Twenty-five years had passed since Citation won the Triple Crown, and in that span six horses had taken the first two legs and failed in the Belmont. Secretariat came to the spring of 1973 off a defeat — third in the Wood Memorial two weeks before the Derby, a mouth abscess later reported as a factor — and still went to Louisville as the morning-line favorite, coupled in the betting with his stablemate Angle Light because both were trained by Lucien Laurin. What followed, from May 5 to June 9, is the five weeks this sport still measures everything against. We build pace cards, so we read it the way we read any card: the field, the pace picture, and then what the chart says actually happened.
The start told you nothing about the finish. Twice a Prince reared in the gate and delayed things; Sham slammed his mouth on the gate leaving, loosening two teeth, and bumped another horse for good measure. Secretariat broke last of thirteen from post 10. The early speed the writers had identified — Shecky Greene, the sprinter stretching out — did what was expected of it: Greene led from the gate to about seven furlongs and was three lengths clear at the half, run in :47⅙. Sham, the Santa Anita Derby winner and the clear second choice at 5–2, raced in the first four throughout and took the lead on the far turn despite everything the gate had done to him.
Then the pattern the Derby is remembered for. Secretariat, who had passed only two horses by the first turn, went by the field on the outside, one by one, and each of his five quarter-miles was faster than the quarter before it: :25⅕ · :24 · :23⅞ · :23⅚ · :23. Nobody else who has won this race has run it as a negative split. He reached Sham in the final furlong and pulled away to win by 2½ lengths in 1:59⅚ — the first Derby ever run under two minutes. Ron Turcotte said he simply “just dropped my hand on him and let him run his own race.” The footnote history keeps skipping: Sham’s own estimated time, 1:59⅞, also broke Northern Dancer’s old course record of 2:00. In almost any other year, Sham is the story.
Two weeks later at Pimlico, only six horses went to the post — the top two had scared the field down to the minimum. Secretariat was 1–5 from post 3, and he broke last again. This time the move came early and all at once: on the first turn he passed horses on the outside in one sweep, sensing, as Turcotte put it afterward, that the early pace was slow — and by the backstretch a horse who had been last was in front, with five and a half furlongs still to run. He was never challenged again and won by 2½ lengths, Sham second, Our Native third — the Derby’s first three, in the same order, for the first time that had ever happened across the two races.
The running was the simple part. The time was not. The infield Visumatic timer read 1:55 and had malfunctioned. The official hand time, 1:54⅚ by Pimlico clocker E. T. McLean, went into the books under the Maryland rule that the official timer’s time is official. But two Daily Racing Form clockers, Gene Schwartz and Frank Robinson, had caught him in 1:53⅚ — fast enough to break Cañonero II’s stakes record of 1:54 — and for the first time the Form printed its own clocking in parentheses beside the official time in the chart. Two numbers sat side by side for 39 years. On June 19, 2012, after a forensic review that overlaid the race videotape against later record runs — five analysts, all arriving at the same figure — the Maryland Racing Commission voted unanimously to change the official time to 1:53. Penny Chenery’s comment is the one worth keeping: “It’s nice to finally have this recognized, because the sport depends on accuracy.”
By June 9, Secretariat was on the covers of Time, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated in the same week, and he went off at 1–10. The plausible danger, as the writers laid it out, was the distance and the pace — and Sham, who had been ordered to stay with him from the start, was the horse meant to apply both. Sham’s stablemate Knightly Dawn had been entered late to add early speed, then scratched when the track stayed dry. What was left was a two-horse race at full tilt: Secretariat and Sham together through a quarter in :23⅙, a half in :46⅕, six furlongs in 1:09⅞ — honest sprint fractions in a mile-and-a-half race. Then the separation. Secretariat reached ten furlongs in 1:59, faster than the time that had won him the Derby, with a full quarter-mile still to go.
“Secretariat is widening now! He is moving like a tremendous machine!”— Chic Anderson, CBS track announcer, on the backstretch call, June 9, 1973
Sham, spent by the duel, faded to last; eleven days later a hairline fracture of a cannon bone was found, and his career was over. The race behind the winner was its own rout — Twice a Prince second, 31 lengths back; My Gallant third, another 13 lengths behind him. The final time was 2:24 flat. It broke Gallant Man’s 1957 track record of 2:26⅙ by more than two seconds, broke the American dirt record for the distance, and the 31-length margin broke Count Fleet’s Belmont record of 25, set in 1943. Turcotte had seen the infield timer flash 2:20 in the stretch and thought, “Oh, I can make it” — and rode for the record. The bettors, for their part, left 5,617 winning $2 tickets uncashed as souvenirs.
All three times are still the stakes records: the Derby’s 1:59⅚ (only Monarchos, in 2001, has since broken 2:00 in the race), the Preakness’s 1:53 (as corrected in 2012), and the Belmont’s 2:24, still the American record for a mile and a half on dirt. There is a blue-and-white checkered pole in Meadow Stable’s colors 253 feet 2 inches before the Belmont finish line, marking where the second-place horse was when Secretariat crossed it. Records in this sport usually fall to time and progress. These three were set in five weeks by the same horse, and more than fifty years later the pole is still measuring the gap.
The full sheet: every field, every fraction, and every chart position — the mock Daily Pace Card we built from the public record — lives in the guides: Secretariat’s Triple Crown, 1973 →
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