Tag Archives: Secretariat

Sports news

You go, Patch!

Under normal circumstances, I wouldn’t give a hoot about the Kentucky Derby, a horse race that occurs each May in Louisville, Ky.

This year, though, is different.

A thoroughbred named Patch is going to take his place Saturday in the starting gate. I want Patch to win the race.

Why? The beast has just one eye.

I get excited about horse racing only when the same horse wins the first two legs of the Triple Crown — the Derby and the Preakness. My favorite horse races of all time were the 1973 and 2015 Belmont Stakes, the final Triple Crown race.

In1973, Secretariat won the Triple Crown by damn near lapping the field at the Belmont. In 2015, American Pharoah broke a 37-year Triple Crown drought by leading from wire to wire in a stunning race.

This year, I’m hoping to watch the Kentucky Derby and am going to cheer for Patch to show up those other horses. He’s about a 30-to-1 underdog. Hey, horses have come from farther down on the odds chart to win.

Go for it, Patch!

Sports news

How odd? I don’t like horse-racing, but am thrilled today

Someone has to explain this one.

I’m not at all nuts about watching horses running around a track with a mini-man perched on the saddle.

However, I do excited when a horse wins the first two legs of the Triple Crown. And then I get really excited when the same horse wins the third one.

http://www.msn.com/en-us/sports/horseracingspecial/american-pharoah-becomes-1st-triple-crown-winner-in-37-years/ar-BBkMGCO

That was my state of mind this evening as I watched American Pharoah win the Triple Crown, becoming the first horse since 1978 (Affirmed) to accomplish the feat. It’s the longest stretch between Triple Crown winners in Triple Crown history.

Secretariat remains the gold standard for horse-racing excellence. What’s more, Secretariat won the 1973 Belmont Stakes by 31 lengths. Jockey Ron Turcotte ever laid a land on his steed. In fact, he was unaware of the distance between his mount and the next one until they turned down the stretch and Turcotte said he couldn’t hear any other horse sounds: hooves pounding or horses snorting.

This one was good. American Pharoah led from the gate and took it all the way home.

However, consider this: It comes from someone commenting on a friend’s Facebook post about which horse is the best in history. This fellow said Secretariat’s winning time in the Belmont Stakes would have put him 15 lengths ahead of American Pharoah.

Still, the newest Triple Crown winner joins some heady company.

Well done.

 

Sports news

Now, let's go for the Triple Crown

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17preakness-master675

Hey, what’s going on here?

I usually don’t watch any of the Triple Crown legs until the Belmont Stakes comes up. And then it’s only if the same horse has won the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness Stakes.

So, what did I do today? I sat down with my wife and watched American Pharaoh win the Preakness.

What’s more, the horse won it going away … in the slop … in a downpour.

It was impressive.

Now I’m going to watch the Belmont Stakes for sure to see if this horse can become the first Triple Crown winner since 1978, when Affirmed beat another great horse, Alydar, in the sport’s greatest two-horse duel over the course of all three races.

I’m pulling hard for American Pharaoh to win the Belmont.

But if you want to see the sport’s greatest exhibition of equine dominance, take a look at this:

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Space flight video chokes me up

I am not prone to weeping openly. That is, I don’t just start sobbing when something pushes my emotional hot button.

But I tend to swallow hard, get a little choked up at sights. Historic videos do that to me.

I cannot, for instance, watch Muhammad Ali light the 1996 Olympic torch in Atlanta without getting teary-eyed; the same thing happens when I watch video of Secretariat winning the Belmont Stakes in 1973 and the announcer says he’s “running like a tremendous machine!”; ditto for watching Sen. Robert F. Kennedy say “on to Chicago and let’s win there” moments before the gunman wounded him mortally in Los Angeles.

So … I’ve been choking back tears this week watching CNN’s series on “The Sixties.” The segment this week dealt with the space race. The United States competed with the Soviet Union to be the first nation to land someone on the moon. We won that race. It was a come-from-behind victory, you’ll recall.

The segment that does it to me every time I see it is the launch of Apollo 8, the first lunar orbit mission that blasted off from Cape Canaveral on Dec. 21, 1968. The launch itself is an emotional moment for me. It reminds me of when my late mother and I would get up early to watch the countdown of those Mercury and Gemini launches. The thrill is something that has never left me.

The CNN series, though, takes you through the launch and quickly to the point where Apollo 8 commences lunar orbit with astronauts Frank Borman, Jim Lovell and William Anders aboard.

Then, on Christmas Eve 1968, Borman pulls out his Bible as he trains the TV camera on the Earth-rise over the moon’s horizon and he starts reading from the Book of Genesis … reminding us of our world that God created.

Yep, that chokes me up.

1968 was a hideous year. The Vietnam War was going badly; assassins killed Martin Luther King Jr. and RFK; our streets were erupting in chaos as Americans protested the war.

Then, to have the commander of a space mission read on Christmas Eve from the passage in the Bible that takes us back to the beginning of our very existence in the universe …

As Tom Hanks says on the CNN segment, “Who wrote that script?”

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Bring on the Belmont!

How ’bout that California Chrome, winning the Preakness Stakes today?

My interest in horse racing has just increased manyfold. Why? Well, California Chrome has a chance to become the first Triple Crown winner since 1978.

Affirmed was the latest horse to win the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes.

Seattle Slew did it the year before. Secretariat won it in 1973 by smashing the Belmont field in that fantastic runaway 1,000-length victory … or at least it seemed that way.

Affirmed had to work real hard to win the Triple Crown, which in its way makes his victories even more memorial. Alydar, another great horse, raced Affirmed nose to nose every galloping step on the way only to come up short by, oh, that much.

Horse racing doesn’t never has piqued my interest much. It does, though, when a horse is in position to win the Triple Crown.

I know what I’ll be doing when they sound the bugle in Elmont, N.Y. I’ll be rooting for California Chrome.

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Waiting for the next big horse race

Horse-racing buffs know that this is Kentucky Derby weekend.

I’m not one of them. I’ve never really gotten into horse racing, let alone betting on the ponies. As for racing’s Triple Crown, well, I don’t care much about that, either.

Except when a certain thing happens. I begin to care about when the same horse wins the first two races of the Triple Crown: the Derby and the Preakness.

Then comes the Belmont Stakes and that is when I get interested. I usually tune in to the final Triple Crown race to see if the Derby and Preakness winner can win the Triple Crown.

The first time I got really interested in this three-horse event occurred in 1973, when Secretariat astounded the world by winning the Belmont Stakes — and the Triple Crown — in utterly astonishing fashion. (See link attached to this blog and you’ll see what I mean.)

Of all the great stories and observations about that race I’ve heard, my favorite came from jockey Ron Turcotte.

As Secretariat galloped into the home stretch, Turcotte has said, he noticed he couldn’t hear any other horse noises; no horses grunting, no hooves pounding … only the sound of his own horse’s hooves pounding along at a record pace.

It was then that Turcotte turned around and saw that Secretariat was running all alone. The second-place horse was about 20 lengths back. I should add that at no point in the race did Turcotte hit his horse with the whip jockeys use to make their beasts run faster.

I’m sure some folks will get all excited about the Kentucky Derby. I’ll get excited if the Derby’s winner pulls off another win at the Preakness.

Then I’ll get excited.