97. Secretariat shows his stuff, April 7, 1973, Aqueduct Race Course

If you can make it here, you can make it anywhere, including Lexington, Baltimore, and Elmhurst. Secretariat became the world’s most celebrated horse for his 1973 Triple Crown run at the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont Stakes, but first, on April 7, he captured everyone’s attention at the Aqueduct Race Course.

        Secretariat had come into his own at Aqueduct. In his debut the previous July 4, the big red colt was bumped right out of the gate and blocked behind other rookie horses, but he closed in a hurry to finish fourth. Less than two weeks later, Secretariat won by four lengths here, starting down the track to becoming the first two-year-old unanimously voted Horse of the Year.

        Some thought he represented the best shot in a generation to win the Triple Crown, something no horse had captured since Citation a quarter-century before. Others, however, remained unconvinced that Secretariat could win those longer races, since his sire, Bold Ruler, had lacked stamina (as did Bold Ruler’s other offspring).

        And in January 1973, Secretariat’s development was hindered when owner Christopher Chenery died, leaving a massive estate tax burden; the horse’s training was curtailed while the situation was resolved. The family’s eventual sale of Secretariat to a syndicate for a record $6.08 million only heightened expectations for the horse and increased the pressure on trainer Lucien Laurin and jockey Ron Turcotte. “I never thought that $6 million would feel so heavy,” Turcotte said later.

        Secretariat kicked off his 1973 back at Aqueduct, routing the field in the $25,000 Bay Shore Stakes, a short-distance tune-up. Turcotte kept the horse running after the wire to get him ready for the $50,000 Gotham Stakes, the one-mile race that would be the first of two big tests on the road to the Kentucky Derby.

        A field of seven with three legitimate challengers lined up for the Gotham, but the crowd of 41,998 came to see just one horse. Carrying a whopping 126 pounds, the heavily favored Secretariat hit the stall’s side coming out of the gate, wobbling a bit, yet still ran aggressively from the start, as if unconcerned by the longer distance. He stayed closer to the leaders and closer to the rail than usual, pulling in front by the half-mile pole. Could the sprinter maintain his pace and hold off late chargers? Champagne Charlie issued a firm challenge, but Turcotte, who had merely been giving his great horse a breather, tapped Secretariat twice with his whip, and the horse blasted to the finish three lengths ahead, tying a track record with a sensational 1:33:40. The horse “made difficult tasks seem easy” in this “dramatically impressive” win, gushed the New York Times.

        Once again, Turcotte showed that his eyes were on bigger prizes: he kept Secretariat going for an extra quarter-mile to equal the Kentucky Derby distance, the length a son of Bold Ruler supposedly couldn’t handle. Although it was unofficial, the clockers timed this young horse at 1:59:40, slightly faster than the Derby record.

        To insiders, the performance was a marvel. People openly talked about Secretariat as a once-in-a-lifetime horse, a Man o’ War, a Seabiscuit, a Citation. But equally important was that suddenly it wasn’t just insiders paying attention. Secretariat’s fame spilled beyond the track’s borders. Sports fans who wouldn’t have known Bold Ruler from Northern Dancer were chomping at the bit, eagerly awaiting the Triple Crown races.

        Before the Triple Crown came one more Aqueduct tune-up, the 11/8-mile Wood Memorial, now presumed to be a cakewalk. Had Secretariat triumphed, that race would be the one celebrated here and probably would be higher up on the list. But Secretariat’s prerace workout was interrupted by a riderless horse, and on the day of the race he suffered from a painful abscess in his mouth. Laurin knew but kept his mouth shut because he wanted the horse to run in preparation for the Derby. When Secretariat finished third, the press speculated again about faulty genes. William Nack recalled later in Sports Illustrated, “In the most important race of his career, Secretariat had come up as hollow as a gourd. I couldn’t help but suspect that Secretariat was another Bold Ruler, who ran into walls beyond a mile.”

        But look back at the Gotham: Secretariat had shown speed, he’d shown guts in holding off the late challenge, and he’d shown stamina in his postwire run. That was the real Secretariat and that Secretariat was for real. When the Triple Crown series arrived, he proved it, destroying the competition, especially in his astonishing Belmont Stakes performance: the unstoppable colt won by an unimaginable 31 lengths.

        Even before that last race, Secretariat had made the covers of Time, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated, becoming, as Nack observed, “a cultural phenomenon, a sort of undeclared national holiday from the tortures of Watergate and the Vietnam War.”

        Indeed, there was a wonderful giddiness to the coverage. “Secretariat generates a crackling tension and excitement wherever he goes,” Pete Axthelm wrote in Newsweek. “Even in the kind of gray weather that shrouds lesser animals in anonymity, Secretariat’s muscular build identifies him immediately; his glowing reddish coat is a banner of health and rippling power.”

        Although horse racing still recedes into the shadows of the sports pages for much of the year, the story of Secretariat made the Triple Crown races a bigger annual story, so that horses from Seattle Slew to Smarty Jones would streak briefly across the athletic firmament. And while that legacy was passed down only because Secretariat “made it” elsewhere, he had to make it here first, dazzling the racing world and becoming a media star by capturing the Gotham in record time.