Just for a change of pace, as this is the 50th anniversary of the you-know-you-win the 1973 Belmont Stakes Prize a mile across the country, this reporter will step aside and let history speak. through the eyes of the writers who were there that June 9 afternoon.
We’ll start with a pre-race column from the inimitable Jim Murray of the Los Angeles Times, whose taste for great horses leans towards the Citation. It’s Citation’s 1948 Triple Crown Achievement Secretariat trying to emulate, after a 25-year drought.
“Now is the week of Belmont Stakes and Secretariat, the horse, has been on the cover of Time, Newsweek, The Blood Horse, Sports Illustrated, and it looks like a $6 million steal,” Murray said. write. “His guidebook will be busier than a king’s. If he loses his Belmont, he’ll take more money with him than a runaway bank president to Rio.”
As we all know, the race is on fast, at least for the Secretariat, who are performing not only for 69,138 clients in Belmont, but also for the national CBS television audience topping out with 52 plays. share, which means more than half of the homes in these United States are watching. Shirley Povich, the Washington Post’s peerless columnist, is in the Belmont press box enjoying every bit of it.
Povich wrote: “This is the Secretariat running the race in his own way, with Turcotte not whipping him in the ribs, and still riding in the saddle. “It was the Secretariat that gave its boy a happy ride, with no holes to look for, no tight quarters anywhere.”
Red Smith, Povich’s Pulitzer Prize-winning colleague, was probably sitting nearby.
Smith wrote: “The secretariat was cheered in the post-post parade, cheered as he entered the gate, and as he caught and passed Sham on the back bench, thunderous rumblings of thunder broke out. chicken skin. “When it reached the finish line, the crowd swarmed towards the winners’ circle, swinging their fists high. After 25 years, American racing fans have had the sovereignty to team the Triple Crown.”
It is the moment a sports journalist lives for, a sporting endeavor that demands comparisons beyond the immediate time and place.
“The 105th Belmont Stakes will rank among the sport’s most spectacular performances, soon followed by Joe Louis’ one-round knockdown of Max Schmeling and the Olympic feats of Jessie Owens, Jean-Claude Killy and Mark Spitz.” —Whitney Tower, Sports Illustrated.
“It was an unbelievable display of brute force and breakneck speed and ranks among the greatest, if not the greatest, races ever held.” —Ray Ayres, United Press International.
“There’s a job opening at Belmont Park for Noah Webster. They’re still trying to find a word to describe the Secretariat.” —Bob Cooper, Associated Press.
Bill Nack, later a Biographer of the Secretariat, covered the Belmont Stock in 1973 for the Long Island Newsday. Nack has a tendency to follow the horse from the moment it leaves the circle of winners.
Bill Nack next to the Secretariat statue at Belmont Park
“Trainers gathered in the test stall,” Nack wrote, “and watched the foal as Ed Sweat washed it with water, shaved it off with a wiper, and the trainers laughed as George (Charlie) Davis—the regular exerciser of the human pony holding it while Sweat shaves—kiss the pony on the nose.”
Thank god for those passionate, creative eyes and ears with side words that placed the rest of us next to the Secretariat’s masterpiece. Every racing fan alive at the time remembers where they were and who they were with as they watched in awestruck delight at the sight of a single horse separating themselves from more than just weak opposition. but with nearly every other signpost in the sport’s history.
At the time, the pilgrim was navigating his first year at the track, working in an advertising office in Hollywood Park and glued to the TV. It’s hard to watch Sham’s elimination for those of us who raved about his Santa Anita Derby (G1) win earlier that year. But there is no doubt that nothing in the 3 year old class can fit into the Secretariat.
The secretariat was one of 24,361 ponies in North America in 1970. So was Carry the Banner, son of the Advocator owned by the colorful Harvey Furgatch and trained by Stephen Ferraro. With the buzz of Belmont still in the air, Carry the Banner won Hollywood’s Argonaut Handicap (G2) later that day for 3-year-olds at one mile and a sixteenth on the main track. .
Ferraro said: “I’m sure I’ve seen Belmont at some point, as we are all such Secretariat fans. “But I’m pretty preoccupied with my pony.”
Ferraro, now retired from training, continues to be the owner of 2-year-old pony Arrogate Liberal Arts partnered with his son, Evan Ferraro, marketing director of Fasig-Tipton. Liberal Arts recently finished third in his debut at Churchill Downs.
“Yes, I suppose we can go back to Belmont to try second place,” Ferraro said with a laugh. “But Argonaut was a big deal for us. Carry the Banner was a pony with great, capricious talent. It’s fun to recall that day.”
On the occasion of the 155th Belmont Stakes on Saturday, which coincides with the Secretariat’s golden hour 50 years ago, it seemed only appropriate to say the last word to the person who first alerted the world to the tides. upcoming red.
Charles Hatton’s coverage of the Secretariat in Daily Racing ignited in the summer of 1972 in Saratoga and continued unabated throughout the remainder of his 2-year campaign, thanks to That pony was named Horse of the Year.
“In the early stages of his race, the crowd of 30,000 or 40,000 stood as silent as so many ghosts,” Hatton wrote at the end of the ’72 season. “The tension builds as he waits for the moment to strike. Suddenly, he hurls down at his hapless foe with a crippling explosion, like a hawk tearing through a chicken coop, and the chaos rocked the stands.”
In the wake of a shaking pandemic Belmont Park after the Belmont Stake of the Secretariat, Hatton trotted like, “He can’t move faster if he falls off the roof of the stands,” and, “You can’t find other horses by two pairs of binoculars.”
Then, after enjoying his winning lap, Hatton saved his best quote for a sobriety blessing that was permanently attached to the Secretariat, declaring:
“His only point of reference is himself.”
