And They Used To Call Him Sexy

Virginia breeder Taylor Hardin, a member of only the Riva Ridge syndicate, takes another view: "I should have gotten out at the first report, because now if we are given bad news on Riva, people like me have an awfully tough time trying to get a service to a proven stallion at such a late date. The breeding season has already begun."

"If you believe in Secretariat," says Elliott Burch, trainer for Paul Mellon, "you stay and take your chances. That's what we're doing."

The current crisis is causing a growing rift between young Seth Hancock and Penny Tweedy. It began on the day when Secretariat and Riva Ridge landed at Bluegrass Field in Lexington. When Mrs. Tweedy looked out the plane window and saw a large group of reporters, she was so angry that she declared she would not let the horses off the plane until they left. Later she relented but was snappish to those who tried, in vain, to interview her. Of course, Mrs. Tweedy did not get the least bit angry with the writer—Bill Nack, Secretariat's Boswell—she had brought on the plane.

Later, at the farm, the colts were tranquilized before they were turned out in their private paddocks. "We had to do it," said Claiborne Manager Bill Taylor. "You just don't turn out colts who are fresh off the track like that. They're liable to run through a fence or something." But, said Taylor, Mrs. Tweedy got angry about the tranquilization, which is a standard procedure on most farms. Taylor said she told people that the horses were not being treated properly, that the Claiborne staff was "inhumane." Later that month when Mrs. Tweedy visited Lexington to speak at a stud managers' course, she did not take the opportunity to go to Claiborne—12 miles away—to see the horses.

Last weekend Penny Tweedy was at her house in Long Island. Asked for comment on the status of Secretariat and Riva Ridge, she declared, "I think any discussion is premature. I have nothing to say." Nonetheless, a great deal is being said.