Woodward

Secretariat with Ron Turcotte aboard being led out to the track by groom Eddie Sweat.

It's a funny thing about horses who can't lose. Sometimes they do. Probably no horse had ever so resoundingly affirmed his invincible might than the mighty Secretariat had in winning the Marlboro Stakes in September of 1973. The Triple Crown champion took on the finest horses of all ages in North America that day, including the hardest hickory cracks of the handicap division, and snapped them like twigs. But two weeks later Secretariat would lose to a lightly-regarded 16-1 shot named Prove Out, a horse not good enough to be invited to race against Secretariat in the Marlboro Cup.

Some said it wasn't the horse, but the magic of the horse trainer that made the upset. It was trainer Allen Jerkens who had sent out Onion to upset Secretariat at Saratoga in August, and now it was Jerkens sending out an even less-likely challenger to beat the Big Red Horse again.

Following the winning style employed previously by Onion, jockey Jorge Velasquez sent Prove Out to an early lead in the Woodward, looking to go wire-to-wire against Secretariat. Meanwhile, not wishing for lightning to strike him twice, Secretariat's jockey Ron Turcotte snatched the lead for himself on the backstretch. But in the stretch, Prove Out came back to pass Secretariat and grab the win by 4 ^½ lengths. The race was strictly between those two. It was a distant 11 lengths back to Cougar II, who was along for third.

Whether it was the trainer's magic, or the luck of horse racing, or simply a flaw in Secretariat's personality that left him less interested in modest challenges than big ones well, that's something racing fans will always debate. But the fact remains that in the 1 ^½ mile Woodward Stakes at Belmont, a 16-1 shot did beat favored Secretariat and beat him pretty easily.

Prove Out defeats Secretariat by 4 ½ lengths over a sloppy track in the Sept. 29, 1973 Woodward Stakes at Belmont Park.

Or … maybe the bettors who dismissed Prove Out simply didn’t know what was coming. That a modest, sprinter-type horse would suddenly transform into a hard-as-nails distance performer in a new barn. That’s the notion of writer Steve Haskin, who did a more careful analysis of a horse most people have pretty much dismissed as a fluke that had a big day. “Regardless of what cynics may say,” Haskin wrote. “Secretariat did not lose the Woodward, Prove Out won the Woodward, and I can’t think of another horse that could have beaten him that day.”

Haskin notes that  Jerkens had given Prove Out a series of series of sharp workouts and three-mile gallops to build the horse’s stamina and toughness. In the Woodward, Prove Out ran home fast to pull away from Secretariat, laying down a final quarter mile in 24 seconds — which is remarkable in a race run at the distance of 1 ½  miles. Prove Out was clocked in a time of 2:25 4/5, the second fastest 1 ½ miles ever at Belmont Park – second only to Secretariat’s sensational Belmont Stakes victory earlier that summer.

Prove Out wasn’t done, either. Less than a month later while training for the two-mile Jockey Club Gold Cup, then America’s longest important race, Jerkens worked his horse on Sunday, Monday and Thursday leading up to the Saturday race. In that one, Prove Out dueled Riva Ridge into submission and pranced on to victory in 3:20 flat. As Haskin notes, only Kelso had gone faster – ever – twice shading 3:20 in winning the Jockey Club Gold Cup in the early 1960’s.

For any other horse, a second in a $100,000 mile-and-half stakes race in Belmont Park would be considered a good performance. But good wasn't good enough for avid Secretariat rooters. It was a hard loss for some to take.

For many racing fans, however, the big story was the magic of trainer Jerkens. He had now upset Secretariat twice with two different horses at two different tracks. Those triumphs certainly made the trainer's reputation,  and Jerkens came away from 1973 with the well-earned nickname "Giant Killer."

A half century later, Jerkens and the nickname are forever intertwined, as is his reputation and legacy for springing upsets in big races. As for Secretariat, the beaten champion would return to do battle another day.