supplies and sewers on Long Island are you I said not particularly I said there are days in the Suffolk County Legislature where I'd rather be having a root canal and he said I'll tell you what he said would you like to cover horse-racing force I thought oh my god he's going to make my hobby my job and I said are you serious he says absolutely we need a horse racing guy at Newsday was a six day a week newspaper no Sunday edition since its inception they were going to seven days that April and they needed a horse racing writer they hadn't had one since the last one was canned for accepting money taking a jockeys money and betting it allegedly gambling it on the stock market and losing it and so he paid them back by writing favorable stories about them that was a story I was told so they hadn't had one captain guggenheim harry guggenheim owned a big racing stable the guggenheim family and he owned Newsday and but he was gone by this time on his way out he had sold the paper to los angeles times anyway my wife was standing across the room and i said let me talk to my wife for a second this is a pretty major decision so I went over and I said I've been offered the job of course Racing writer at Newsday what do you think and Mary said that's a good idea that's boy that's a really good I was hidden I wanted to go to the White House and I would spoke Spanish so I wanted up be a bureau chief not in Mexico or something and climb the Andes with Simon Boulevard and she said this is perfect query so I got back and I said I will do it your man David said okay I got one request I don't want everybody coming into the office saying has bill lost his mind what is he doing going from politics to horse racing so I want you to write me a note asking me for the job so I did and the only thing I remember of that note was one line and it was after covering politicians for four and a half years I would like to have the chance to cover the whole horse and and I did say at the bottom of the note I said I do not include Robert dole in this judgment however but and so that April after I cleaned up everything that March this was December 71 in December in March of 72 I walked into Belmont Park with a spiral notebook in my hand never having covered horse-racing in my life but knowing a lot about it and I was in heaven I was levitating I never touched the ground and I was there for four weeks five weeks when I covered my first Kentucky Derby and the winner of that Derby was a horse named Riva Ridge and he had been the two-year-old champion the year before and then he went to the Preakness and he lost the Preakness in the mud he could not do mud and then he came to the Belmont and he was getting ready to run in the Belmont and his exercise rider guy named Jimmy Gaffney came up to me and he said he said Bill I want to show you something I said okay so we walked up the shed and he waved his hand into the stall and I looked in and I said who's that and he said he said this is the horse that got to make everybody forget Riva Ridge and I'd been on the racetrack for six weeks seven weeks and I said well who is it he said his name is Secretariat he said he's not rested is he run he said no he's never run he said he just came up from Florida and I said well who is he by said at least by Bold Ruler out of something royal and boy I know enough about pedigree that that was royal that was royal blood that was the tutors and I thought gee this is really interesting and he's gorgeous a he looked like a Greek discus thrower he had muscles on his muscles he had muscles on his eyebrows and I said I said can he run he said I'm telling you he said this horse is going to make an offer get Reeve Ridge I said that's a little early to make that judgment I would soon learn that every time he went into a boxing gym to do a story about Sugar Ray Leonard Muhammad Ali there was some trainer pulling you aside and saying you think the champions good you ought to see my kid over here there was always somebody in the background that hadn't proved himself who was going to be a world beater it just is that way and so I thought about it and I thought okay I'll check this horse out when he run to run he said Oh a couple of weeks sure enough two weeks later I look in the program and there he was and I said oh that's that Horace Gaffney pointed out look gorgeous of the post parade big chestnut horse anyway they leave the gate and one step out of the gate on Secretariat's right there was a horse named Quebec who did a left turn right into him he was a separatist horse and Quebec did this left turn and bang right into his shoulder he went down almost to his knees he managed to struggle to his feet and he was dead last they're only going five and a half furlongs that's a buzz assume one surrender that's not even halfway around and so he he finally got he got to see he went to the outside he was blocked by horses he tried to take him in couldn't get through went to the outside and he really didn't get any Running Room to the last eighth of a mile and boy he was flying at the end and I thought this isn't why this is good Clem foreo a handicapper at Pimlico who was an on vacation extended vacation in New York to play the horses he jumped up from his seat and he said secretary it's going to win the Kentucky Derby next year I said Clem he just finished fourth he said yeah but don't pay any attention to that take a look at the films he got creamed coming out of the gate said this horse has got everything look at him look at him and I said okay now here we are a week or two later at Aqueduct and he comes out of the gate this time he's running again comes out of the gate this time any airs he just gallops wins by five or six easy Clem jumps up again in the same press box and he screams secretary that's my triple crown horse for next year well manny Kalish of the New York Post stood up and it gave Clem the ultimate put-down ah you New York guys I'm sorry are you Maryland guys you come to New York and every two-year-old you see I think he's citation well Clem was a boxer as an amateur boxer and he came up to Manny and they started doing this to each other poking each other and if you ever been in a bar and guys do that go out the front door or the back door whichever comes first it's a bad sign and I and my Quinn had to jump in between them say come on you guys knock it off oh you think you know what you're talking about any of the usual stuff and so already this horse was stirring passions very early on and so we went up to Saratoga and he wins three races at Saratoga in succession one one more impressive than the next meanwhile Reaver had started heading downhill and he was in the same he was in the same he was in the same stable you know I got to know Secretariat by the way I forgot to mention because I was going over to the barn every day to see River Ridge they were in the same barn and I was totally lucky had Riva been with another stable that had been going over to that stable might not have ever met Secretariat but I was over to see Riva so much that they got to know me and that's when Gaffney came up and said you got to take a look at this horse well meanwhile Riva Ridge is going downhill and Secretary took off like a roman candle at Saratoga he won the hopeful stakes six and a half furlongs he's dead last going down the backstretch he never quite mentally for a while anyway as a two-year-old got over the beating he took in the first race and so he'd come out of the gate and he just dropped back that was his style I'm out you guys go have fun I'll see you later I'll see in about 55 seconds and so in the Popol he dropped out of the gate dropped back to last and in the distance you could see his blue and white silks disappear behind one horse then reappeared and disappear reappear disappear reappear he ran from the from the far turn to the turn for home less than a quarter of a mile he must have gone in 20 seconds and he went from last to first and he turned for home and he galloped home when one very easily the biggest two-year-old race in Saratoga at this point breeders Taylor Hardin all these guys were running around Alfred when Vanderbilt coming up to penny and saying when you syndicate this horse I want to share of him that's how impressive he was as a breeding stallion and so the rest of the year was a cakewalk he got disqualified in them Champaign stakes for coming in and bumping a little horse it was ridiculous he wouldn't be he would not be disqualified today for the same infraction he just and but he won every other race and he was spectacular he was so spectacular that at the end of the year he became the first horse in history to be unanimously voted horse of the year as a two-year-old no two-year-old had ever done that native dancer was horse of the year as a two-year-old but only two of the three voted for him he had all three of the voting bodies vote for him and so he comes to the beginning of the year he's the heavy favorite to win the Kentucky Derby suddenly his owner breeder who'd been in a coma died Christopher T Jenner had passed away after suffering in a coma for at least a year in a hospital up in New Rochelle New York and all of a sudden the federal government came with his hand out saying okay you owe as 70% of the estate because that's what the estate taxes were in those days ridiculous but that's what they were and so they had to raise in order to to keep the farm the yearlings the weanlings and everything else that their father had built up over the years they had to sell their one biggest asset to pay the taxes and that was Secretariat they didn't want to sell Riva Ridge because his stock had gone so far down since the Triple Crown he had lost his last four or five races by 65 lanes total he had really lost it he needed to be protected so that he could come back the next year and regain his value so there was secretary at that two year old it just turned three he was syndicated for 6.08 million in February of 1973 just before the Triple Crown year it saved the farm the yearlings the weanlings the brood mares and River Ridge the only one they had to sell was secretary the entire state I believe was worth about 10 million so they raised six and it was it was enough apparently to whatever else they could cobble together to do the to save everything and so here he was suddenly the six million dollar horse first in history the most expensive horse in history I looked up and found out that gold was selling for $90 an ounce he weighed eleven hundred and fifty four pounds if you convert 1154 pounds into ounces and then do the math on $90 he came out to be worth about 270 dollars an ounce which is three times his weight in gold and I wrote that in the mat in the newspaper and that really attracted some attention they said Wow because you hear that phrase all the time where is somebody he's worth his weight in gold well you could say to him he's worth three times his weight in gold and he was still a virgin he had never bred a mare they didn't know if he was fertile and so these people gambled each of them gaveled one hundred and ninety thousand dollars to buy a share of this horse and and so I started hanging around him thinking I might get a good magazine story out of it because I had questions whether he'd win the Triple Crown won he was by Bold Ruler who was a great statin for speed but no son of Boulder had ever won any Triple Crown race no Derby no Preakness no Belmont as great a sire as he was his mother was by Prince quillo he was a stayer but you didn't know whether he has inherited the staying power of it through his mother and so I decided anyway worth a magazine story so every morning I got up except for Easter when I hit Easter eggs I had four kids but I got up every morning rolled out of bed at 5:30 or 6:00 got into my rattling green Toyota and drove out to Belmont Park to see Secretariat and I became kind of a fixture around the barn and he comes into his first race after he comes up from Florida to the he runs the Bayshore stakes quite easily he wins the Gotham stakes at a flat mile quite easily and he galloped out by the way after he won the mile in the Gotham he galloped out another quarter of a mile his momentum carried him another quarter of a mile further and he finished a mile and a quarter in 159 and two which had that been the Kentucky Derby would have been the fastest Kentucky Derby of all time he was already breaking records pulling up in workouts and works and people were singing boy the sources is magical this horse is magic well then comes the woodland Morial I was over at the barn at the aqueduct when they were trying to bribe him Eddy sweat his groom tried to get the bridle in his mouth it and the horse kept throwing his head like this like that and he said come on now Reds quiet down here bring your head down to bring his head down tried to get the bid in he go like this and I finally said the sweat I said Eddie what's wrong with this horse I've never seen him do this before he said ah he's just edgy I said edgy I said he's never been edgy in his life a kid could ride him he was a very docile horse with a poised demeanor and I thought there's something may be wrong with this horse and he said nah he's fine well what I did not know was that morning dr. Emmanuel Gilman who was the racetrack veterinarian in charge of horse identification came around the barn as he did for every horse running that day and lifted up his upper lip to check the tattoo that was tattooed inside the upper lip which I which was put into that horse's mouth tattooed in there as a yearling and would identify him as who he was all of his life he died with that tattoo in his mouth and it's just he can't take it out you can't alter it and the horse ident people come around and look at the tattoo to make sure he's the horse that it purports to be so you don't run a ringer in a race a horse with by another name so horse ident identifies them perfectly and when dr. Gillman lifted up that lip he found a Boyle about the size of a half dollar festering under his upper lip anybody ever hear had a Boyle I'm imagining one under your upper lip and that's why he couldn't get the bit in his mouth he told this dilution Loren the trainer and Lucien said what can he run in a doc says you're he's perfectly fine he's not lame but I thought you ought to know this he's got an abscess on his upper lip and Lucien said well we got to run him the derbies in two weeks he's got to go the mile Oh Nathan this race what a further compromised him that day was the fact that Lucian's mother father mother-in-law had died and he had to go to Canada for a funeral the horse had not worked well that week he worked slow a horse got loose on the racetrack the work was all goofed up he meant to work him again and didn't and Secretariat had a slow metabolism he needed hard fast works to stay fit hard I'm talking about faster than horses run in the afternoon he needed hard work big muscular horse and he didn't get that work and he had this abscess turcotte knew nothing about the absolution didn't bother to tell him about it fact he didn't tell penny about it I guess he didn't tell anybody Lucien was the old school you don't tell anybody anything because they can use it against you that's the old school so Pancho Martin the trainer of sham knew that he had an abscess then he'd run an entirely different race than he who did run that afternoon he waited and waited and waited for Secretariat while Engle light went out and took the lead and he waited for secretary and waited and waited and waited and finally in the stretch Secretariat came up his flap as the bottom of a fried egg he just didn't get untracked he looked horrible he didn't stretch out but he didn't look himself I thought to myself is this the same horse that won the Bayshore and the Gotham Azores of the year my gosh this is ridiculous going to the Kentucky Derby good luck going a mile and a quarter he's got no chance not off of this thing of course I didn't know about the abscess turcotte was disconsolate he couldn't figure it out people said always another Bold Ruler running around one turn he's fine run around two turns he fizzles out so I thought all these days I put in on this on this magazine story ah I had all these notebooks filled with stuff anyway I thought okay we just go down to Kentucky and see what happens so I got out of Kentucky and you know coward that I am i had to pick for the newspaper and so I picked my gal at the winner of the bucket burr bluegrass to win the Derby and sham second and Secretariat third one of the Loeb moments of my life because I said I said to Turcotte I went to Bryant to the jocks room the day of the derby I came in their place was just tense penny was under pressure dilution was under pressure the Six Million Dollar horse how is he going to perform if he loses again what are you going to do hey yay and so I said the round I said I said well what do you think he said what do you think I said well he said who did you pick I said I picked him third I picked my gallant to win in sham second he said Bill there was something wrong with this horse for the wood and I found out later what it was and he's over it now and so is it too late for you to pick again I said no we only have one paper on Saturday I've got to stick with my pick and he said ah too bad he said this horse is gonna run big today I said what about the wood he said there was something wrong with him in the wood and it's okay now he's himself again he had worked brilliantly that week at at Churchill which kind of puzzled me I thought well he's working great again he looks good he's radiant his coat looks really good very gold and the Sun had hit it and they blind you and so anyway I went back up to the press box and I didn't know what to think and all of these the stands were filled with all these people wondering in anticipation what was going to happen to the six million dollar horse and all the syndicate members are saying oh my god did I throw all this money away and what is she going to do if the horse loses again will she stop with him so anyway here's the Kentucky Derby and there's a horse that leads it by the way his name's Shecky Greene who's not named after the comedian the owner of Shecky Greene was Neal Hellman who was a good friend of Shecky and sham of course is very close to the hunt he's the horse that everybody thought was going to win this Derby if Secretariat didn't sham was in the movie of course with punch of Martin but anyway Lawrence do you want to show the Derby please he starts out dead last by the way you see him coming out of the gate and on the inside throwing the light for buried on the outside Shecky Greene royal and regal and on the rail it's wrestlers up followed by our new lives up on the outside his gold bag if I understand for the first time Chucky green is showing the way by Arlington app royal and regal now being moved to the inside looking for room gold bag is up on the outside then on the Whelan sang the light followed by sham our native restless Jeff it's my gallant then for gold on the outside novel followed by secretary Webber and finally twice a friend moving on the turn the leader is Shecky Greene leading by two and a half let's go back a second by a head jam now fed on the outside by to light royal and regal fourth who likes them back to hang the light in fifth the Secretariat is late a sudden move it is now six then it's best less Jeff our native beginning to move up not a half before ago and war box to getting to move up followed by my gallop and twice a prince there into the turn and bunching for though he was Shecky Greene still the leader by a half away on the outside in challenging his sham that he's now got a rep in front now Shecky Greene responds to the challenge in those two rs.25 royal and regal is served and holding on gold back drops back Secretariat is fourth and moving up on the outside and is now third and we've got the leaders as they come fall out of the stretch that's the end of the stretch and cam is the leader he leads it fire-like sec potatoes in the center of the racetrack in writing Jackie green now drops back forgo are needed on the outside now under the stretch its sex Secretariat Secretariat on the outside to take the lead Jam holding in second its Secretariat moving away he has to fight to a half jam then on the outside hour here he gallops out has got a nice friendly chat away yeah okay that was the greatest Kentucky Derby ever run since he ran for fort 1 million four hundred and four hundred and ninety thousand horses have come of age to be eligible to run in the Kentucky Derby and he still owes the record for it he said it 38 years ago it was the fastest Derby ever run the first Derby ever run under 2-minutes 159 and 2 which was the same time that he galloped out the Gotham in a few weeks before he was he was telling us then forget the wood go back to the gotham horses will do that to you know Fortius sometimes and of course he had these physical conditions which he overcame and I mean there were people dancing in the aisles when this horse won the Derby there were 160 thousand people there there were rebel yells all over the track the syndicate members were dancing in the aisles penny and Lucien were there by the way when they came by the stands the first time this was in the movie and it's an accurate depiction of it when they came by the stands the first time and secretary it was last Lucien turned to Penny and said I'm getting out of here and she said you're going to stay here with me they were going to face the music together and then of course very slowly one horse by one horse by one horse he started picking it up never a big burst of speed when they got to the turn for home and he was lying fourth turcotte went like that to him no response he went again no response and Terk I thought oh my god so he said I took my whip and hit him no response he said I took the whip and I waved it in front of his right eye like that and when he dropped about six inches hit another gear and that's when he came up he drew even he drew even with with sham and outfought him in the stretch when he no horse in history had ever before or since run every mile every quarter mile in the Kentucky Derby or any other mile and a quarter race than the preceding quarter he ran each quarter faster than the one before it he literally gained speed throughout the entire race he was going 35 miles an hour through the stretch the first time and he was going 39 to 40 miles an hour in the stretch the second time he ran this the fastest last quarter in the history of the derby 23 seconds flat which was faster than Shecky Greene round the first quarter he was standing all the old notions of time on their head and it was just a remarkable Kentucky Derby still the greatest Derby I've ever seen by a horse that had that was just trained to the minute for it and we all went off to Pimlico saying maybe in first horse in 25 years to win the Triple Crown maybe we'll have won again I had given up I'd seen so many horses when two of them and lose the third lose the first win the last two when the first lose the second win the last all sorts of combinations but they never could it was like you never got three cherries coming up on the window it was always two cherries and something else and so it was very you know very discouraging and I thought gee here's my first year covering the beat maybe I got a Triple Crown winner and I have all this stuff on him right I have all these notebooks this is really cool so off we went to Pimlico and I was sitting under his stall one day four o'clock in the afternoon on Thursday and he leaned his head out of the stall right up above me and he leaned over and he boo-soms it's not on me a little bit and then he he started doing this with his like a camel it was an upper look making like a camel and I looked at I said what's wrong with him Eames sweat what's wrong with this horse I said look he looks like a camel and Eddy came up and he looked at him and he walked up and he plucked a little thing off of his whiskers and the worst would and went back into his stall basically said thank you very much I appreciate it and then Eddy threw this thing up in the air and blew it up and it came down in the palm of my hand it was a and he said not just a pigeon feather itching him don't worry he's okay so I took the pigeon feather and I put it my wallet and I carried it around with me for about 20 years until that wallet was lifted at Madison Square Garden during a prize fight between Roberto Duran and Bobby Bobby more I could not believe it I had a laminated picture of swaps that I've been carrying in assorted wallets over the years since 1955 and I had this pigeon feather and when I would go out to Churchill Downs and go out to Lexington to visit Secretariat in the incoming years I had always pulled that pigeon feather out of the wallet and I'd say and here's the pigeon feather that was on his whiskers that Eddie sweat blew up in the air and it came down in my hand and here it is and I'd pass it around the car like a little conversation piece and so we didn't quite know what to expect in the Preakness it's a mile of 3/16 sixteenth of a mile less than the Kentucky Derby he worked like the wind instead of nowadays a horse wins the Kentucky Derby record time he would barely work on to the Preakness well Lucien said I'm going to tighten the screws a little more this horse needs work and so he worked my MA he worked on five eighths of a mile in 57 seconds flat which is absolutely blazing along and he galloped out three quarters of a mile in one minute and ten seconds which is the same time that it took a horse namely Matt an older gray horse a fastest horse in Maryland to win a stake the day before 110 flat so he was working out and galloping out in the morning faster as fast as horses older horses were running in the afternoon and I mean he looked spectacular he was radiant he was eating up his feed he was not acting like a horse would just run a mile and a quarter in 159 and two but didn't quite know what to expect you know Clem Florio who was now the guy from aqueduct who had predicted this he was now back at his home base in Baltimore Maryland and I said what do you think Clement he said well if I were him I'd go to the lead I said right out of the gate he said yeah you don't want to go to the lead on the first turn because if you go to the lead on the first turn the track is not graded as high at Churchill as high at Pimlico as it is at Churchill and if he goes too fast around the first turn there's a Chinese Laundry out on belvedere Avenue he can take his dry-cleaning back over there because that's where he's going to end up if he goes fast around the first turn well Secretariat was a short coupled horse which means it wasn't a long distance down his back his front legs and his back lace were fairly close together and so as a result he ran he was like a polo pony he loved turns he loved turns the sharper the better he turned very well as Ronnie Turcotte said he takes turns like a hoop around a barrel and so turcotte dropped back to last in the Preakness and he's going to the first turn he looked up ahead of him and he saw the front runner e---coli Taj he saw the horse's head come up and that means that jock on e---coli Taj was taking him back to slow him down well when you're back you don't want the front end slowed down and so he moved his hands on the bridle on the reins as subtly as a man would adjust his cuffs on a tuxedo and the horse felt Ronnie's touch like that and horses don't run when you throw the reins away they run when you pick him up that's the signal to run it is they grab the bit and they go you've heard this sting he took the bit between his teeth that's when the horse takes the bit between his teeth when he feels that signal and he grabbed it so watch what happens on the first turn Lawrence let's see the Preakness he breaks last again said visit number three then it's also touching on the outside the kanga aseptically Taj netiquette means the moving away by about to wrap as they passed the stands settling in the second portion on the rail deadly dream in our native the Secretariat is laughed again as they move into the first turn their into the tyranny colder cause ossified too late motion second by a length and then sham good juice an easy all right now but here comes Secretariat he's moving fast and he's going to the outside he's going for the lead and it's right now he's looking for Ronnie Turcotte sends him alongside a calling card look at the size of his neck got a great second on the outside now now on Secretariat for leader by all eight-foot average am living in a second and it looks like a kool aid taja started dropping back in third coming on in fourth is our native of these pretty clothes sourcing stuff and after their way back is deadly dream on the terminal is the race folks set the tired trying to hold it and cameras driving to get him these tier beginning golf in a few lengths is our native centers in the Fed and he has about three lights our reporter cars but in a stretch Secretariat aha and he's making it on now but it still kept going on retired by too late second not to sound redundant but that was the greatest weakness that was ever run sorry the electronic teletype malfunction that caught him in 155 which is ludicrous the track record was set by canon arrow in 1971 the year I stood up on the table in the middle of the city room he ran in 154 flat the two Clockers of the Daily Racing Form Frenchy Schwartz and Gene Robinson disagreed with the electronic timer which everybody agreed now functioned and they caught him in 153 and two so in the official chart he broke the track record by three-fifths of a second I don't know how it happened but the official track photographer next to whom I was standing during the race and was in charge of crowd control on the jockey stand he reported that he had clocked the worse than 154 and - I don't think so maybe he did but I did not see a clock or watching his hand but anyway that's the time that that was recorded so whatever there was a lot of confusion over the time afterwards Andrew buyer who does speed figures had predicted that the horse if he ran as fast as he did in the Derby given the speed of the racetrack his final time would be 153 and to CBS television did a split screen of cannon arrow and Secretariat's Preakness showed them simultaneously and Secretariat beat him by three lengths one length for every fifth of a second that's 153 and two so I'm sorry that that was it was the fastest Preakness of a run and now what did we have sham could not catch him he was sort of out of the picture although I talked to his trainer beforehand and everybody was talking about this horse he was on he's the only being in history that was on the front of the three largest news weeklies in America on the same week he was on the front of Time Newsweek and Sports Illustrated on the cover that week you know obviously at the Haldeman's and Mitchell's of the world they were on quite frequently if they made news and they were frequently making news in those days and but the Sports Illustrated was the wild-card but of course since he was a sporting figure he was on the cover there too and I know a lot of people who have those three covers frame kind of neat and another thing was going on the Vietnam War was still happening we weren't actively engaged as we had been in 1968 but we still had a lot of troops over there and a lot of people were getting killed and it had become another long depressing run and combat and burning and shooting and killing and body bags etc and also another thing that happened during the making of the movie Fred Thompson the actor former senator from Tennessee and the bill Lacey by the way worked for and it's his campaigns he came up to me and he said would you tell me what I was doing on when the Watergate hearings were because he was working for Howard Baker at the time as a Special Counsel and he was very involved in the Watergate hearings and he said I want to know what what was going on what while his triple crown was happening because I'm going to be doing radio programs on on the movie which he was in he played bull Hancock in the movie Secretariat so I came you know I went back and I did a timeline on 73 and believe it or not on Friday before the Preakness the day before that race you just saw was the first day of the televised Senate Watergate hearings and I said to Fred Fred on the Friday before the Preakness right in the middle of this Triple Crown was the first televised he said oh I know exactly where I was when this was going on thank you I cannot put it in a context so anyway the so the Watergate hearings were going on and really America at this point was kind of in a funk and all of this stuff happening all at once the presidency collapsing around everybody's heads you know in the Republican so it was just a very difficult period of time and secretary came along and he sort of declared a national recess for about five weeks he said I'm going to you know here's a horse being that you know olly olly wanted was hay oats and water he didn't have a girlfriend he didn't have an agent he didn't beat up his wife her girlfriends there was no 911 calls all he wanted to do was eat and run and he was perfectly delightful personality he was a prince of a cult a chivalrous principal just like his old man Bold Ruler was also that way and you know around the barn he was as playful as a kitten I remember one time I was walking up the shed and Eddie sweat had been scraping with the rake the shed in front of secretary install and then he leaned the shed the rake up against the wall by secretary stall and went over to get a burlap bag and the horse seized with his mouth the rake can started pushing it back and forth across them and so you know and one day I was standing in front of a stall with my spiral notebook and I was taking notes with sweat and the horse reached out and he grabbed my notebook and he pulled back in the stall looking at me like are you going to come and get it and I said Eddie your horse took my notebook and he said read give the man his notebook back he says you can't write anyway and so the horse dropped the notebook on this straw matting and anyone hadn't picked it up and and anyway he gave it to you but he was very playful and very sweet temperament of a horse and we didn't know what you know I called up Lucien the night before the Belmont I said everybody is expecting not a race we were expecting a coronation the first horse in 25 years to win the Triple Crown but he was working faster now than he ever worked in his life believe it or not I was telling about the workouts before this horse worked a mile in 134 and 4/5 seconds a day or two after or before I can't remember which a very one of the best older horses in America 10 Tam won the metropolitan mile at Belmont Park in 135 flat so he worked in the morning a fifth of a second faster than 10 Tam ran a race in the afternoon this was unheard of and then read on the eve of the race he worked in a very fast half mile and on the morning of the Belmont I was just exhausted I was up every morning I was at the bar and I was walking around talking to people what's going to happen I call Lucien the night before on Friday night for my story my advance and I said Lucien what do you think he's going to what's going to happen around he said I think french-canadian I think he's going to win by more than he's ever won by in his life I said really by how much he said I think he'll win by 10 I said wow that's a lot of lates man he said yeah but this horse is really fit I'll tell you how fit he was the morning of the Belmont instead of going home to Lloyd Harbor where I lived or to Huntington where I lived I decided to stay at the office because it was much nearer the racetrack Garden City office of Newsday and I decided to sleep on one of the one of the probably the same table I stood on when I recited all those Derby winners and I slept on the table and I told it city desk I said wake me up about 3:30 in the morning the guys write in headlines I said okay so sure enough woke up they woke me up I got up washed my face you know changed my shirt and I went drove to the racetrack I got there about 4 o'clock in the morning 3:30 and I sat down and went to his barn the guard said gee bill you're here awfully early I said yeah I just I can't be so eager and anxious like I can't sleep much anyway so I sat down next to a tree by secretary it's still not by installed by the barn he was in and I could hear the guard up in the tack room next to Secretariat stall playing solitaire I could hear the snap of the cards on the table and I sat down by a tree and I fell asleep with my back against the tree and I woke up at the crowing of a they have roosters all over the backstretch it's almost biblical but I get up and I said ok any Hoffner comes up the shed and he said hey Charlie get the big horse ready take him out and walk up around this walking ring a little bit so they got him he said it must be dull in that stall all night so he gets up puts on the lead shank charlie takes him out of the barn there was a little walking ring about a quarter of the size of this tyre Hall but it was a cinder block with a with a little barn at the end of it where a girl named Robyn Edelstein had pony had stabled her pony she was in the stall rattling around with the bucket to feed him some water and and he's the horses walking around and he's like this he's got his he usually walked real docile II but now he's got his head arched like this and all of a sudden she rattles the bucket against some well real loud crank crank well that horse heard that and he went up on his lined legs and he's pawing at the sky like this and walking on his hind legs and Charlie's under him like he's under a thunderclap and he's going come on down red come on down and the horse came down and he was like in dressage he was hitting the ground like a dressage horse barely touching the ground it's like he's on Springs and he's going on his eyeballs are rimmed in white his nostrils are flared I mean he looked like he was going to the breeding shed you ever see his daddy and go to the breeding shed I mean it's a pretty you know there's a lot of testosterone in the air I'm telling you and that's the way he was he was going he looked like he was ready to breed a mirror and you know I've got an 18 year old kid and he loved it anyway I'm not gonna even bother rewarding that but he you know and so she rattled a bucket again and he went up again and he walked around on his hind legs and he's dancing and he's looking like this he's his shoulders like golden he looked like a myth something out of myth and I thought my god and then all of a sudden Henny comes running out of the bar and he said take him in he's going to hurt himself and so Charlie he was out there for about three and a half minutes that's all and he finally took him back in the barn because he was afraid he was going to kick himself or hurt himself somehow and I ran around a bar and I got this girl's name I said what's your name Robyn did you realize that you just had secretary standing on his hind legs twice and she said no what happened I said you're rattling that bucket and that horse went up she said oh I'm sorry I didn't know he was here I said well that's okay don't worry about it they took him back in so I got her name she's in the book and I think she's also in that story pure heart I wrote about the death of Secretariat but anyway we really didn't quite know exactly what we were going to see but we were expecting to see something quite out of the ordinary I didn't exactly know what it was going to be but I had seen that morning the fittest racehorse I ever saw in my life and I'd been around the racetrack since 1955 which was eighteen years earlier and I'll tell you he was on Springs and of course he walked to the post looked like a cow out there just docile II lumbered along hardly doing anything I walked over with him from the barn to the paddock and he was grinding at the bit like this and his eyes were all white you could see the whites of his eyes but then when he got on the racetrack he just walked along real easy they put him in the gate and we didn't know if he was going to come from behind we didn't know what sham was going to do all we know this is the longest of the Triple Crown races it's a mile and a half the track record was held by a wonderful racehorse in the Hall of Fame today named gallant man he ran the mile and a half in two minutes and 26 and 3/5 seconds in 1957 okay Lawrence could you run the Belmont please position on the rail and in fact he's not going up with the leaders in living for the first tentative Secretariat share many outsiders affirmative L strongly and now it's sham sham and Secretariat ago he got into the first pair Mike gallon are stirred by them that it's twice of this and the corner is private smiles is the big I deter there's two together shame on the outside sham getting ahead and cutters we live around the trend of secretary of second then there's a large job may be customized dollar in third and paisa prints forth and private smiles is located on the backstretch if that is the match race now Secretariat's on the inside by a head sham is on the off side they they're from ten links for my gallon who is fired with parts of himself that it's another offense back to private smile openings believe is increasing he is any misstep that was the greatest performance by a thoroughbred racehorse in history not just there's penny that's cool I'm sorry I should have started talking I forgot they were going to show that that's really neat he broke the world's record on a dirt for a mile and a half and he broke gallant man's the great gallant man's record by two and three fifths of a second that's almost unheard of it was not just the best Belmont ever run but it was the greatest many Horsemen think that the greatest performance in the history of the sport and it was just I mean there were people just odd a couple of weeks later Jack Nicholson didn't know anything about horse racing he's the greatest golfer the played ever played the game probably and he but he got caught up in this thing during the Triple Crown because he saw him on the front of newsweek time and Sports Illustrated and he and he was at home in Boca Raton Barbour and his wife had the kids out of the house and he was by himself in the den and he told Heywood Hale brew in the broadcaster he said hey what he said woody I I don't understand it he said I was watching that race and he said when that horse turned for home I was on the floor of my den on that road pounding on the rug 10 he said tears were coming down my eyes I can't understand it what was going on and he said something very sage he said Jack he said your entire life has been a pursuit of perfection and June the 9th you saw it and recognized it and so you remember the the football Commissioner very distinguished gentleman called up Pete Rozelle I was a Commissioner of the National Football League he didn't know he knew a little bit about horse-racing I guess but he went to the Belmont and he said he was talking about it later I mentioned this to him up at Del Mar I heard the story and he confirmed it was he said dumb he said how was it and I guess the turf and field club did dining room tables and everything and he said I was watching that race and he said as the horse turn for home he said somebody grab my ankle and I thought somebody collapsed at my feet and he said and I looked down to see what had happened and he said I was standing on the table and I have no memory of getting up there I mean that's the kind of thing that was going on and people were today you can say did you see secretary of Spelman yeah I was at my mother's house that afternoon they remember like they know exactly where they were when it happened it was so astounding so he not only won the Triple Crown but he won it in a way that had never been done before he's the first horse and B I'm sure the last or certainly in my diminishing lifetime that will that would break the records on all three races it's never been done it's been done in one race but never two and never three that's out of the question and there are horsemen around who say who believed today that that mile and a half record of 224 flat will never be broken and they've still haven't broken the Derby record but 224 flat is just daunting it I asked her kind I said what did you hear going around the far turn I said what did this there were like 75,000 people there something like that so what did you what was that were you hearing he said well after Shawn dropped back I didn't hear any foot Falls except my own horse and he said I heard my horse breathing easily going and I could hear his his the beat of his feet on the ground and he said the only other thing I heard was as I turn for home I could hear the stands roaring and it sounded like I said what'd it sound like he said it sounded like when you near the ocean you get near the ocean he can start to hear the waves that's incessant like that he said I heard that and he said and then I heard a voice a voice said keep it up Ronnie you're going to win and he said I looked over to his bushes there was bushes on the rate at the turn-on and he said I didn't see anybody and he said I just wondered who that was I often wondered who that was who yelled that to me there's the only thing I heard and then he said of course when I came home I was just like I had entered a tunnel of sound it was awesome he said it was the most unbelievable memorable performance he ever had on a horse and and so when he died secretary died 19 9 I found out that in 1838 Ameri was born in this country in Pocahontas named after the Indian Queen and she had she had in her body she had I don't know what the exact how to say it but she had a genetic not anomaly what's the call William buzzer mutation yes she had a genetic mutation and it's now called the large heart gene and this large heart gene is passed can only be passed through females and polka hosta Don to a number of horses believe it or not sham had that gene his heart was very large also when he died it was autopsy data about 18 pounds the normal horse just the average riding horses nine pounds as their heart the average performance horse is 12 pounds and when they took Secretariat's heart out doctor sir Wiki thought it was probably around 20 22 21 and I asked him I said was it pathologically enlarged he said no it was not pathologically enlarged all the chambers and valves were normal and he said it was just huge we put it on the table on all the veterinarians who were at the autopsy just commented on how huge it was and he said that probably explains why he was able to do what he did he was able to crack up and synthesize oxygen faster than any other horse and removed the lactic acid and it also gives us a hint about why he needed such hard works between races because he was building up all of this energy and it had to be expended with the slow metabolism he had and so Pocahontas he got he got the gene through something royal his mother who got it through her mother and her mother before her and it traced it all the way back to Polk on us and so that's probably a counselor for the largeness of the heart that's my story and I'm sticking to it if anybody like to ask me some questions I would be willing to thank you I'm get a the way we'll do Q&A this afternoon if you'll wait for one of our students with a cordless mic to come up to you and grab you we got somebody on the front row but somebody else going to take a mic here because the gentleman there with his hand up he's just walking by him would you address the propensity of some horses to just have a willingness to win they don't want to follow anybody yeah I mean that's that's the very essence of the thoroughbred unfortunately a lot of thoroughbreds don't have that quality they don't like their job and a lot of them are lazy a lot of them don't try very hard a lot of we got a coax and cajole somehow to get a supreme effort out of them and some verses like Secretariat and sham and Shecky Greene by the way that horse who led the Derby at the end of the year he had done so well in sprinting that he became the sprinter of the year he was voted sprinter you got an eclipse award a sprinter of the year that these horses descended from where is it ascendant from anyway these horses came from Arabian stock that was shipped over I was horse named the Darley Arabian Thomas Darley who worked for was a British consul bought this horse bought Darlie the Darley Arabian from a tribal chieftain and and brought him home through the port of Aleppo to England and mixed him with some of the sturdier hearty er bone stock of the English horses the racehorses the darling arabian was extremely fine he had a tremendous spirit which is what to address what you were saying and a will to win and a desire to win and he infused this in a lot of his offspring and in fact the last figures I heard all horses in America I think in the world in the world in the third business 90% of them over 90 it's like closer to 92 or 3 if you were to trace their tail mail line their sire grandsire great grandsire all the way back it goes to the Darley Arabian his influence was profound and it's not just profound in terms of what he infused in the Thoroughbred but it was it was it was extensive and it's lasted this horse lives among us today through his offspring and Secretariat was one of one of those every good horse I've ever seen really good horse like Secretariat Seattle Slew affirmed for go they were smart and by that I mean this I don't mean they couldn't parse a sentence or add or add digits but what they did do is all horses express their intelligence through alertness and curiosity I once saw Secretariat out next to his barn being grazed one day and it's in the flight path of JFK and a plane flew over and that horse lifted his head up and looked up at that airplane I had never seen that before I'd never seen a horse look up at an airplane before but he was an extremely curious horse and that to horseman is tantamount to being as is the same as intelligence that's the way they expressed their intelligence alertness they're cute they act cute they act fun they are they're alert and alive and when you're around one like that you can say well this one probably can run any other question did I answer your question whoever able to you yes you are you mentioned the 1955 Derby that slop swirl and I just was fortunate enough to be there you were high wise if you would wake him up here I was a senior of the senior in high school and I got a trip free trip there from my uncle who taught at the UK at university Kentucky anyway Nashua was the big the those were the two horses they trained and it seemed like the the rivalry was so so great afterwards they even had a matchup as they did did you describe that and how that came about well that was one of the most disappointing days of my life when swaps and loss to Nashua in the match race I didn't find out until years later that from PG Johnson who had a horse trainer in New York who was in Chicago in those days he said that the morning of the match race swaps came up lame he had a very sore frog on his foot and they tried to cover it up with they cut up a woman's high-heeled shoe and they put the leather on it over but it wasn't enough and the horse was lame he should not have run but something like five or six hundred reporters had flown in from all over the world to see this race it was a huge event and they begged ellsworth not to scratch swaps we've got to run this race we can't postpone it so he ran the horse when he shouldn't have run him and he hung in there until about the last eighth of a mile in Nashua pulled away from him the next year swaps broke for world time records and tied a fifth and one of the greatest exhibitions of speed in the history of the sport that got him into the Hall of Fame with Nashua I should add and but I was at the racetrack the first time I went to the races in 1955 swaps was my arrow he had won the Derby and I went out there with my father I'd never been to the races before I rode horses equitation less I wrote in horse shows and other things we owned a horse my parents bought us a horse my sister Amy but I went out to the races with my dad and all of a sudden this gorgeous looking chestnut comes walking out of the tunnel with bill shoemaker on him between races he was exhibition he was just parading for the fans and the announcer said ladies and gentlemen coming on the racetrack right now is the 1955 Kentucky Derby winner swaps who's preparing for the American Derby that will be run at Washington Park on so-and-so in two weeks and that's my horse so I dashed down to the rail and bunch of kids I was one of a bunch of kids I was 14 and I yelled out I said bill over here shoemaker like I knew him like he was a buddy a minute and shoemaker I got to know quite well many years later very well actually when I covered the sport he brought him over and that horse dropped his head over the over the rail and I reached up my hand like this and he breathed on it and I could still feel a hot breath on the back of my right hand and it like infused me with this magic milk and it did changed my life I mean after that I said this is it for me I've got to do this so all this stuff that happened standing up on the table all followed in sequence from all this horse breathing on my hand and that's when I ran home and rememorize all the Kentucky Derby winners and that's why I'm here today instead of covering tertiary treatment for the New York Post no I've never washed this hand do you know what it's like for a horse to breathe on your hand like that it is the coolest feeling it's a very affectionate kind of a thing you know it's very sweet that's how they communicate yes sir bill I want to thank you for bringing back memories of my childhood I also spent my youth with my dad at Aqueduct and the old Jamaica ah Belmont Park bill hartack shoemaker arkiro remember horses like Kelso Oh he was a monster oh my god yes anyway my question is how important was Ron Turcotte s-- writing to Secretariat swimming well you know I think in the Kentucky Derby Lucien wanted to go to the lead he wanted him to break the horse out of the gate and go right to the front Ronnie said Lucien I don't want to do that Ronnie I want you to go out there and get you know don't get in any traffic trouble you won't get in any trouble if you're on front he said yeah but Lucien it's a mile and a quarter let him I think we should just let him do what he wants to do I'm just going to throw the reins away and just let him come out of the gate and we'll do what he wants to do and Lucien finally said acquiesced and he said okay he said but it's your fault if this horse you know everything was always going to be Ronnie's fault and so Ronnie just kind of threw the reins away when the gate open and the horse went back to last he just galloped alone then all of a sudden he picked him up a little bit going by the stands and just and one of the things Ronnie did not do was he did not get in the way of the horse he let him do what he wanted to do he had confidence in the horse he rode the horse with complete confidence and other jocks would have rushed him up there got him and maybe God I don't know who was what would have happened but all I know is it Ronnie timed everything perfectly and I said you started moving in the Derby around the first turn you picked up one horse and another than another I said did you do that he said I had nothing to do with it I said he said I just went along for the ride this horse knows exactly what he wants to do and he said by the time we turn for home and we had to be there he was there and he said we were in a perfect spot he said I roused him and tried to get him to run I hit him he didn't want to run he said he was like he was saying to me to cool a jock I know what I'm doing and then he waved that whip in front of his right thing and what he took off grabbed the bit and went choo like that and Ronnie left him alone I thought he wrote him brilliantly at the Preakness one of the reasons I think he wrote him brilliantly the Preakness is because he went against all conventional wisdom he moved the horse very fast around the first turn he just he said I said how did you I said how did you tell him to go he said he said I just made a very quiet move with my hands you ever see a guy adjust his cuff with a tuxedo just real quiet he said he felt me immediately he grabbed the bit he took off he said that was him again he said I just sat there and let him do his deal and of course in the Belmont he let him run up to the lead and cam came alongside and he never for an instant I said did you know how fast you were going I mean he was real they were sprinting did you hear that chick Anderson called he said it bother he they've gone three-quarters of a mile and 109 and four you know a fast sentence and he's still out of three-quarters of a mile to go he was only halfway through the race he's he's already running as fast the first three quarters of a mile as sprinters leaving the gate run three-quarters of a mile that's what they run 109 and for 109 and three 110 flat that's fast and he still had a half race to go and Turcotte said I had no idea how fast I was going you hear this thing about Jack's have a clock in their head well maybe some of them do but Ron's alarm didn't go off because he said this horse was running so easily he was just he said when he was a two-year-old he had those big shoulders he'd pound on the ground and pound he had a big big thick neck pound that's one of the reasons I didn't think he'd stand training I thought he'd break down but he had this little short cannonball from his knee down to his ankles about this long most horses are like this and that short can and one really helped him God you couldn't have broken him down with an axe he was like a piano legs boom it hit real hard hard thick bone beautifully beautifully made horse Chick Langley great the general manager at Pimlico said it is as if God had decided to create the perfect horse not just anatomically but in every other way he gave him speed there's an old Arab saying that that that God blew took the south wind and blew it and created the horse there's an old Arabic they explain that but anyway you know this horse kind of embodied that sort of thing but I know if I sound a little frantic about this but you know you don't see perfection very often cite charlie hadn't said it's like looking at a bunch of gravel and seeing the coronor lying there they pick up this corner diamond and it's about what how many carats is a corner like the Hope Diamond and he said this is the way I said that's when Charlie had a great turf rider first saw him in the paddock at Saratoga was just astonishing so did I answer your question any others yes ma'am ma'am won't you come up here yeah what do you woody what's your question okay we get to you in a second you happen to be visiting the farm a couple of days before Secretariat died and learned that day the Secretariat was sick how emotional was it was it like losing a dog or a family member oh yeah it was like you know one of the reasons then pure heart I broke down and cried against the wall of a hotel when I found out he had died and I went on the Charlie Rose show that night and I was trying to explain why because Charlie Rose asked me how did you react I said I cried like a baby he said why do you think and I said well I said the horse I was happily married in those days with four kids and you know I was on top of the world I was a horse racing Raider and you know and this horse comes along and I happened to be there at the perfect intersection of time and space I was happy domestically and everybody was getting along and the Secretariat era represented to me something very special and that era died when he died as I missed it and so it was like a kid I mean I'm so so close to him emotionally I had spent so many hours around him and I'd take people on tours of Claiborne farm and say here is and he'd come galloping around the paddock you know and people and I had that pigeon feather and my thing and so a lot of my emotional energy and life were tied was tied to that to that animal and it probably sounds a little bit silly but it's really not I mean I really looked up to him and I mean he was one of the greatest athletes I've ever seen you know when Sports when ESPN decided to make him the 35th most important athlete of the 20th century there were arguments I want to know one of the reasons Mickey Mantle was number 36 and all the Yankee fans were outraged how could you have a horse ahead of Mickey Mantle well Secretariat never got drunk and disorderly was a very good reason like Mickey did and you know tell the press off and not talk to anybody and be surly and all this other stuff that Mickey was often but here this horse wasn't but anyway you know I and a bunch of other sports writers insist that he was an athlete he was trained like an athlete he was fit he was he was on a very strict regimen he was like a you know an Eastern Bloc I don't want to say that because that implies drugs but he was but he was like an Olympic athlete who was sheltered all of his life to perform at his optimum for our entertainment which is what it was for and for money by the way Windham when secretary won the Belmont there were people being to ask being offered $500,000 for the $190,000 share and he turned out to be a good stallion he did not reproduce himself neither did citation neither did Man O'War nor did Count Fleet two names nor did swaps or Nashua two named a few the great ones in history these are once-in-a-lifetime horses and Secretariat was really a once-in-a-lifetime horse any others ma'am you want to start this gallery yes sir over here Oh over here sir okay I'm sorry now in in your writing and certainly in the movie the Sham team doesn't come across very sympathetically so I just wondered what what is your assessment of sham clearly in view of the horse that he was up against well if I'd have if I owned sham this year he'd win the Triple Crown we'd have a Triple Crown winner since 1978 since affirmed he was a hell of a horse but he was absolutely pounded into the ground by this horse and he broke down in the Belmont or shortly after and he never ran again turned out to be a reasonably successful sire by the way they shared maternal grants secretary was out of something royal and she was a daughter of Prince quill Oh sham was out of Sequoia the second who she was also by Prince quill Oh Prince quillo was conceived in Belgium was a sire lived in Belgium he was conceived in France or born in France raised in Ireland in advance of the Nazi army going in from across Europe and his owners just kept him ahead of the era of the Nazi armies and he crossed the English Channel and I think he might have had he was conceived in Belgium or maybe he was conceived in France and and traveled in oduroh to Ireland and was born in Ireland and the little prince' quillo came out and a little bay horse kind of an aura whorfin really and and while the Nazis were bombing with a ver Mach was bombing Britain he was he was in Ireland he was in Britain that he moved to Ireland that's what it was and then he went to Ireland from Ireland he travels by boat in the in the hold of a ship through submarine infested waters and landed in New York and really got off the boat is kind of an orphan and he ran in claiming races cheap races for a long time he was finally owned by Princess George Ozzy from Cincinnati Ohio she was somehow princess who she had royal she was royal blood and how she ended up in Cincinnati but I'd have preferred Newark actually but but anyway she ended up in Cincinnati and and she owned this horse and he gradually became they found out what his forte was long distance races mile and a half mile of 3/4 - miles - miles and a quarter long long races and he had great stamina in him and he was born in 1940 during the Battle of Britain and he got over here and he became the best cup horse in America in 1943 at the age of three and when the princess retired him either that year or the next year she couldn't get anybody to stand him instead because stamina horses don't have much appeal people want fast Bold Ruler speed speed speed that's what people were looking or it here is his cup horse so bull Hancock finally took him and said outstanding but stud at my farm in Virginia Ellerslie near Charlottesville so he took Prince quello stood him at stud his oh his stud fee his first year was two hundred and fifty dollars and two empty coca-cola bottles I mean I mean there's nothing well his first year his first crop he had he'll Prince Christopher Chantry bred to him because he was a Virginian he didn't need Kentucky so mr. Chantry in Virginia that's where secretary was born in Virginia he had that farm in them about 25 miles north of Richmond so he bred he bred marriage to Prince quillo including Hill Dean who was by the 1926 Kentucky Derby winner named bubbling over she was an old mare and blind and they took her to Prince quo at Ellerslie she got pregnant and she dropped Hill Prince Hill Prince was the favorite for the Kentucky Derby didn't win won the Belmont and went on to be horse of the year that was Prince quillon first crop well immediately he was moved from Ellerslie to Kentucky where he became an extremely popular and successful stallion this little war orphan that's his story I wouldn't be here if it were not for him because of I'm sorry I'm starting for one last question oh I'm sorry am I told too late no no you're doing it there this gal would like to ask a question she's been asking me um I grew up showing courses in warm Bloods and so I'm not a big big fan of the thoroughbred I can't I can't deny it um but the thoroughbreds of my time are extremely different of the thoroughbreds of secretary it's time and they seem to be breeding them to more especially the racehorses like more streamlined small and they can't hold up the length of the race especially in the Triple Crown I was heard there was a evaluation of the length of each race maybe to accommodate the new like tiny little thoroughbreds I was wondering what your thoughts on that one accommodate to what the woods the new little thoroughbreds and not the the big the big throw Brad's big bone like there's always been a movement has never been stilled since I came to make the Capri kiss the first race because it's shorter the derby the second and the Belmont the third make the Preakness a mile underneath the Derby a mile and a quarter and the Belmont a mile and a half that makes sense but there are many people bound a tradition as I am who want to keep it the way it is even as lopsided and as awkward as it is and because if you change it then it's like introducing steroids to baseball it screws up all of the statistics you don't know who's better or who's aided and it's a different game it would be a different game because you couldn't say that a horse winning in this new format would be a Triple Crown winner like all the others before him yeah it would change it and so they've a lot of a resistance to changing it and I'm among the resistors and I'm probably outdated but I don't care I think you say yes it okay thank you thank you very much bill

Channel: The Dole Institute of Politics

Views: 193,814

Rating: 4.715239 out of 5

Keywords: Secretariat, Bill Nack, Kentucky Derby, Belmont, Dole Institute of Politics, 2012, sports, leadership

Id: 1ZN4nKnDmC8

Length: 85min 36sec (5136 seconds)

Published: Sun Apr 29 2012