A Coming Of Age

It was hopeless. Laurin would later insist that he was framed, that the battery was planted in his jacket, that he had an idea who did him in but would not say who. His voice still carries an exasperated edge when he talks of it. "I was playing cards and somebody put it in my pocket. That's the truth," he says.

Now he was 60 years old, with silver hair and elfish grin and traces of his heritage in his voice. He had come a long way from that black day in 1938, building steadily, if unspectacularly, a reputation as a shrewd conditioner of the thoroughbred horse. From Delorimier Park in Canada he had found his way to Aqueduct, Belmont Park and Saratoga and ended up making a substantial living on that most competitive racing circuit in America. And here he was at Chris Chenery's farm in northern Virginia, with Riva Ridge, a potential champion, in his barn back at Belmont Park. In all the years Laurin trained, he had never had a champion 2-year-old colt with a shot at the Derby, the ability to win the Triple Crown—the big horse. Now, at the twilight of his training career, he had Riva Ridge, and he was standing with Mrs. Tweedy and Miss Ham looking at next year's Meadow 2-year-olds when Secretariat was led toward the gathering. In the notes she took that day Penny Tweedy wrote under Secretariat's name, "Big (turns out left front—LL), good bone, a bit swaybacked—very nice—lovely smooth gait." LL meant Lucien Laurin, but if the colt's left fore did turn out slightly and he was a trifle swaybacked (he quickly grew out of both conditions), Secretariat raised Laurin's eyebrows.

" Mr. Laurin," the man at the colt's head said. "This is the horse that will make you forget Riva Ridge."

All Secretariat had in the beginning was the look of an athlete, and Lucien was wary of appearances. In his years on the racetrack he had seen too many equine jocks come and go; to Laurin, Secretariat at this stage was just another untried thoroughbred.

As a youngster Secretariat did not awe the clockers at Hialeah, either. There were no quarter-mile workouts in :22 seconds, no leveling off into a flat run, all business, from the quarter pole at the top of the stretch to the wire—no such heady flights.

Ron Turcotte was with Lucien Laurin one morning at Hialeah, just outside the shed, when four 2-year-olds were led from the barn and began circling them, grooms holding the bridles. It was just a passing comment in a passing moment, as Turcotte would recall it later.

"Want to get on him?" said Lucien, as Secretariat walked past.

"Sure, love to."

Turcotte jumped aboard Secretariat that morning for the first time, guiding him out to the racetrack with the others, in Indian file, turning right, counterclockwise, on the dirt track. Laurin told them to let the youngsters gallop easily, side by side, in a schooling exercise designed to accustom them to other horses running next to them. The four colts took off at a slow gallop around the mile-and-an-eighth oval, galloping abreast. The riders stood high in the saddles, going easily. Secretariat seemed almost lackadaisical. The red horse plopped along in casual indifference, his head down, a big, awkward, clumsy colt, Turcotte remembers. Galloping past the palm trees and the infield lake, Jockey Miles Neff, riding Twice Bold, reached his stick over and slapped Turcotte on the rump. "Whee-ew!" yelled Turcotte. Laughter on the backstretch. Charlie Davis was riding inside on All or None, and Turcotte leaned over and jabbed Davis in the rear with his stick and Davis almost went over All or None, screaming. This was not all intended for fun. Exercise boys do it to get young horses accustomed to quick movement, to shouts and to noise. A horse race is not a quiet affair.

The colt next to Secretariat drifted out and banged against him, and the red horse countered with a grunt.