On May 9 and June 1, I posted segments of an article that I had written based on my interview with Ron Turcotte, the jockey who rode Triple Crown champion Secretariat, among other great Thoroughbreds. In the midst of Triple Crown season, I thought it would be interesting to revisit the interview. Here is more:
As spectacular as Secretariat’s 1973 Triple Crown victories were, Ron Turcotte’s favorite ride aboard the big red colt came later that year in the Marlboro Cup, against older horses at Belmont Park. “It was one of his great, great races,” Turcotte said of the invitational event.
The race came about after a proposed match race between Secretariat and Riva Ridge lost its appeal, when the two stablemates each lost a race at Saratoga within days of each other. Secretariat, an overwhelming 1-10 favorite, lost to former $35,000 claimer Onion in the Whitney Stakes, and Riva Ridge was defeated by a 56-1 longshot, Wichita Oil, in a $15,000 allowance.
In addition to Secretariat, the Marlboro Cup field included 1972 Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes winner Riva Ridge; 1972 champion 3-year-old Key To The Mint; Onion, who had upset Secretariat in the Whitney Stakes; Cougar II; Kennedy Road; and Annihilate ‘Em, the only other 3-year-old besides Secretariat.
“There were trainers and owners who were against the track running a match race between Secretariat and Riva Ridge because they thought there were better horses,” Turcotte noted. “But all the handicappers said that they were the best two horses in the country. As it turned out, they were right. We finished one-two and broke the world record for the distance.”
Secretariat drew off to win the 1 1/8-mile Marlboro Cup by 3 1/2 lengths over Riva Ridge. Cougar II was third by 2 lengths; Onion finished fourth by 12 lengths; and Key To The Mint brought up the rear, beaten by 14 1/2 lengths.
With a bright future already mapped out for him in the breeding shed, Secretariat closed out his race career in the fall of 1973 with two races on turf, his first and only starts on that surface.
“As great as he was on the dirt, I couldn’t believe that he was so good on the turf,” said Turcotte. “He was probably ten to fifteen lengths better on grass than on dirt. Tentam was the best grass horse running in that day and we just played with him.”
Secretariat won the 1 1/2-mile Man O’War Stakes in track record time, defeating Tentam by five lengths. His final race was the Canadian International Championship at Woodbine, which he won by 6 1/2 lengths. Although the race was especially meaningful for trainer Lucien Lauren and Turcotte, both native Canadians, in the end, Turcotte was denied the satisfaction of riding Secretariat on the track where the jockey had begun his career.
“If it was today, I would appeal,” said Turcotte, who was slapped with a suspension five days before the Canadian International Championship,when a 2-year-old he was riding ducked in front of another horse. “I never believed in taking authority from the stewards, but to this day, I regret not having appealed. If there is one thing I regret in my career, that’s it.”
Turcotte was in the irons, however, for Secretariat’s last workout at Woodbine and again on November 6, 1973, at Aqueduct’s Farewell to Secretariat Day, when he jogged in front of the grandstand packed with 33,000 fans. But it was a sad farewell for Turcotte.
“Nobody ever saw the real Secretariat,” he said. “He was just a baby when he was retired. Weight would have never mattered to him. I’d work him in the morning with my heavy boots and all. I got on the scale one day at Hialeah and I weighed 143 pounds and he was just as fluid with 143 pounds as he was with whatever weight he had carried before.”
Secretariat retired with a record of 16 wins in 21 starts and earnings of $1,316,800, and the titles of champion 2-year-old and champion 3-year-old. He stood at Claiborne Farm in Paris, KY, until he was incapacitated by laminitis and humanely destroyed on October 4, 1989. Today he is best known for his outstanding producing daughters. The great sire Storm Cat is out of a Secretariat daughter, as is leading sire A.P. Indy.
Ron Turcotte led the nation in stakes wins in 1972 and 1973, and for the next four years he never rode fewer than 150 winners. By mid-year 1978, he was well on his way to a sixth consecutive year of $2 million-plus earnings, when disaster struck.
“They say that working as a lumberjack is the most dangerous occupation,” said Turcotte, thinking back to his first job as a youth in Canada. “I’ve seen people killed different ways, with trees falling on them and a chainsaw kicking back and splitting a man’s head. But when you go into a job, you don’t want to feel that it’s dangerous. I knew all along that (racing) was, but you just don’t want to think that way.
“I don’t dwell on it,” Turcotte, now 65, said of the spill at Belmont Park, on July 13, 1978, that left him paralyzed from the waist down. “I took it one day at a time after that, just like I did when I was riding. It changed my life in a lot of ways, but I don’t let that affect me.”