Tinner’s Way
Kingston Rule
The Wood, the Withers, the Woodward … apparently, the letter ‘W’ was his kryptonite. All the better that he finished up in the Canadian Int’l rather than the Washington, DC, Intl.
I’ve read here and there of both being described as the perfect conformation.
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And on this subject did anyone see that John Veitch recently admitted to using cobra venom on Alydar?
This doesn’t exactly make Veitch on par with Biancone, but it indeed hurts to find cracks in the rose colored glasses we use to look at horses of yesteryear…
Secretariat also later gained this odd reputation for being the perfectly conformed racehorse, which is at odds with what was written about him at the time.
Oh I think his reputation has been downplayed in other areas too - supressed by the media are the real stories that
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at Siros one night in 1972 Secretariat was a guest bartneder and made what some still to this day say was the best Moscow Mule tasted. His ability to add just the right amount of lime put people in awe only to be surpassed a year later by his talents at Belmont Park
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he exhibited a little known series of watercolors to great acclaim at Yaddo just days before the Whitney Handicap in 1973; an innovator even then he used just “S” as his name. Those works later ended up in a dormatory hall at Smith College and then said to be eerily lost in a fire.
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on a non-descript track in Western NY long since lost when being shipped back from Canada he took part in an illegal race where he not only won on one track but simultainiously won an another. The latter was by 101 lengths putting to rest in the eyes of those there his superiority to the Man O’War legend of a 100 length victory
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on his more warm and touching side visitors at the time will swear they saw him once guide a dog and cat to freedom on their journey as they passed through his paddock at Claiborne. Still disputed however was the suggestion that he hummed doe a deer a female deer in the process
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he was originally one of the picks for the character of Indiana Jones above Tom Selleck, Nick Nolte and Harrison Ford; due to his breeding committments he had to pass although the screen test notes remarked him to be a ‘penny colored Robert Mitchum’
Yes his legend lives on 
To the list of horses who probably would have won the Triple Crown, you have to add Tim Tam, who limped home second on a broken sesamoid. To me that exemplifies heart.
He is one horse who is terribly underrated as a race horse; and he, too, was a good damsire.
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American Racing Manual (1973) wrote many very glowing things about Secretariat’s build/conformation, but they noted what some might consider defects. At the time, the thing I remember most people mentioning was his ‘goose rump.’
[i]Secretariat represents the Nearco type. They are heavily bodied and heavily muscled… Some have been indulged in gluttony, become gross and expired of heart attacks in consequence.
Big horses of the type of Secretariat … are not every horseman’s taste, though they fill the eye. Old time racing men include those who prefer them hard and wirey, or modeled on a smaller scale…
Secretariat has a strong, masculine neck of proportionate length, though it inclines to be straight and heavy. … His scapula is well placed, though some might consider it a trifle too extensive to accommodate a humerus of approximately equal length, or one upright as desired. …
A yearling buyer might look askance at his knees, though they are reputed never to have given concern. Here again there is a compensatory point, for he is slightly over on them, which reduces the concussion from impact with the racing surface…
The pelvis is exceedingly sloping, however, giving him a vaguely goose-rumped aspect at first glance…
Walking off after a race, Secretariat divulges nothing of his extended action. He goes frightfully short behind, like so many Princequillos, and wide in front, like most of the Bold Rulers. At a glance, one might suspect he had bucked…[/i]
That’s what they want you to believe. Those watercolors look great here in my livingroom.
That post was classic, Glimmerglass.
Honestly, people were injecting that stuff like it was a steroid. I knew backyard horses who showed at glorified local shows that got the stuff back in the day. It’s like Barbara’s tale of equipoise. Do I believe Secretariat had it? I don’t have a clue, but I wouldn’t be remotely surprised. You could have bought it over the counter from the feed and tack store I worked at as a 15 year old and every tom dick and harry in the breed halter world and racing world was using it and even as a fairly ignorant teenager even I knew that.
It doesn’t make it right or good, but slapping today’s knowledge and judgments on yesterday’s action isn’t usually going to get you anyplace useful, I think its far better to just try and learn from the past so you can avoid repeating it.
DMK,
Like you, remember when Equipoise was no big deal - many people used it on their horses. I even remember what the bags looked like, and Equipoise ads were common in horse magazines.
Well it’s not like Phar Lap wasn’t given juice at the time thought to be good
UK Independent 25 April 2008 “‘Recipe book’ holds the clue to Phar Lap’s death”
Phar Lap probably died as a result of arsenic administered by his own trainer, rather than being murdered by American gangsters as Australians have long believed. That is the conclusion of experts who have studied a “recipe book” of tonics used by Phar Lap’s trainer, Harry Telford, which sold at auction yesterday for close to £18,000.
Among the ingredients the tonics contained were arsenic, strychnine, belladonna, cocaine and caffeine – given to horses in small quantities in the past, as stimulants, before a race.
Sad to say but Phar Lap was quite possibly just one of many juiced up horses of the era. Nothing like some Coke, Red Bull, and Winstrol to get 'em going …
[QUOTE=Glimmerglass;3739839]
Nothing like some Coke, Red Bull, and Winstrol to get 'em going …[/QUOTE]
I wish I had some of that mix for the next few days to get me through Christmas, ho ho ho.
:lol::lol::lol::lol::lol:
Finally a good reflective article on Sham - the often under appreciated runner:
BloodHorse 7-9-09, Steve Haskin “Sham Rocks”
excerpt
Let’s not forget that there is much more to Sham’s resume than finishing second to Secretariat in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness. Before he came face to face with his nemesis, Sham won the Santa Anita Derby in a stakes record-equaling 1:47 flat and captured the Santa Catalina Stakes over a deep, muddy track. Prior to those races he won a pair of 1 1/16-mile allowance races by six and 15 lengths. In his six-length score, his time of 1:41 2/5 was only a second off the track record. In his final start at 2, he broke his maiden at Aqueduct by six lengths, also in the mud, in hand the length of the stretch.
Aw.
I heart Sham (or as the Deborah Clasky in Secretariat would say: “I love you for trying!”). :sadsmile:
