Secretariat

Mara and I went to see the movie Secretariat last Friday. I had never gone to see a movie at a movie theater before, and it was a nice one to start with.

Me & Mara at the movies!

The horse Secretariat was a big chestnut colt sired by Bold Ruler and foaled by Somethingroyal. He was born at Meadow Farm in Caroline County, Virginia. He was owned by Penny Chenery Tweedy, trained by Lucien Laurin, and mostly ridden by Ron Turcotte. The way the coin toss—deciding who would get which foal—worked out in real life was a little different then from the movie. In the movie there were two unborn foals. One from Hasty Matelda and one from Somethingroyal. Ogden Phipps won the coin toss but he picked Hasty Matelda's unborn foal so Mrs. Tweedy got the foal she wanted. In real life there was a live colt out of Hasty Matelda, and a live filly out of Somethingroyal, along with an unborn foal of Somethingroyal. Since Phipps won the coin toss he took the filly out of Somethingroyal, leaving Mrs. Tweedy with the colt out of Hasty Matelda and the unborn foal of Somethingroyal.

Secretariat raced several times as a two-year-old, and he was American Horse of the Year both as a two-year-old, and as a three-year-old. To skip right to the Kentucky Derby, Secretariat broke from the gate last, but came from behind to win the Derby by 2 1/2 lengths. He ran each quarter-mile segment faster than the one before. He set a Derby track record that still stands of 1:59 2/5. It was 28 years before any other horse has won the Kentucky Derby in less than two minutes.
Then, again in the Preakness Stakes Secretariat came from behind to win by 2 1/2 lengths. For the third race in the Triple Crown, only four horses decided to race against Secretariat in the Belmont Stakes. Among these was Sham, who had finished second in both the Derby and the Preakness, also three other horses thought to have little chance of winning. Secretariat and Sham started quickly, setting a ten length lead on the rest of the field. Sham started to tire a little farther on -finally finishing last. But Secretariat surprised everybody by continuing the fast pace, and getting farther and farther ahead. He finally won by 31 lengths, and set a world record for 1 1/2 miles on dirt of 2:24. Secretariat became the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years, and he was the 9th horse to win the Triple Crown.

Anyway, we thoroughly enjoyed the movie, and now my whole family needs to watch it. It has a quotation from the book of Job about horses in it from the NIV version. Secretariat is a great movie, and I'm glad I went. Now I think I know how Alec Ramsay from the Black Stalion books feels whenever he enters a race. I think when people write about horse races it is still pretty exciting, but they can't quite catch the excitement of actually seeing it.