Scorecard

SICK SECRETARIAT

When Secretariat was beaten by Onion in the Whitney Stakes at Saratoga, most horsemen and bettors chalked off the stunning upset as just one of those things that happen now and then in racing. After all, Man o' War and Citation lost, too. Then it was announced last weekend that the superhorse would not run in the Travers this coming Saturday because of coughing, and people began to wonder. Finally, it came out that before the Whitney, Secretariat had been under the weather for nearly a week, running a slight temperature off and on.

But despite the temperature, which was not made public, the owner and trainer decided to run him in the Whitney anyway. "He is so strong," said a dejected Penny Tweedy, "we felt he was fighting off the fever and could still perform at his best. We didn't think it that important to cancel. After the race we knew that something was wrong."

The something wrong, Whitney Tower points out, was for the stable to have started a horse that was not 100% himself. It was unfair to the public, which bet $192,772 (of a total pool of $279,081) on Secretariat in this win-only race. The bettors were cheated. Nor was it fair to the stockholders in the syndicate that will control Secretariat when he goes to stud. Nor was it fair to the superb horse himself. If this is an example of the paralyzing hold that show biz can have on people in sport, it is a sad commentary on the way sport is going.

For, of course, Secretariat had become a TV star. The Whitney was to be the first of four races in which CBS and the New York Racing Association hoped to show him off to millions of viewers. Trainer Lucien Laurin says now he feels the horse will be back to normal in two weeks, or in time for his next performance, the Marlboro Cup at Belmont on Sept. 15. This is the once heralded match race with his stablemate Riva Ridge, a schmaltzy $250,000 piece of business. After that there is the Woodward, possibly The Jockey Club Gold Cup, the Washington D.C. International, maybe even the Arc de Triomphe in Paris.

Everyone wants the horse, it seems, and perhaps the pressure is too much. Penny Tweedy said the other day, with sad hindsight, "This proves a horse is not a machine." Then why treat him like one?

ON AGAIN, OFF AGAIN

In its investigations, the House Select Committee on Crime looked into corruption in horse racing. After a flurry of headlines, nothing more seemed to happen. In the August issue of Hoof Beats, official publication of the U.S. Trotting Association, Executive Editor Stan Bergstein comments:

"The House Select Committee on Crime has expired, its appropriation not renewed, and there will be little mourning at the bar.

"Despite its noble purpose, the committee used methods that were not only embarrassing to racing but to its own members. It listened to 'experts' who weren't; dignified the testimony of hoodlums and creeps of no character and less credibility; apologized in its final report for having never quite gotten around to talking to the leaders of American racing; used as its star witness a minor crook who claimed he could get into any stable area in the country but was arrested, tried and convicted when he attempted to do so; used racing's own security files, including those of the USTA, as if they were original investigative work of the committee; discovered that wiretapping was employed by the staff of one committee member, who stated that he would sanction it again if necessary; and totally omitted any mention of Harness Tracks Security, an autonomous organization that does exactly what the committee recommended, but which the committee apparently never even knew existed, or chose to ignore if it did."