Secretariat, with Gaffney on him, walked to the training track that morning, taking the same route Feliciano had taken him the last time. The red horse stopped at the gap and stood there for several seconds, looking to the left and right, raising his head, as horses do when they are looking off into a distance. Gaffney did not hurry him, but let him stand there and watch the morning activity. It was a habit the colt acquired early in life—he liked to stop and see what he was getting into before he got into it—and he did that every time anyone ever took him to the racetrack.
Near the clocker’s shed a quarter mile away, Secretariat began doing his number: he dipped his shoulder and pulled, but Gaffney, riding with long stirrups, rode with him. The colt had been confined for a few weeks, and he was feeling his unburned oats. He galloped off strongly, pulling hard on the bit, but every day Gaffney gave him more rein, exerting less pressure, and after several days the colt relaxed. As he had done at Hialeah he started plopping along easily, moving smoothly and relaxed.
Secretariat soon stopped dipping his right shoulder. Gaffney, putting a special bit in the colt’s mouth with a prong on its left side, worked for days on the problem. Pressing both hands on his mount’s neck, Gaffney kept pressure on the right line, and every time the colt started to dip to the left Gaffney pressed down on the colt’s neck and exerted pressure on the rein.
Gaffney had been riding horses for almost two decades—he had ridden big and small horses, some fast and slow horses, stiff and supple horses—but in Secretariat he sensed the finest running machine he had ever straddled.
That the red horse had never run a race did not temper Gaffney’s public enthusiasm, an enthusiasm rooted in the way he looked and moved to Gaffney. “He was strictly a powerhouse—his movement, stride, and for a horse who is not supposed to know much at his age, he sure knew a lot. He would change strides just right coming in and out of a turn, and he seemed to me so intelligent for a young horse. Nothing bothered him. I had been on a lot of two-year-olds in my life, but this one really struck me.”
Gaffney’s mornings at the racetrack revolved around Secretariat. He rode the red horse steadily, building him up in his own mind, telling stablehands of the youngster’s extraordinary future, boasting about him to grooms and hot walkers and even to his wife, Mary. He began calling the horse “Big Red.”
Gaffney told his mother about the colt, too, and she replied by knitting and sending him a pommel pad—which is inserted as protection under the front of the saddle—with Secretariat’s name knitted in blue lettering across a white background. As if to flaunt his confidence and to reaffirm his instincts, translating them into something tangible, Gaffney purchased two blue saddlecloths, protective pads that prevent the saddle from abrading the colt. He took the saddlecloths—for which he paid four dollars each—to a woman in Queens who did needlework. Gaffney paid her twenty-four dollars to stitch “Secretariat” into the section that hangs, visibly, below the rear of the saddle. He took one of Lucien’s exercise saddles home—it was the saddle he always used when he rode the colt—and for several hours, with his leather-working kit, Gaffney hammered “Secretariat” into it, giving the letters a cursive flourish.
The red horse returned to serious work on the racetrack Thursday, May 18, when he went three-eighths of a mile in 0:37; yet no one but a few clockers—Meadow Stable hands and avid horseplayers—paid any attention. Lucien, for one, had his mind on things of greater moment: the Preakness Stakes, the second race in the Triple Crown series, was consuming all his energy. Penny Tweedy was confident of the outcome, feeling certain Riva Ridge would win it. This only made her disappointment at what happened all the more bitter.
The ninety-seventh running of the Preakness Stakes was a 1:553/s horror show, a mudslinger during the running and after it. Riva Ridge broke in a tangle, crowded Festive Mood on the first turn and down the backstretch, and began dueling his archrival Key to the Mint for second position. On the lead, his ears playing and pricking at the sight of the swipes and hot walkers draped over the backstretch fence, was William Farish III’s Bee Bee Bee. He was galloping along with consummate nonchalance, and neither Riva Ridge nor Key to the Mint ever got close enough to bite him, much less beat him, while veteran jockey Eldon Nelson sat chilly on him in a superbly judged piece of race riding.
Bee Bee Bee won it. Stretch-running No Le Hace was second, Key to the Mint a neck in front of Riva Ridge for third. The next day Lucien accused Turcotte of losing the race by not letting Riva Ridge move to the leader at the far turn. He said Turcotte was so busy watching jockey Braulio Baeza on Key to the Mint that he let Bee Bee Bee steal away with the race unchallenged. Elliott Burch, trainer of Key to the Mint, made no such accusations against Baeza. Turcotte said only that Riva Ridge could not handle the muddy track.
Laurin was furious with Turcotte, howling to turfwriter Joe Hirsch early Sunday morning. Laurin and Penny Tweedy talked about taking Turcotte off the horse again. “It was the second race he blew for us,” Penny Tweedy said. But again, rather than switch at a critical juncture, they decided to keep Turcotte for the Belmont Stakes June 9. Several days after the Preakness, Lucien had cooled off, and his opinion of Turcotte’s ride had mellowed considerably.
Hope for the Triple Crown was gone, just when it had seemed within their grasp.
If not for the Preakness Stakes, the bay might have won all three. For on June 10, Riva Ridge cruised to the front of the mile-and-a-half Belmont Stakes, opening the bidding with a half mile in 0:48 and six furlongs in 1:12, a perfect twelve-clip, and he almost strung two more twelves together heading for the far turn. Riva Ridge reached the mile in 1:361/5 when Smiling Jack, racing with Riva all the way, began to stagger. Key to the Mint, probably overtrained for the race, spit out the bit turning for home, and Riva Ridge slowed down but galloped to win by seven in 2:28, the third fastest time of the race since it was first run at that distance in 1926, the year Man o’ War’s son, Crusader, won it.
Thus Riva Ridge reclaimed whatever prestige he had lost in the Preakness, establishing himself as the leading three-year-old in America and seemingly destined for Horse-of-the-Year honors. Then it happened.
The big mistake—one that would hound Penny Tweedy and Lucien Laurin—was deciding to take Riva Ridge to California for the mile-and-a-quarter Hollywood Derby, a race that appeared a soft touch for “The Ridge.” It was not. He carried high weight of 129 pounds, and he was desperate to win it.
He was like Olympic quarter miler Lee Evans running against a good high school sprint relay team. Finalista made two runs at Riva Ridge, Royal Champion took one close look early before calling it an afternoon, and finally Bicker ran at him in the final yards. Riva Ridge just lasted to win. The race exhausted him, leaving him dead on his feet, and many believe he never was the same horse again all year. They had no way of knowing it then, of course, but Riva Ridge would race six more times before the end of the year, losing his final start by thirty-eight lengths, and wouldn’t win another race.
Through May and June, with Gaffney galloping him and others working him, Secretariat grew in strength and ability, gained in fitness, and appeared to begin learning in earnest how to run. Other two-year-olds were appearing, too, such as Cornelius Vanderbilt Whitney’s chestnut colt Pvt. Smiles. On June 1 another unraced youngster headed down the path past Barn 5, walking from the stable of Bull Hancock. He was a son of Pretense, the one-time Claiborne stallion, out of the mare Sequoia, who like Somethingroyal was a daughter of Princequillo.
His name was Sham, and that morning he worked an easy half mile in 0:514A Sham was growing quickly, and he would fill out one day into a rangy, good-looking dark bay colt, but on June 1 he, too, was still an ungainly youngster who hadn’t yet caught on to the game. Sham would learn soon enough.
On Thursday morning, June 6, three days before Riva Ridge’s Belmont Stakes, Secretariat wore blinkers for the first time—blue