Bay Shore

After a championship 2-year-old season that saw Secretariat named all-age Horse of the Year in North America, the big red son of Bold Ruler was given the winter off to fill out for his 3-year-old campaign. First target on the agenda of trainer Lucien Laurin and owner Penny Chenery would be the Kentucky Derby, and then ideally the Triple Crown.

Chenery and Laurin had won the 1972 Kentucky Derby with Riva Ridge, and were ready to roll again with a colt many believed could be a horse for the ages.

First step on the Road to Glory was the seven-furlong Bay Shore Stakes at Aqueduct that would hopefully launch the big horse on a path to Kentucky and Churchill Downs on the First Saturday in May.

Secretariat had been training in Florida for his return to the races. Getting back in shape. The stable vanned north and settled in at Laurin’s barn No. 5 at Belmont Park. Three days before the Bay Shore Laurin asked regular rider Ron Turcotte to give the horse a sharp workout. Secretariat had grown over the winter months, as horses turning three will do, maturing into their adult size. The horse was now 1 ¼ inches taller, measuring five feet six inches from the ground to his withers (top of shoulder point), with a massive 78 inches circumference around his chest. Bigger, yes -- and also faster.

Turcotte galloped Secretariat along to warm up, then allowed the big chestnut to slant over to the rail and snap into speed. The work began at the three-eighths pole on the far turn – three eighths of a mile to the finish. Secretariat cruised into speed quickly, then turned it up. After a first eighth mile in just over 11 seconds, the horse blazed his second and third quarters in just over 10 seconds each. At the finish wire, professional clockers clicked their watches to catch Secretariat’s “move” in 32 3/5 seconds. A breathtaking display of speed.

Maybe too much speed, trainer Laurin worried, especially just three days before his first start of the season. “I’m amazed,” Laurin said. “I wanted him to work fast but I don’t know if I wanted him to work that fast.” Journalist Bill Nack, who would later author Secretariat’s biography, Secretariat: The Making of a Champion, describes the scene that morning: Laurin talking with the press, talking with Penny Chenery, and phoning key members of the new $6.08 million syndicate that had purchased shares of Secretariat.

“For him, it was just a blowout,” Laurin said, using a racetrack term for getting plenty of air into a horse’s lungs. A blowout. “It makes a difference if he comes back with his head between his legs. But he didn’t. For him it was a blowout.”

The writer describes Laurin checking with groom Eddie Sweat, at Secretariat’s stall.

“How’s he doin’, Mr. Sweat?” The trainer asked.

“He’s OK boss,” said Sweat, pointing to a feed tub the horse had happily emptied.

“If that work had bothered him, he’d have backed off his feed,” beamed the trainer. “Look, he licked the tub. You come by here tomorrow and he’ll be jumping sky high.”

A few minutes later Turcotte was up on another horse and spotted by syndicate member Alfred Vanderbilt. “Say Ron,” called Vanderbilt. “I heard you burned up the racetrack this morning.”

“No,” Turcotte said. “I just dried it out a little.”

The Bay Shore was a short-distance race, but it wasn't that easy. Secretariat bumped with a horse named Torsion soon after the start, then found a galloping tempo down the backstretch. Turcotte signaled Secretariat, and the horse launched his move near the end of the backstretch. The rider bided his time around the turn, looking for room as the jockeys of three horses ahead of him attempted to maintain a wall to contain the favorite. But when a crack developed -- a slight glimmer of daylight ahead -- Secretariat powered through it and quickly strode away.

Daily Racing Form columnist Charlie Hatton loved the way Secretariat had dismissed his rivals: “Confronted with a seemingly impenetrable wall of horses, he came smashing through like Kung Fu.”