Secretariat Movie in the Editing Phase

Posted February 1, 2010
Courtesy Horseracegame.com

A Disney produced Secretariat movie currently in the editing phase will premiere on ABC-TV on October 10, 2010, and being the first feature length film about arguably the greatest racehorse that ever lived, it's an understatement to say that anticipation runs high for fans of the champion.

Certain it is that there is great anticipation not unmixed with anxiety concerning the finished product. Most of his fans, myself included, are sincerely hoping that this Secretariat movie does him justice, that is, that the film captures well the almost indefinable magic he created during his racing career.

What does that magic entail? The magic that started with his amazing talent, talent so singular, so devastating, so nearly incomprehensible that it allowed the chestnut son of Bold Ruler to do things on the track that, to this day, no horse has ever done and most experts doubt will ever be duplicated.

For casual fans of horseracing that don't understand the technical aspects of racing such as the significance of a fifth of a second (it's the equivalent of one length) or what a twelve-clip is (averaging 12 seconds per ever 8th of a mile) and don't care to know, they can tap into the magic that was his astounding 31 length victory in the 1973 Belmont Stakes, but what they might not know is how his time of 2:24 flat is so utterly inconceivable that, in the research that I've done, I've never found any documentation that any other horse has ever ran a mile and a half on dirt in a time better than 2:25&4/5ths.

They might not know that he ran each successive quarter-mile in the 1973 Kentucky Derby faster than the one before, finishing with an all-time speed record for both the Kentucky Derby and for the fastest final quarter mile as well.

This horse just loved to run, and perhaps the most amazing single feat he ever accomplished was one that didn't officially even count: After SECRETARIAT and jockey Ron Turcotte crossed the finish line to complete that historic 1973 Belmont Stakes performance, the horse kept running for an extra 8th of a mile to gradually slow down. A clocker kept his stopwatch running for that extra furlong, and clocked his unofficial mile and 5/8th's time at 2:37&3.

To this day, the official world record for that distance is held by the Hall of Fame champion Swaps, one of the all-time greatest, at 2:38&1, an accomplishment achieved in the mid 1950s when he was fully mature 4-year-old.

Secretariat unofficially broke that world record, and he was slowing down before the race was over! The only word to describe each of those never since duplicated feats is magical. I am hopeful that this Secretariat movie captures that magic.