It was 1973 and Secretariat was on his way to racing
immortality, having just captured the first Triple Crown since Citation in
1948. The Meadow Stable star would
go on to win three Eclipse awards that year: his second Horse of the Year
title, best three year old colt, and top grass runner. Secretariat’s loss in the
1973 Whitney Handicap added to the legend of Saratoga as the “Graveyard of
Champions” and catapulted trainer H. Allen Jerkens’ reputation as “The Giant
Killer”.
Secretariat
is ranked number 1 in the HRN Top Thoroughbreds of All-Time.Prior to
the running of The Whitney, NYRA, Phillip Morris Company, and the CBS
television network struck a deal to create the Marlboro Cup, a race to be run
at Belmont on September 15th, with Secretariat as the star
attraction. The promoters saw the
race as a publicity stop on the way to their big event.
During
the month of July, some said Secretariat had lost weight and was not training
well. In Bill Nack’s Making of a Champion, he wrote about the
concerns: “Turcotte (Jockey Ron) kept telling friends privately that the colt
was not himself—his workouts through July were the least impressive of his
entire career.”
There
was tremendous pressure for Secretariat to be in the 46th running of
The Whitney. His final workout went in :48-1 and was one of the slowest of his
career.
Jerkens decided to run Onion in The Whitney because, “We
thought it was a small field and we probably had a chance to be in the money.”
On August
4, 1973, a record crowd of 30,119 gathered at Saratoga. The Secretariat fans
bet heavily and made him the 1-10 favorite with Onion as the 5-1 second choice,
and the outcome has become legend.
Onion’s
victory over Secretariat is best described by Jerkens: “He was a much better
horse than anyone gave him credit for.
In fact four days before beating Secretariat he broke the track record
here (Saratoga) going six and a half furlongs and now a days nobody would let
you do it. They would think you
were nuts, but he did it. And he went right into the race and he was very good
and he was very well ridden (by Hall of Famer Jacinto Vasquez) and he caught
Secretariat going the wrong way a little bit.”Jerkens gave Vasquez credit for the victory: “We thought
he would go to the front because Onion was a sprinter and we knew the rail was
not too good so he stayed off the rail and kind of enticed Secretariat to come
inside of him and then he moved over little by little and made it tighter on
him. He rode a brilliant race on
the horse, that’s for sure.”
After the race there was debate about the upset of
Secretariat. Was the loss Turcotte’s fault? Why had the horse’s training been
so inconsistent? Later it came out
that Secretariat had a low-grade fever on the day of the race, but that with
all of the hype the Meadow Stable connections felt that they had to run him and
that he probably could win anyway. Big Red continued to run a fever for several
days after the defeat.
The 1973 Whitney has become the signature upset victory
for “The Giant Killer” Allen Jerkens, but that was only one of his great wins.
His horses beat Kelso three times; Forego, Riva Ridge, and Buckpasser each
once; as well as Secretariat for a second time.
In the 70’s I was another one of those kids that went to the track with their fathers, and I immediately became enthralled with the excitement and challenges of handicapping. And then the charisma and dominance of Secretariat gave me a hero to follow. To this day, I still get emotional when I hear Chic Anderson’s call of the 1973 Belmont, “Secretariat is moving like a tremendous machine”. 
