Ron Turcotte, one of Canada’s greatest sportsmen, will forever be linked to Secretariat

In Grand Falls, N.B., there is a bronze statue of Ron Turcotte and Secretariat as they bound across the finish line at the 1973 Belmont Stakes. It is a stirring tribute to the town’s favourite son and his horse, and to what is widely considered the greatest race in history.

A coppery three-year-old colt known as Big Red, Secretariat set a world record on June 9, 1973 and blew away the competition by 31 lengths, a margin so large that the other horses could barely be seen as TV cameras panned down the track’s home stretch. It was the final race that clinched the U.S. Triple Crown, a feat that has been accomplished only 13 times since 1919.

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In a moment frozen in time, they rode across the finish line and into history in a record 2 minutes 24 seconds. It remains a Belmont record, as do the records Secretariat set over 1 1/4 miles in the Kentucky Derby and 1 3/16ths of a mile in the Preakness earlier that year.

Turcotte’s remarkable accomplishments as a jockey – an illustrious 18-year career – are mostly revisited over the five weeks in May and June when the Triple Crown is contested. It culminates with the Belmont Stakes, which will be run on Saturday in Elmont, N.Y.

Secretariat’s legend has been immortalized in culture: on the big screen thanks to a feature film by Disney, on the cover and in the pages of Sports Illustrated, and as the subject of numerous books. While many may know him as the greatest horse who ever lived, comparatively few are familiar with the man who rode Secretariat into the annals of sports history.

Flashes of Turcotte can be seen whenever there is a horse close to contesting for the Triple Crown, but outside of that, he has remained largely anonymous. (Has his name ever been uttered in the same sentence as Wayne Gretzky?) Yet the magnitude of his accomplishments are no lesser than those of the Great One.

You will not find him featured in television advertisements for online casinos, or hawking luxury cars or his own line of fine wines.

Instead, at 81, he remains true to his roots, and lives quietly in Drummond, N.B., a few kilometres from where he was born in the northwestern part of the province.

The race

It was a half-century ago that Secretariat electrified nearly 70,000 spectators at Belmont Park and half of the TV audience in Canada and the United States.

Breaking from the starting gate smartly, Secretariat quickly joined the leaders and engaged in an elongated match with his biggest rival, Sham, before he pulled away as though the others were standing still.

“Secretariat is moving like a tremendous machine,” Chic Anderson, the CBS broadcaster, said in his famous call as Turcotte and Secretariat passed the three-quarter-mile mark in the 1 1/2-mile race.

The time recorded by track officials was 2 and 3/5ths seconds faster than the previous mark. Only four other horses were entered – by then Secretariat had earned a reputation for being nearly invincible – and as an overwhelming favourite he demolished the field.

A $2 win ticket returned only $2.20 and 5,617 of them were never redeemed. They were kept as souvenirs instead and now fetch as much as $300 on the collectibles market.

Beginning with the Kentucky Derby in 1972, Turcotte became the first jockey in history to win five Triple Crown races in two years, the first two aboard Riva Ridge. Among all of them the 1973 Belmont Stakes is the one he most remembers.

Curtis Stock, author of the recently published book The Turcottes: The Remarkable Story of a Horse Racing Dynasty, likens Secretariat’s performance in the Belmont as the equivalent to Roger Bannister breaking the four-minute mile in 1954 or Bob Beamon setting a record in the long jump by a margin of 55 centimetres at the 1968 Mexico City Olympics.

“When I watch replays of the Belmont it gives me goosebumps,” Stock says.

The magnificent year

On May 5, 1973, Secretariat’s road to the Triple Crown started at the sport’s most hallowed venue: Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky., home of the Kentucky Derby.

On that clear day, Secretariat broke last and was 11th among 13 horses as they passed the grandstand the first time. He ended up running every quarter-mile faster than the previous one – he was going faster at the end than at the beginning – and beat Sham by 2 1/2 lengths before a crowd of 134,476.

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In so doing, Big Red became the first horse to break the two-minute barrier (finishing in 1:59 2/5ths) at the Derby, which was inaugurated in 1875. None has done it since.

“I just let him run his own race,” Turcotte said afterward. “He moved awfully fast and awfully easy on the backside.”

On May 19 at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore, Secretariat started last at the Preakness Stakes but made a swift move to the outside at the first turn to take the lead, and then held off Sham to win in 1:53. Just as in the Kentucky Derby, the latter was second best, 2 1/2 lengths in arrears.

Near the end Sham’s jockey, Laffit Pincay Jr., struck his horse repeatedly with a whip in his left hand but they got no closer. Turcotte didn’t take a whip to Secretariat that day – and never did before or after. “He was a nice horse,” Turcotte says.

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Jim McCue, a track photographer at Pimlico, was among the 61,000 people on hand. Only a few years before he was a U.S. Army photographer in Vietnam.

“That was a special Preakness,” recalls McCue, 76, whose family owned racehorses in the 1960s. He still takes racing photos. “There was such a buzz about Secretariat. I remember the excitement as he exploded around the turn. A jockey told me he had never seen anything like it. As far as I am concerned, he is the greatest racehorse ever.”

McCue has since taken pictures of four other Triple Crown winners. “None of them were as exciting as Secretariat’s run,” he says.

Three weeks after the Preakness, it was the final leg of the Triple Crown, the 1 1/2-mile Belmont Stakes. Secretariat had never raced that far. Owner Penny Chenery and Canadian trainer Lucien Laurin were worried he would fizzle down the stretch.

When Turcotte arrived at his hotel in New York, he found a note from them requesting an urgent meeting. “They wanted to know if I thought he could go the distance,” Turcotte says. “I told them not to worry about him. I more or less assured them he would win.”

The following day, Turcotte rode Secretariat during a short workout and gave Chenery and Laurin a thumbs up. In the workout, Big Red was faster than horses that raced at the track the same day.

“I told Lucien that if we got beat I was going to hang it up,” Turcotte recalls. “I wasn’t worried about the distance. Secretariat was a tough son of a gun. He never got tired.”

In the lead up to the Belmont, Secretariat was on the covers of Sports Illustrated, Time and Newsweek.

On June 9, Secretariat turned in the performance of a lifetime.

During the race, which was immortalized by the Disney film Secretariat in 2010, he took off like a Roman candle and fired down the stretch urged by nearly 70,000 voices.

“I galloped him for the first quarter-mile,” Turcotte says. “I knew he would pick up the pace as soon as I asked. The minute I had the spot I wanted to be in, he started to fly. If he had wings he would have taken off.”

At 1,150 pounds, Secretariat covered the mile and a half in an average speed of 37 miles an hour (59.5 kiloemetres an hour). His nearest competitor, Twice a Prince, was nearly a football field behind when he crossed the finish line and captured the first Triple Crown in 25 years.

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Here is how Red Smith, the Pulitzer Prize-winning columnist for the New York Times, described it:

“Secretariat was cheered in the post parade, cheered as he entered the gate, and when he caught and passed Sham on the backstretch the exultant thunders raised gooseflesh. At the finish the crowd surged toward the winner’s circle, fists brandished high.“

Over a period of 15 months in 1972 and 1973, Turcotte was in Secretariat’s driver’s seat 18 times. They won 15 together and never finished worse than third. The super horse’s last race was at the Canadian International Championship Stakes at Toronto’s Woodbine Racetrack in October, 1973. He won again, this time with another rider, Eddie Maple, in the saddle because Turcotte was suspended for a riding infraction.

Big Red died from laminitis, a degenerative hoof disease, in 1989. On eBay hundreds of items related to him are still being peddled. A horse shoe he wore during the Kentucky Derby in 1973 sold in 2018 for more than US$80,000.

After the limelight

One of Canada’s greatest sportsmen, Turcotte has been inducted into nine halls of fame.

Over the course of his brilliant career, he became Canada’s leading money-making athlete, won riding titles in Canada and the United States and the horses he rode amassed earnings of more than $28-million. He won more than 3,000 races before he was paralyzed from the waist down in a 1978 riding accident at Belmont Park.

“The spill was just one those things,” Turcotte says from his home. “A horse to the side bored in and my horse stumbled. I was slung off it like I was coming out of a slingshot.

“You see accidents but you never think it is going to happen to you. I learned to live life one day at a time and make the most of it.”

The first person from thoroughbred racing to be appointed to the Order of Canada, Turcotte travelled to tracks across North America for many years making appearances on behalf of the Permanently Disabled Riders Fund.

“If I can help someone along the way, I will,” he says. “I want to be a role model.”

In 2010, Turcotte drove to Kentucky for the premiere of Secretariat and was lionized along with stars John Malkovich and Diane Lane.

“I didn’t care much for the movie at first,” Turcotte says. “Secretariat’s history was so rich that I didn’t think Disney needed to add little things. But after a while I realized it rekindled a lot of memories in older people and introduced young people to the story and the sport.”

To some people, the great jockey will never be forgotten. When Stock was interviewing Turcotte at his home overlooking the northern range of the Appalachian Mountains, two women knocked at the front door and asked Turcotte to autograph a picture. They had driven 1,300 kilometres to northern New Brunswick from Kentucky.

Turcotte has been unable to travel for five years, as age and infirmity have taken a toll. He is left with a paddock full of great memories.

In Grand Falls, about 15 minutes from where Turcotte lives, there is a bridge, which spans the Saint John River, named after him. He is as proud of that as any award he ever received.

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