In , his success as a racehorse got him inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame, and is considered by many to be the most famous racehorse of all time. Secretariat is most well-known for his incredible performances in the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont. Not only did he win all three of these races to become the Triple Crown champion, but he did it all in record times. Secretariat won the Kentucky Derby with a record time of In the final race of the Triple Crown, Big Red blew his competitors away, winning by an incredible 31 lengths.
In his first start, a horse named Quebec cut in front of the field, leading to a chain reaction that caused the chestnut to get bumped hard. Though he was able to recover from the bump, he ran into traffic on the backstretch.
He was able to push through and ended up placing fourth in the race. His groom, Eddie Sweat, thought the young colt was clumsy and a bit on the wild side. Despite his unsuccessful first race, Secretariat proved to be a star.
He went on to win 16 of his 21 starts. At the time Secretariat won the Triple Crown, the racing industry was still heavily dominated by men. However, his owner was a woman called Penny Chenery. Her siblings urged her to sell the farm, but she wanted to keep it running.
To keep the stable profitable, Chenery decided to breed. The chestnut colt gained a reputation for being a kind, likable horse. Chenery believed that her big chestnut Thoroughbred had what it took to be a racehorse. Despite his rough beginning on the race track, she had faith in him and he soon proved to be an incredible athlete.
Not only was Secretariat was known for being kind-hearted, but he also had a big heart in the literal sense. Specifically, laminitis is an inflamation of the sensitive laminae -- the sensitive tissue beneath the hoof wall that contains nerves and vessels.
Laminitis can develop rapidly and is life-threatening, although it is treatable. In mild cases, horses can recover and resume some athletic activity, according to Lexington, Ky.
Dean Richardson, the chief surgeon who has been treating Barbaro, described the problem this way at his news conference on Thursday:. Evolutionarily speaking, they adapted to walk on the tip of their middle digit. So, they're essentially walking on the nail of their middle finger. And if really what you're talking about is the bone inside of the hoof has to be attached to that nail They are inter-digitating pieces of tissue And if the horse loses the connection between the bone and the hoof, it's exquisitely painful to the horse because the horse needs that connection to walk around.
The only way you can cure it once it's at this point is many, many months of the horse actually growing a new hoof wall that extends down from the top, just the way you would regrow a nail if you had your nail essentially pulled out, which I think everyone recognizes to be very painful. It's a serious condition. And it's a very difficult, long-standing problem to deal with. The disease also is seen in horses with systemic infections and mares that retain the placenta.
Swerczek proceeded to carefully extract the heart, setting it on the table. Both standing there in utter silence for a moment, Dr. Kaufman finally asked,. There were no pathological abnormalities of the heart, typically found in an animal with an enlarged heart. All of the chambers were normal. There were no lesions. I estimated his heart to be lbs.
I did the necropsy on his sire, Bold Ruler, who did not have a large heart. Ironically, he had the second largest heart I had ever seen, at 19 lbs. It was the perfect combination of, well His large muscled body, deep chest cavity and broad girth, paired with his large heart that acted like a V8 engine in a sports car. He continued to run faster with each stride he took due to this phenomenon.
His stride length already surpassed nearly every horse on the track due to his flawless conformation. Secretariat was the exact combination of all that made the perfect racehorse. Her research led back to one specific mare called Pocahontas, foaled in , which seemed to prove traceable and could not be produced by stallions. History tends not to repeat itself when it comes to those almost poetic cornerstones of history.
Swerczek had been difficult to reach the day Secretariat was euthanized due to being with his son, Michael, who had been critically injured in an automobile accident. One did not have a cell phone in their pocket for instantaneous ways to get in touch with someone like we have today. I was not prepared for a full diagnostic necropsy, nor did we see a need for such, we knew his condition was clearly laminitis.
Swerczek not providing proof, such as photographic evidence of the heart, not having a scale for an exact weight, and not preserving the heart. Our son, Michael, was critically injured and not expected to live. Tom had been going back and forth to the labs to do what autopsies he could on other horses, but that is also why he was not aware of what bad shape Secretariat was in.
That is how much this meant to him, and also why he was not prepared with having all of the necessary equipment that day. There was no time. A lot of opportunities at various positions and job offers presented themselves as a result of this discovery, but were turned down, as Dr.
Swerczek and his wife dedicated their lives to caring for their son. Their lives never quite returned to normal. They retrofitted their home, including adding on an addition, to bring their son home. Michael lived in a coma for 22 years before passing away.
With Mary Ann being a nurse, together they took turns tirelessly caring for their son for nearly half of his career. A few articles shared a brief mention of the discovery over the years, but for something one would assume could bring great fanfare, or the wing of a hospital named in Dr.
However, fame was not something he was after. Let's walk him about 15 minutes. Sweat slipped into the stall, put the lead shank on Secretariat and handed it to Davis, who led the colt to the outdoor walking ring. In a small stable not 30 feet away, pony girl Robin Edelstein knocked a water bucket against the wall. Secretariat, normally a docile colt on a shank, rose up on his hind legs, pawing at the sky, and started walking in circles.
Davis cowered below, as if beneath a thunderclap, snatching at the chain and begging the horse to come down. Secretariat floated back to earth. He danced around the ring as if on springs, his nostrils flared and snorting, his eyes rimmed in white. Unaware of the scene she was causing, Edelstein rattled the bucket again, and Secretariat spun in a circle, bucked and leaped in the air, kicking and spraying cinders along the walls of the pony barn.
In a panic, Davis tugged at the shank, and the horse went up again, higher and higher, and Davis bent back yelling, ''Come on down! Come on down! I stood in awe. I had never seen a horse so fit. The Derby and Preakness had wound him as tight as a watch, and he seemed about to burst out of his coat. I had no idea what to expect that day in the Belmont, with him going a mile and a half, but I sensed we would see more of him than we had ever seen before. Secretariat ran flat into legend, started running right out of the gate and never stopped, ran poor Sham into defeat around the first turn and down the backstretch and sprinted clear, opening two lengths, four, then five.
He dashed to the three-quarter pole in , the fastest six-furlong clocking in Belmont history. I dropped my head and cursed Turcotte: What is he thinking about? Has he lost his mind?
The colt raced into the far turn, opening seven lengths past the half-mile pole. The timer flashed his astonishing mile mark: ! I was seeing it but not believing it. Secretariat was still sprinting.
The four horses behind him disappeared. He opened Then Halfway around the turn, he was 14 in front. Belmont Park began to shake. The whole place was on its feet. Turning for home, Secretariat was 20 in front, having run the mile and a quarter in flat, faster than his Derby time. He came home alone.
He opened his lead to As rhythmic as a rocking horse, he never missed a beat. I remember seeing Turcotte look over to the timer, and I looked over too. It was blinking , The record was Turcotte scrubbed on the colt, opening 30 lengths, finally The clock flashed crazily: The place was one long, deafening roar. The colt seemed to dive for the finish, snipping it clean at I bolted up the press box stairs with exultant shouts and there yielded a part of myself to that horse forever.
I didn't see Lawrence Robinson that day last October. The next morning, I returned to Claiborne to interview Seth Hancock. On my way through the farm's offices, I saw one of the employees crying at her desk. Treading lightly, I passed farm manager John Sosby's office. I stopped, and he called me in. He looked like a chaplain whose duty was to tell the news to the victim's family.
I felt the skin tighten on the back of my neck. We thought we had it under control, but he took a bad turn this morning. He's a very sick horse. He may not make it. Down the hall, sitting at his desk, Hancock appeared tired, despairing and anxious, a man facing a decision he didn't want to make. What Sosby had told me was just beginning to sink in. They don't give a hoot about the other studs. You want to know who Secretariat is in human terms? Just imagine the greatest athlete in the world.
The greatest. Now make him six-foot-three, the perfect height. Make him real intelligent and kind. And on top of that, make him the best-lookin' guy ever to come down the pike. He was all those things as a horse.
He isn't even a horse anymore. He's a legend. So how do you think I feel? Before I left, I asked Hancock to call me in Lexington if he decided to put the horse down.
We agreed to meet at his mother's house the next morning. I told Hancock I had been to Robinson's house the day before and I had seen Secretariat from a distance, grazing.
He doesn't look good. I did not know it then, but Secretariat was suffering the intense pain in the hooves that is common to laminitis.
That morning, Anderson had risen at dawn to check on the horse, and Secretariat had lifted his head and nickered very loudly. I left Claiborne stunned. That night, I made a dozen phone calls to friends, telling them the news, and I sat up late, dreading the next day.
I woke up early and went to breakfast and came back to the room. The message light was dark. It was Wednesday, Oct. I drove out to Waddell Hancock's place in Paris. We had talked for more than an hour when Seth, looking shaken and pale, walked through the front door. He did not answer. I left the house, and an hour later I was back in my room in Lexington. I had just taken off my coat when I turned and saw it, the red blinking light on my phone. I knew. I walked around the room. Out the door and down the hall.
Back into the room. Out the door and around the block. Out the door and down to the lobby. I called sometime after noon. I phoned Annette Covault, an old friend who is the mare booker at Claiborne, and she was crying when she read the message: ''Secretariat was euthanized at a.
The last time I remember really crying was on St. Valentine's Day of , when my wife called to tell me that my father had died. At the moment she called, I was sitting in a purple room in Caesars Palace, in Las Vegas, waiting for an interview with the heavyweight champion, Larry Holmes. Now here I was, in a different hotel room in a different town, suddenly feeling like a very old and tired man of 48, leaning with my back against a wall and sobbing for a long time with my face in my hands.
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