28/07/2024
Great story of another amazing horse.
SECRETARIAT
The newborn Somethingroyal foal gained his legs just forty-five minutes after birth and began suckling when he was an hour and fifteen minutes old. He was well made, well bred, healthy, and hungry, and that made him as much a potential Kentucky Derby winner as any of the other 24,953 thoroughbreds born in America in 1970.
The mare and the foal were turned loose together the following day in a confined one-acre paddock behind the foaling barn. So that the newborn foal does not injure himself trying to stay at her side, a mare is not given much room to run and roam about. After the foal had gained the strength to stay with her—four days later—the pair was turned out with other mares and their foals in a three-acre pasture near the broodmare barn. The routine of farm life began.
For six weeks the mare and foal were pastured in the daytime, and returned at night to their single Stall 3 in the broodmare barn. The routine changed in mid-May, when groom Lewis Tillman began taking them outdoors in the early afternoon, leaving them out all night, and then returning them in the morning to Stall 3. The foal subsisted on Somethingroyal’s milk for the first thirty-five days of his life. Then Tillman began to supplement the youngster’s regimen with grain, preparing him for the day of weaning in October. Tillman would tie up the mare in the stall and give the c**t small portions of crushed oats and sweet feed. He grew quickly as the summer passed. Christopher Chenery’s personal secretary of thirty-three years, Elizabeth Ham, visited the farm and looked at the foals. Miss Ham noted in her log, dated July 28, 1970:
Ch. C Bold Ruler-Somethingroyal
Three white stockings—Well-made c**t—Might be a little light under the knees—Stands well on pasterns—Good straight hind leg—Good shoulders and hindquarters—You would have to like him.
Summer cooled into October. The daily rations of the Bold Ruler c**t were boosted periodically, up to five and finally to six quarts of grain a day by the time he was separated from Somethingroyal on October 6, 1970. Like other newly weaned c**ts, the youngster howled and stomped around the stall and field, but that passed in a couple of days. Somethingroyal was far into pregnancy once again by then, this time carrying a foal by the Meadow stallion First Landing. The aging Imperatrice, the c**t’s maternal granddam, had been bred for the last time in 1964, and since then had been pressed into service as baby-sitter for nervous, young, and uncertain mares, especially for broodmares visiting the farm. They would gather around her in a field, as if around a grandmother, within the apron and circumference of her calm. Chenery had bought her twenty-three years before, when she was nine in 1947, so while her grandson was romping around toward his yearling year, which would begin January 1, 1971, Imperatrice was already pushing thirty-three. She was aging visibly, three dozen ribs and elbows dressed up inside an old fur coat, but her eyes were clear. Everyone hoped that she would live to reach the milestone age of thirty-five.
Her chestnut grandson had begun to fill out into a striking if still pony-sized c**t by the day of his weaning, and on October 11, Miss Ham was moved to note: “Three white feet—A lovely c**t.” Lovely was twice underlined.”
Secretariat grew out above the matchstick legs, his ration of grain increasing from six to seven and then to eight quarts as he lengthened, heightened, and widened through his yearling year of 1971. “A lovely c**t. Half brother to Sir Ga***rd,” Miss Ham noted.
After his weaning, Secretariat lived in the end of a row of stalls by the office behind the big house that Chris Chenery rebuilt and renovated. Barn 14 is an attractive set of stalls withdrawn under a roof topped by a spanking bright blue and white cupola.
Secretariat lived in the premier stall, the one traditionally reserved for the most promising c**t yearling, Stall 11. Gentry placed him there because of his superior conformation and pedigree. Somethingroyal may not have been a runner—starting only once and finishing far up the racetrack—but she had given birth to fine running horses—Sir Ga***rd, Syrian Sea, First Family. Putting the most promising c**t in Stall 11 was not mere symbolic ceremony to Gentry. Facing the Coke machine and nearest the feed bin, the stall is seen and passed more times a day than any other stall in the shed, so its occupant is observed more closely during the routine of the farm.
Secretariat lived there that fall, winter, spring, and most of the summer of 1971. Danny Mines, a yearling man, would daily walk the youngster to and from the field. Secretariat was nosy, alert, ambitious, playful, playing constantly with other yearlings, and in that shifting pecking order of the yearling crowd he was at times a leader, at times not.
Meanwhile, he grew up. On April 20, 1971, Miss Ham noted that Secretariat had suffered a minor injury at the farm: “Nicked left shoulder—Not serious.” Things far worse had happened at the farm. The nick on Secretariat’s left shoulder, probably from a fence post, healed and disappeared.
As spring and summer warmed up to August—baking the sand and gravel white on roadside shoulders, dappling the wardrobes of the bays, grays, and chestnuts in the fields—
A blacksmith shod Secretariat on August 3, fitting him out for a set of racing plates on his front feet. They were of aluminum and signaled the start of a new way of life. Later that morning, groom Charlie Ross and several other men headed for the row of stalls at the yearling barn. It was a day of permanent change.
Ross, clipping a shank on Secretariat, led him out of Stall 11, to which he would never return, lined him up in single file with the other yearlings, and marched him in caravan down the road. Yearling trainer Bob Bailes directed traffic while the youngsters, heads up, moved across the pavement, passing the stretch of the racetrack, across the sandy surface to the infield and offices.
Secretariat was taken to Stall 1, in the corner, and there his training began on August 4.
Ross played with the c**t’s ears, preparing him for a bridle. Secretariat ducked away from Ross; he did not like his ears touched. Ross also tried to lift a foot to clean it, but Secretariat kicked him away. Meredith Bailes watched from the doorway and heard Ross cussing softly.
Secretariat’s spookiness, not uncommon in the young, meant more work for Ross, more trouble teaching, more time. He put a rub rag to the c**t, trying to clean him off, and Secretariat dipped away again. So Ross worked with Secretariat the next few days, picking up his feet again and again, toying gently with the sensitive ears, rubbing and patting him and talking, getting him accustomed to the presence of a human in the stall.
On August 9, they fitted a bit into his mouth for the first time, pulling the bridle over his ears. Meredith Bailes put on the saddle. At the odd sensation of the saddle and girth, Secretariat hu**ed his back, arching it. Inside the 220-yard indoor ring, where all the Meadow yearlings are schooled and broken under saddle, the three stopped—Bailes, Ross, and Secretariat.
Bailes put his arms over the c**t, patting him. Ross took the bridle with one hand and reached down, giving Bailes a boost.
Up Bailes went, not straddling the c**t, only lying across his back, lengthwise, his stomach lying on the saddle. Bailes said nothing, watching what he was doing, his full weight resting on the back. The bridle was reinless. Ross led Secretariat several steps down the ring with Meredith lying across him. Ross stopped the c**t. Bailes slid off, jumped back on. Ross walked Secretariat forward again, a few steps at a time around the oval. Bailes was up and off, up and off, Ross walking and stopping, walking and stopping. For three days they went through that routine, accustoming the c**t to a saddle and bridle and a body on his back, a bit in his mouth. Secretariat behaved sensibly, Bailes recalled, with poise and equanimity. The lesson changed on August 12.
Bailes again saddled the c**t, and he stood for a moment beside him in the indoor ring. Secretariat no longer hu**ed at the feel of the saddle, and he had never tried to “break Western,” as they call it on the farm—to buck, kick, or break loose. But August 12 was another day, the one on which Bailes would climb aboard and ride him for the first time, straddling the c**t with both legs. Bailes knew the ceiling of the ring was about twelve feet high, perhaps a foot or so more. His head had almost grazed it while riding yearlings that bucked him. Bailes donned his blue fiberglass helmet, steadied himself at the side of Secretariat, talking to him. “Take it easy, old boy. Whoa. Easy now. Whoa.”
