was quicker on his feet but he was headstrong—rank and speed crazy—often trying to run away with riders in the morning. Twice Bold pulled so hard on the reins that riders used to dismount rubbing the soreness in their arms. All or None, the filly, would buck, jump, kick, spin, and wheel; no one wanted to ride her. “Everyone wanted to gallop Secretariat,” Turcotte said. “All you had to do was sit there.” As the days passed, Cecil Paul felt the youngster getting stronger, more rhythmic in his strides, and felt him begin to take hold of the bit.
That was pivotal. Turcotte also felt the colt lean against the bit, fall into it, grab it in his mouth, and run against it in a communion transmitted from mouth to hands through the lines stretched taut between them.
“You want to make him think he’s doing something, so you sit against him, take ahold of him, and make him think he’s doing everything on his own. You have to build his ego. You have to give him confidence,” Turcotte said.
Not even confidence came easily for the red horse. In late February Laurin boosted Turcotte on Secretariat for a quarter-mile workout, not an easy gallop but a speed drill, in company with Gold Bag, Twice Bold, and a colt named Young Hitter. It was time to teach them how to run, how to level out and reach for ground, something all horses have to learn.
“No race riding, boys!” Lucien called out to the four as they walked their horses to the racetrack that morning, through Sunny Fitzsimmons Lane and out the quarter-mile bend under the spanking brightness of the morning. The four riders reached the racetrack and moved into a gallop around the turn. They headed for the three-eighths pole at the top of the stretch, then pulled to a stop, lining up abreast and walking several yards. Then they clucked to their horses and went into a jog, picking up speed slowly.
Nearing the quarter pole, the four riders chirped again and the horses started leveling and reaching out, bodies lower to the ground. Twice Bold, Gold Bag, and Young Hitter accelerated rapidly, gathering speed from a gallop to a run as they raced past the quarter pole at the top of the straight.
Turcotte picked up Secretariat’s reins and chirped to him, trying to give the colt a feel for the game, not yelling, but urging quietly. He sensed bewilderment in the colt, so he gathered Secretariat together and gave him time to steady himself and get his legs under him, synchronized and meshing. The three others blew away from him. Far up the racetrack, as Secretariat battled along by himself down the stretch, Turcotte saw the three more precocious horses far down the lane as the colt started to find himself and gather momentum.
They all dusted Secretariat easily that morning, beating him by about fifteen lengths and racing the quarter mile in 0:23. Secretariat finished in about 0:26.
Periodically, as Secretariat worked out in Florida, Penny Tweedy would ask Laurin about the red horse, and he hardly reflected buoyant hope.
“He hasn’t shown me much,” Lucien would say. Or, “He’s not ready. I have to get the fat off him first.” Or, “I have to teach him to run. He’s big, awkward, and doesn’t know what to do with himself.”
Secretariat was beaten more than once in workouts that winter at Hialeah. Gold Bag beat him again. So did Twice Bold and All or None, the filly. So did a colt named Angle Light, a two-year-old bay owned by Edwin Whittaker, a Toronto electronics executive. He wasn’t beaten by fifteen lengths again, but the crowd of young horses did beat him by five lengths another time.
Riva Ridge remained the luminary of the Meadow barn. The champion worked sharply for the seven-furlong Hibiscus Stakes March 22, and when he won it briskly coming off the pace, Laurin honed him for the Everglades Stakes—the same race won by Citation twenty-four years earlier—on April 1. That was the day Turcotte sensed a change in Secretariat during a workout. The track was muddy that morning when Laurin put Turcotte on the red horse, Neff on Angle Light, and Charlie Davis on All or None. The filly had thrown Turcotte earlier, so Laurin put Davis, a strong and experienced exercise boy, on her.
He told them he wanted them to work an easy three-eighths of a mile.
It was about eight o’clock. It had been raining heavily earlier in the day, but it had lightened to a drizzle by the time the set of horses headed down the backstretch to the three-eighths pole, midway through the turn for home. About seventy yards from the pole, in unison, the riders took hold of the reins and eased their horses toward the rail, keeping them about five feet out. Turcotte could feel Secretariat fall against the bit, heavy-headedly, and he could see a horse on each side of him. He eased down in the saddle. The tempo picked up as the horses raced past the three-eighths pole and banked into the stretch. Suddenly the horse on the inside of Secretariat drifted out, glancing off his side.
Turcotte steadied Secretariat. Recovering from the bump, the red horse started slowing down, easing himself back. Turcotte reached forward with his whip and waved it in front of the colt’s right eye and he picked it up again, slipping back into the breach. He stayed there through the run down the lane, striding hard against the bit to the wire, finishing head and head with the others in 0:36, breathing easily, a sharp move for young two-year-olds in the mud at Hialeah. They had run at a perfect “twelve-clip.” It was a fast workout. Secretariat was learning how to run.
Running times vary considerably from track to track, from condition to condition, and according to the sex and age of the horses, so what is fast is relative. But most horsemen agree that horses are stretching out on a fast track when they run a furlong—a distance of 220 yards or one-eighth of a mile—in 0:12 seconds. When horses string a few 0:12 furlongs back to back, they are moving at what horsemen call a “twelve-clip.”
A twelve-clip is the rate of speed horses must average or maintain to win major stakes races at American middle and classic distances, distances from a mile to a mile and a quarter.
Most horses, even young two-year-olds like Secretariat, Angle Light, and All or None, should be able to run at a twelve-clip for a few furlongs—at least four.
That means they would be running one-eighth of a mile in 0:12, one-quarter in 0:24, three-eighths in 0:36, a half mile in 0:48.
At that rate of speed, a horse would run six furlongs, or three-quarters of a mile, in 1:12, which would win races on some tracks. If a horse strung two more furlongs together at a twelve-clip, he would be running a mile in 1:36, a time that equals or betters the clocking for six of the dozen runnings of the $50,000-added Jerome Handicap at Belmont Park between 1961 and 1972. The degree of difficulty in sustaining a twelve-clip beyond a mile, unlike sustaining it from four furlongs in 0:48 to five furlongs in one minute, increases in quantum jumps. The degree of difficulty increases vastly beyond a mile.
For another furlong in 0:12 would send a horse a mile and an eighth, or nine furlongs, in 1:48, a clocking that would have won every running of the $100,000 Wood Memorial since it was run at that distance in 1952. And another 0:12-second furlong would send a horse a mile and a quarter in 2:00 flat, which was the Kentucky Derby record set by Northern Dancer in 1964; and a mile and three-eighths in 2:12, two and one-fifth seconds faster than Man o’ War’s American record; and a mile and a half in 2:24.
That workout was the first time Turcotte could sense that the big clown had any ability at all, any speed. He fell against the bit and ran with two fast youngsters, handling the mud well, handling it better than Riva Ridge did that afternoon in the Everglades Stakes.
Hemmed in on the rail with no place to go, bumping the rail in the stretch, and never getting near the lead, Riva Ridge finished fourth in the race, the first time he had been beaten since the summer of ‘71. Laurin said he was grateful to get the horse back in one piece. Turcotte was sharply criticized for his ride in the race, and Penny and Lucien talked about firing him and finding another rider. But the big races were coming up, so they decided to keep him on the colt.
It would not be the last time that Turcotte nearly lost a Meadow Stable mount.
It was nearing the time of the spring classics, and Riva Ridge was shipped north to Lexington, Kentucky, for the Blue Grass Stakes on April 27, his final prep race for the May 6 Kentucky Derby. Secretariat and several stablemates were vanned north to Long Island and to Barn 5 at Belmont Park, an indoor shed with a row of stalls that abutted the fence of the clubhouse