The legend of the record-breaking Secretariat, ‘the greatest horse that ever lived’
America’s first Triple Crown winner for quarter of a century, Secretariat’s speed records from 1973 still stand today. Jamie Haase tracks the enduring significance of the bright chestnut who reset racing’s boundaries
More than half a century later, Secretariat’s records and reputation still reign supreme,” said Leeanne Meadows Ladin, author and president of the non-profit Secretariat For Virginia.
Today, Leeanne lives in the farm manager’s house at Meadow Stable, Virginia, surrounded by a landscape that once raised and conditioned a young Secretariat – his foaling shed and yearling barn, largely untouched, are preserved as historic landmarks.
Earlier this year, nearly 350 acres of adjacent pastureland, including “The Cove,” locally known as Secretariat’s nursery, were placed under permanent conservation easements. From this vantage, Leeanne lives alongside a legacy firmly grounded – not distant history, but uninterrupted, a continuum between yesterday and tomorrow.
Horseracing in the United States dates to the early 17th century, with Long Island’s Newmarket Course, established in 1665, marking the first organised racetrack in colonial America. Named for Britain’s racing capital, it was designed to formalise English racing tradition throughout the colonies. Three centuries later, on Saturday, 9 June 1973, American thoroughbred racing reached a pinnacle never before seen – and never replicated since.
At the summit stood a chestnut colt whose supremacy not only secured the Triple Crown, but reset the sport’s boundaries. For five extraordinary weeks, the record books were not simply rewritten but reimagined and today Secretariat’s official times still stand unchallenged.
‘Everything about Secretariat is out of this world’
Secretariat won the Kentucky Derby in 1min 59.4sec over 1¼ miles and the Preakness Stakes in 1min 53sec over 1³⁄₁₆ miles. At Belmont Park, he completed the sweep with one of the most dominant performances in sporting history.
“Secretariat set a world record for a mile and a half, 2min 24sec, which still stands, and won the race by 31 lengths,” his owner, Penny Chenery, later wrote in The New York Times.
The 1973 season was not built on soft opposition. Sham, Secretariat’s chief rival, possessed speed that eclipsed many past Triple Crown winners, yet his abilities were repeatedly obscured by unparalleled athleticism. At Churchill Downs, before a record crowd of 134,476, Sham finished second after recording an estimated 1min 59⅘sec – fast enough to have set a new track record and to have won virtually any other Derby in history.
Under the protocols of the era, however, only the winner’s time was captured, leaving Sham’s performance unacknowledged – and Secretariat standing between him and immortality.
The Belmont Stakes, above all others, captured the performance that fixed Secretariat’s name in the public imagination, carried as much by the moment as by the voice that delivered it.
Calling the race, broadcaster Chic Anderson found the words on cue to match what was unfolding: “Secretariat is widening now, he is moving like a tremendous machine.” More than half a century later, the call endures as faithfully as the record it immortalised.
Secretariat won 16 of his 21 starts, earning $1,316,808 (£989,000). Behind those figures stood a team whose influence shaped the colt’s rise and restraint. Trainer Lucien Laurin served as an anchor, guiding a talent that could easily have outrun its own narrative.
He once described Secretariat as “beautiful, everything about him is out of this world… in all his races he has taken the worst of it by coming from behind, usually circling his field”.
For those who worked closest to him, the relationship was personal. Secretariat’s exercise rider Charlie Davis later reflected on the bond they shared: “We didn’t make Secretariat. Secretariat made us.”
Genetics further fuelled the Sham and Secretariat rivalry through their grandsire, Princequillo – a transatlantic influence conceived in France, born in Ireland and safeguarded in the United States during World War II. Sired by Prince Rose, Princequillo was imported by Arthur “Bull” Hancock Jr in 1945 and later stood at Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky, leaving an intercontinental imprint on thoroughbred stamina.
Princequillo’s bloodline converged at Meadow Stable just north of Richmond, Virginia, before it reached the racetrack. After establishing the farm in 1936 and constructing many of its buildings himself, Christopher Chenery built the Meadow into one of the industry’s most respected breeding operations. It was there, on 30 March 1970, that Somethingroyal, in foal to Bold Ruler, delivered the future 1973 Triple Crown champion.
In 1967, as his health declined, Christopher Chenery’s daughter Penny Chenery assumed control of the Meadow. With her siblings urging liquidation, she chose instead to safeguard the operation, motivated as much by loyalty as by conviction. Her resolve was vindicated in 1972, when the home-bred Riva Ridge won both the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes.
That same year, Riva Ridge’s Meadow stablemate, the two-year-old Secretariat, was crowned Horse of the Year, quietly setting the stage for what was to follow.
Breaking records on and off the track
In 1973, entering his three-year-old season, Secretariat did not find his stride immediately, but when it came, it came decisively. Ángel Cordero Jr, the Hall of Fame jockey who beat Secretariat in his maiden start at New York City’s Aqueduct Racetrack, recalled a colt still in development, not yet the phenomenon he would become.
“When Secretariat first entered the scene, the jockeys all knew he was special, a great horse,” Ángel tells H&H. “But it wasn’t until he competed at Saratoga in the summer of 1972, stringing together decisive victories in the Sanford Stakes and the Hopeful Stakes, that we recognised just how astonishing he was.”
Penny Chenery already knew as much. Anticipating both opportunity and obligation, she chose to syndicate Secretariat into shared stud ownership before the 1973 campaign even began. The record-breaking $6.08m (£4.57m) agreement was announced on 26 February, little more than a month after her father’s death in January.
Meanwhile, Seth Hancock, newly installed as Claiborne Farm’s third-generation president at just 23, was also navigating the recent loss of his father, Bull Hancock, while assuming responsibility for both the farm and the Secretariat syndication. Seth later told H&H that one of the reasons the deal succeeded was that friends of his father stepped in to buy shares because they “didn’t want to see me fail”, support that helped make the agreement possible.
On 28 October 1973, in Toronto, Ontario, with the Triple Crown secured and his times fixed in the record books, Secretariat made his final start in the Canadian International Championship Stakes on Woodbine Racetrack’s cold turf, surging effortlessly to win by 6½ lengths.
The venue was a fitting farewell. Both trainer Lucien Laurin and jockey Ron Turcotte were Canadian, but Penny Chenery’s choice carried deeper resonance, reflecting the long-standing relationship between her father and the Canadian breeder, EP Taylor, of Windfields Farm. An architect of Woodbine and breeder of Northern Dancer and his Epsom Derby-winning son Nijinsky, Taylor became a trusted adviser after Christopher Chenery’s death and an early backer of the syndication.
After his final lap in Toronto, Secretariat was withdrawn from training and sent to Claiborne to begin stud duties. There would be no gradual winding down, no four-year-old campaign. He left the racetrack not in decline, but at full speed, his legacy intact.
Secretariat at stud
With competition in the rear-view, the bloodline enterprise began. Carrying extraordinary expectations, Secretariat arrived at Claiborne on 12 November 1973, taking up residence in the stall once occupied by his sire, Bold Ruler.
From his early crops emerged high-class performers, including Kentucky Derby runner-up General Assembly, Breeders’ Cup-winning filly Lady’s Secret and dual Classic winner Risen Star.
Yet as his lineage evolved, it became clear that Secretariat was the exception, not the rule. For all his brilliance on the track, he could not reproduce himself in direct male succession, a familiar pattern in racing, where athleticism often proves easier to display than to transmit through DNA. His more enduring influence flowed through his daughters. As a broodmare sire, his impact shaped elite pedigrees worldwide, most notably Storm Cat and AP Indy.
That legacy extended into European Pattern racing, where a small but distinguished group achieved elite success. Athyka emerged as a leading ambassador with back-to-back victories in the Prix de l’Opéra, while Bluebook, trained by Sir Henry Cecil, won at Group level. In total, more than 90 of Secretariat’s progeny raced in Europe, with 11 becoming stakes winners.
Amy Zimmerman, a close friend of Penny Chenery and senior vice president and executive producer at Santa Anita Park, is in no doubt of the significance of Secretariat’s influence on the sport.
“He is the reference point by which all other horses are judged,” she says. “It is stunning that so many Eclipse Award winners, Kentucky Derby entrants and Breeders’ Cup runners over the past decade carry the name ‘Secretariat’ somewhere in their pedigrees.”
As the current fourth-generation president of Claiborne Farm, Walker Hancock says that the memories of Secretariat remain vivid within the farm itself.
“It may be known by some, but I don’t think people fully realise just how much he loved attention,” he says. “Secretariat was a complete ham for the camera. The moment someone pulled one out, he would come to life – posing, engaging and soaking it all in.
“He seemed to know he was special and fully embraced it. Everyone around him couldn’t help but love him and be awestruck by his presence. He truly was a rock star.”
That presence, Walker says, carries forward into a responsibility of stewardship.
“There is real pressure to ensure Secretariat is remembered and respected in the way he deserves,” he says. “He is the most famous horse in the history of thoroughbred racing, and we feel a responsibility to make sure his legacy endures.”
A cultural icon: “grown men wept”
On 4 October 1989, Secretariat passed away from complications of laminitis. A necropsy revealed that he possessed an unusually large heart, more than twice the size of a typical thoroughbred’s.
Dr William F Gilsenan, a board-certified equine internal medicine specialist at Rood & Riddle Equine Hospital in Lexington, Kentucky, outlines the potential effect of this anomaly.
“It is plausible – if not probable – that there is a hereditary basis for factors such as cardiovascular capacity and heart size,” he explains.
“Assuming normal cardiac function, a larger heart is capable of enhancing an animal’s oxygen-carrying capacity.”
Walker Hancock was born just two months before Secretariat passed, but the colt’s absence nonetheless weighed heavily throughout his formative years.
“Grown men wept long after his passing, and there was a real sense of loss – a void that was hard to fill after losing such a cultural icon,” he recalls.
In the years since, many champions have emerged, and comparison with Secretariat has remained unavoidable. What ultimately distinguishes him from the field is not excellence but permanence: many records fall when conditions align – his times remain insulated by the sheer scale of their margins.
Ron Turcotte captured it simply: “He was the greatest racehorse who ever lived, and I was the luckiest guy in the world to be on his back.”
In assessing Secretariat’s place among the greats, the language of ranking often fails, assuming a scale that shifts with eras and evolution. He instead occupies a fixed position. He is not merely measured against others, he defines the terms by which all others are measured.
Leonard Lusky, a longtime friend and associate of Penny Chenery and Ron Turcotte, frames it this way: “He has transcended his sport to become a timeless cultural phenomenon, for many, a veritable chestnut Elvis.”
For the modern reader and for generations to come, Secretariat’s most enduring achievement lies in the rare convergence of fate, circumstance, skill and spirit. He emerged at a moment when the United States was struggling politically and economically, and the clarity of his brilliance offered something steadier than the era itself.
It was not simply his decisive victories, nor the influence of his progeny, nor even the acclaim that followed. Secretariat instead left behind a standard so explicit and fully documented, and so scarcely realised that it crystallised definitively – the very notion of equine perfection.
Did you know?
- The bright chestnut with three white socks was nicknamed “Big Red”
- Only Derby winner to run each quarter-mile faster than the previous one
- Appeared on the covers of Time, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated in the same week
- In 2025, every Kentucky Derby starter traced their descent to Secretariat
- Equestrian clothing company Ariat is named after Secretariat, whose spirit inspired the brand’s founders
- His first foal was a spotted half-Appaloosa, named First Secretary, after there were question marks over his sperm quality and the stud wanted to test his fertility via a reliable Appaloosa broodmare
- He featured on a 1999 US postage stamp
Secretariat in numbers
76% strike rate
31 lengths – winning margin for his record-breaking Belmont victory
16.2hh – height
$6.08m – his value at syndication
Fact file
Foaled: 30 March 1970, Meadow Farm, Virginia
Sire: Bold Ruler
Dam: Somethingroyal
Breeder: Christopher and Penny Chenery (Meadow Stable)
Owner: Meadow Stable
Trainer: Lucien Laurin
Primary jockey: Ron Turcotte
Groom: Eddie Sweat
Died: 4 October 1989
Cause of death: laminitis
Burial: Claiborne Farm, Kentucky; buried whole (an honour reserved for only a few thoroughbreds)
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