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To: NKP_Vet

I was in high school at the time and remember watching the race with my family in my parents living room. What a race, it was almost surreal. Even though I didn’t know much about horse racing, I loved Secretariat followed him through the Triple Crown. I agree, we will never see the likes of Secretariat again.


22 posted on 01/14/2014 2:04:12 PM PST by nicksaunt
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To: nicksaunt
Lost in all the excitement of his surreal performance in the Belmont Stakes was his record setting performance in the Kentucky Derby. http://en.wikipedia.org/wiki/Secretariat_%28horse%29 "On his way to a still-standing track record (1:592⁄5), Secretariat ran each quarter-mile segment faster than the one before it. The successive quarter-mile times were 251⁄5, 24, 234⁄5, 232⁄5, and 23. This means he was still accelerating as of the final quarter-mile of the race. No other horse had won the Derby in less than 2 minutes before, and it would not be accomplished again until Monarchos in 2001. Sportswriter Mike Sullivan said, in admiration: I was at Secretariat's Derby, in '73. . . That was...just beauty, you know? He started in last place, which he tended to do. I was covering the second-place horse, which wound up being Sham. It looked like Sham's race going into the last turn, I think. The thing you have to understand is that Sham was fast, a beautiful horse. He would have had the Triple Crown in another year. And it just didn't seem like there could be anything faster than that. Everybody was watching him. It was over, more or less. And all of a sudden there was this, like, just a disruption in the corner of your eye, in your peripheral vision. And then before you could make out what it was, here Secretariat came. And then Secretariat had passed him. No one had ever seen anything run like that – a lot of the old guys said the same thing. It was like he was some other animal out there.[16]" Secretariat set track records in all three Triple Crown races in 1973. 41 years later he still holds the records. Their will never be another Big Red.
28 posted on 01/14/2014 6:58:23 PM PST by NKP_Vet ("Rather than love, than money, than fame, then give truth" ~ Henry David Thoreau)
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