Jockey Ron Turcotte rides Secretariat to win the Belmont Stakes and capture the Triple Crown in this June 9, 1973 photo in Elmont, New York.AP
Lawrence Scanlan is the author of 26 books, including The Horse God Built: Secretariat, His Groom, Their Legacy.
The horse-human bond: For many years, that was my subject. I wrote more than a dozen books – about equestrians, horse trainers and individual horses. But the book that continues to generate response is the one I wrote about the legendary racehorse, Secretariat, and his admirable groom, Eddie Sweat.
I’ll be thinking of both this weekend as the Kentucky Derby unfolds at Churchill Downs in Louisville. On May 6, 1972, Big Red began his historic run for the Triple Crown of thoroughbred racing (the Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes). The handsome chestnut’s times in each race have never been equalled. And there are many who would argue that his groom was key to that success. After the horse’s last race – at Woodbine Racetrack in Toronto, on Oct. 28, 1973 – they went their separate ways: Secretariat would generate a fortune in stud fees for his owners before dying in 1989 and Mr. Sweat continued toiling in racetrack barns before being buried in a pauper’s grave in 1998.
Last November, a letter arrived from California. The correspondent, one Nick M. Ben-Meir, introduced himself: “I have been involved with Thoroughbred Racing for nearly 65 of my 78 years, first, as a fan, and, for the last 50 years or so, as an owner/participant. It has increasingly become the most important activity, other than being a grandpa, in my life. I cannot imagine having gotten through the last year, with its horrible COVID plague, without the game.”
It's a mob scene as jockey Ron Turcotte rides Secretariat off the track after the powerful horse won the Belmont Stakes and the Triple Crown.Associated Press
In 1982, when Mr. Ben-Meir was managing the rock group Crosby, Stills & Nash, the touring band made a stop in Lexington, Ky. Stephen Stills shared his band manager’s love for horseracing, and they arranged a swap: The Claiborne family (owners of the stud farm that was then home to Secretariat) came for a backstage visit and the band got a tour of the horse farm. “Our first stop was Secretariat’s paddock,” Mr. Ben-Meir wrote, “and I can still recall our standing there, in silence and awe, before this magnificent horse …”
In my book about Secretariat and Mr. Sweat, I lamented the strict hierarchy of the racetrack, which puts owners at the top, then trainers, then jockeys. On the lowest rungs of that tall ladder are the exercise riders, grooms and hot-walkers; their fate is to be the lowest paid and the least appreciated. Even the grooms of the most famous horses were and are often ignored – though Mr. Sweat was both celebrated and ignored. He made the cover of Ebony magazine but when Western Horseman magazine ran a piece to mark the 25th anniversary of Secretariat’s Derby win, the editors included a photograph of the horse and his blanket of red roses, and every white person in that image was named: owner, trainer, jockey, even the owner’s sister. The Black groom was referred to as “an unidentified handler.”
Mr. Sweat brought great skill and knowledge, compassion, understanding and attentiveness to the job. On nights prior to race days, he slept on a cot outside Secretariat’s stall to guard against possible tampering. His devotion to that horse was dawn to dusk, and then some. Mr. Sweat could have become a very successful trainer, but he was raised in the forties in rural South Carolina, as one of nine children born to a sharecropper. All his life he could not look a white person in the eye, so he stayed on the backstretch.
In his letter to me, Mr. Ben-Meir included a copy of a photograph showing Ruffian – among the greatest fillies who ever raced – being rubbed down by her groom, Dan Williams. Like Mr. Sweat, he was a Black man. The framed photograph hangs in Mr. Ben-Meir’s house and was taken by his friend, the late Dan Farrell, a long-time photographer for the New York Daily News who had taken many iconic shots – including the one of three-year-old John Kennedy, Jr. saluting his father’s flag-draped coffin as it passed.
Secretariat dances at the end of a halter held by groom Eddie Sweat on arrival at Woodbine Race Track.Dennis Robinson/The Globe and Mail
In my book, I had sketched the sad tale of Ruffian, who, prior to her match race in 1975 against a colt named Foolish Pleasure, was undefeated in 10 starts. She suffered catastrophic injuries on the track during that race and had to be euthanized. Raymond Woolfe, one of Secretariat’s several biographers, had told me, “Dan loved Ruffian in the way that Eddie Sweat loved Secretariat.” As he read my account, Mr. Ben-Meir expected that I might relate the story that follows – one he has never seen published in all the many accounts of Ruffian’s last race. There is no mention of it, for example, in sports writer William Nack’s masterful little book, Ruffian: A Racetrack Romance.
Mr. Farrell had taken his photograph the day before the match race when a crowd had gathered around the stunning dark bay filly, including a TV news team, one of whom had put a cloth-covered microphone boom over the horse’s head. Ruffian apparently reached up, snatched the cloth – and swallowed it. Mr. Williams quickly put his hand down the horse’s throat and grabbed it, sparing the filly damage and ensuring she would not be scratched from the race that would kill her. The 59-year-old groom was widely viewed as a master of his craft, and Ruffian was his sole charge. He told reporters the day after the tragedy that he couldn’t talk about the incident because he had just lost his “best friend.”
As Mr. Ben-Meir put it, “a distraught Williams blamed himself … sometime later, Williams drowned in the ocean. People who were close to him found that odd, because they knew he couldn’t swim.” This was two years after the match race. No one can say with certainty what led to his death but this much seems unquestionable: Both Mr. Sweat and Mr. Williams enjoyed an extraordinary bond with extraordinary horses, but both men paid a steep emotional price for that privilege. There was affection, genuine and particular and no doubt unfathomable to some, and then it was wrenched away.
Thoroughbred racing has been called the sport of kings (and, these days, Saudi princes), and what is a kingdom without serfs? While researching my book I read a PhD thesis at the University of Maryland in which the writer – who had worked at the track for years – described the backstretch as “one of the last remaining serfdoms in the United States.”
I once asked the late Mr. Nack to name some of the most memorable characters he had encountered in all his decades covering the track. He named three people, two of them grooms, with Mr. Sweat topping his list. The man was a character: short and blocky and immensely strong, a gentle and confident hand around horses but not one to brook nonsense, in dress prone to loud plaids and tartans, and unfailingly generous to others – overly so, many said.
Mr. Nack had worked as a groom in his youth, knew how important the job was, how demanding. His article in Sports Illustrated in 1991 (Nobody Knows Their Names) paid homage to grooms and railed against their lousy pay and even lousier living conditions on the backstretch. In an updated version of his superlative biography of Secretariat (Big Red of Meadow Stable), Mr. Nack had reported that Mr. Sweat died “virtually penniless.” He told me that a trust fund could have been set up: “One cover by Secretariat would have done it.” In other words, a donation of one of his stud fees would have allowed the man some comfort as he slowly died of leukemia.
Woodbine Racetrack, on its website, informs that grooms can make “up to” $500 a week, along with a share in the winnings of the horses (usually four) in his or her care. But what if a horse never wins, or breaks down? What if the trainer stiffs the help and fails to fairly share any purses?
In his letter, Mr. Ben-Meir said trainers now get 13 per cent of any purses won (up from the traditional 10 per cent) – “ostensibly to reward their staff, but we, as owners, can’t really be sure where those extra funds we shell out wind up. My practice has been, for many years, to buy mutual tickets for the grooms and exercise riders, just to be sure …” In other words, he buys them shares in their horse’s performance that day. The lucky ones get rewarded; the unlucky may get nothing.
David Walker, Mr. Sweat’s nephew and a former groom himself, told me that his uncle expressed one wish near the end of his life: He wanted to be the first groom to enter horse racing’s Hall of Fame in Saratoga Springs, N.Y. There is a petition now circulating on the internet to try and nudge that possibility closer. The original aim was to gather 2,000 signatures, and that goal has been surpassed and continues to climb. I signed it and I urge you to do the same.
The Canadian Horse Racing Hall of Fame, based at Woodbine, has honoured the horse, as well as his Canadian jockey and his Canadian trainer (respectively, Ron Turcotte and Lucien Laurin). No groom has ever been inducted.
On both sides of the border, it is time that Edward “Shorty” Sweat, finally, gets the recognition he so richly deserves. The 50th anniversary of Secretariat’s Triple Crown victories is a year away, which gives each hall of fame plenty of time to right this old wrong. And maybe, while we’re at it, the horse industry could start paying grooms a living wage.
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