Posted on 06/09/2021 6:49:31 PM PDT by ameribbean expat
Flag in the breeze, Secretariat pulls away, then he blasts off into history.
https://youtu.be/V18ui3Rtjz4
The poor guy wearing the #1 jersey in that photo was the only player on the U.S. team who didn’t play in a single game at the 1980 Winter Olympics: backup goaltender Steve Janaszak.
2020 calendar celebrates Secretariat’s last living sons and daughters
I was looking at it not from a physical standpoint where the horse might have been injured, I was completely thinking of it in horse-psychological terms.
I recall reading something about Seabiscut, the he just loved to run, loved competition as many horses apparently do, being herd animals.
He would play horse-mind games with other horses, and would taunt them, holding back, letting them think they could win, and then just pulling away from them.
There was one horse he destroyed, that never raced effectively again, and if it were being kept in a stable that Seabiscuit was in, the horse would have a tantrum. It became a head case.
Funny, I never gave a huge amount of thought to that aspect of horse racing, that they love to run, and love to compete. But later in life, I got to spend some time with horses, and I stayed at a horse farm where the guy was apparently a bit unorthodox in his treatment and relationships with horses.
The guy who runs it with his wife is a real-life “horse whisperer”. I am not kidding. Their specialty it taking in troubled horses and horses with behavioral problems.
He rescues them.
When he gets them, the first thing he does is remove their horse shoes. When you go out to the giant quonset hut where the horses are prepared to go on rides, there is a pile of rusting horseshoes about four feet high. None of his horses have any shoes.
He doesn’t segregate his horses into groups, he just lets them all live together, stallions, mares, and geldings in a huge herd. He says it is how they live in nature, so he lets them. (He did have his prize stallion segregated in a small paddock one day as I reference below, but that was really the only time I saw it in several visits)
As he was explaining this to me, his prize stallion was in the field with all the horses, and was acting up, trying to engage a huge work horse stallion who completely ignored the high-strung stallion. It was comical, and Ron grinned as he pointed this out to me and said “Look at that big lug of a horse...the other one is trying to pick a fight with him, but he couldn’t care less!”
He talks to all of his horses in plain English, and I swear, they understand him. (All these names below are made up since I can’t remember them) I was watching them take out a bunch of horses one day for a group ride. He went to the pasture holding all the horses, opened the gate and yelled “Betsy! Come on.” and a horse peeled off, ran over about fifty yards and right through the partially opened gate, and without any guidance, ran up the hill into the quonset hut and right up to a bucket of oats to eat and wait for a saddle.
He called “Jim! Come on.” and another horse ran over and up the hill into the “stable” to get set up for a ride.
He called out “Strawberry! Come on!” and two horses ran over and both went through the gate. He yelled after one of them “Daisy! Come back...you aren’t going out!” and without hesitation, the horse stopped, turned around and walked back through the still open gate unprompted!
I thought this was amazing-I know some horses are smart, but this guy seemed to have a way with them! When we went inside to saddle the horses, they were all standing where he had placed the buckets of oats and he just walked to each one and clipped their harness to an eye-bolt on the wall. As we were saddling the horses, I heard this ruckus coming from outside somewhere, a horse whinnying loudly and making various horse noises. I was puzzled by this, and didn’t know what was going on, but Ron didn’t even seem to notice it. I said to Ron something like “It sounds like that horse is in trouble or something” and he stopped, went outside and I could see a small one horse paddock about 100 yards away with his prize stallion in it, and the horse was going mental, rearing up, just making a scene. Ron yelled “COWBOY! YOU AREN’T GOING OUT FOR A RIDE TODAY!” and the horse huffed and stamped its front hooves into the ground...hilariously, like a little kid being told he couldn’t play with a toy!
Ron just said “He sees us getting set, and he wants to go with me on the ride.”
I loved it. I had never seen horses in this light before, and I looked at them in a completely different way!
So I spent a lot of time, especially when I went there once without my wife, and it poured rain the three days I was there and even the people who ran the place left me there all by myself. So I watched the horses. I view them quite differently now.
This is probably old hat to people who know horses well, but it was new to me. I began to look a them much as I look at dogs, who I understand to a degree. The horses are a lot bigger and apparently have a different set of quirks than dogs have.
I played in that arena, a few years before that historic match, loved watching the US team beat the rooskies.
The one other place that fit into the same category was the old Montreal Forum. It was utterly awe-inspiring to go into that place and see 24 Stanley Cup banners hanging from the rafters.
I only played there for a year, went to a prep school at the other end of the lake, and that’s where we practiced and played our games.
I was unexpectedly awed by a visit to the arena at Lake Placid. I recommend going there during the off season, when the arena is essentially empty, and you can hear the recording of the game faintly echoing from the adjacent museum.
An ideal off-season visit will at least have a few figure skaters training on the ice, or (even better) a hockey team doing some off-season training. Lake Placid hosted an international exhibition hockey tournament in August a few years ago that attracted the top junior national teams from around the world.
There’s a very interesting ESPN 30 for 30 episode called “Of Miracles and Men” which covers the Soviet side of the contest. It’s very interesting, if you can find it to watch.
The 2:24 time is still, 48 years later, the fastest 1 1/2 miles ever run on dirt.
Very interesting. Nice experience.
As far as psychological, that is a frequent claim of many of these great horse stories.
OK full disclosure, I’ve been involved in many a Secretariat vs. Man O’War argument. I am a MOW fan and as a result of arguments I get a bit acerbic when it comes to Secretariat.
Anyway, Seabiscuit lost many a race, and I don’t just mean before he changed hands. So let that temper any stories about “psyching” any horses.
Likewise, Sham was not “heart-broken” in the Belmont, nor hurt physically. It was about a month later. So of course, he did not race again. Further, Sec lost 3 races as a 3yo, legitimately, so he is not infallible either, thoug much less than Seabiscuit.
I’d also say this for Man O’War, wherein many a fan claims MOW broke Sir Barton’s heart and maybe even John P. Grier’s. Sir Barton can hardly be judged on just 3 races shortly after, in which he finished in the money. And Grier actually went on to win more races as elder, including several track records. MOW did not ruin these horse’s hearts. In fact, a great racing historian wrote that in fact, Grier was much better. Nothing wrong with his heart that was not helped getting away from the long shadow cast by MOW!
But even at the time, was NOT a world record. Already set by the great Kelso (2:23-4), and then Fiddle Isle (2:23)
As a fan of the New Jersey Devils I got to see some of those early Soviet-NHL pioneers up close. Slava Fetisov has always been one of the most fascinating, enigmatic hockey players I've followed. And Sergei Starikov stayed in New Jersey after his brief NHL career ended and later worked as a referee in the men's amateur hockey league I played in. The one thing I always remember about him was: (1) he hardly called any penalties (adult amateur hockey probably seemed so tame to him!), and (2) he had the thickest hands I've ever seen on a human being.
Alexei Kasatonov -- who had been Fetisov's linemate on the famed "Green Unit" (with the legendary KLM Line) for the Soviet National Team in the 1980s -- came over a couple of years later. I was watching the team practice one day and I saw him do something I've never seen before or since: He fired a slapshot from the top of the circle and rang it so hard off the corner of the crossbar that it broke one of the net moorings and pushed the net out of place on the ice.
bump for later
Kelso and then Fiddle Isle set those records on turf. Hawkster broke it again in 1989 with a 2:22.8 at Santa Anita.
As I said, Secretariat’s 1 1/2 record of 2:24 is on DIRT, not turf. And it still stands.
Yes, but I want people to put it in perspective.
hockey is a team sport....im talking single sports achievement...what Secretariat did that day transcended racing, and they have been running the Belmont Stakes for over 150 years...time records and margin of victory unequaled for almost 50 years, and not even close. In a 12 furlong race, he ran the first 6 in 1:09 4/5, just astonishing...at the 1 1/4 mark, he ran that in 1:59 flat, beating his Kentucky Derby time, which is still the record..then took 2 3/5 seconds off the world record for a mile and half that still stands...and was hand ridden the entire race....a performance that will never be equaled...
MAYBE single performance. Maybe.
But he sure milks a lot out of this one race to be exalted by so many as greatest ever.
Not that he didn’t prove a lot, but he also had quite a few chinks.
I mean — if some dude wins the Daytona 500 by 17 laps, does anyone really think it’s a great sports achievement?
Disclaimer: Opinions posted on Free Republic are those of the individual posters and do not necessarily represent the opinion of Free Republic or its management. All materials posted herein are protected by copyright law and the exemption for fair use of copyrighted works.