Horse Racing Fantasy Community

Origins I

Well, we're a week away from the Kentucky Derby and I have decided to use the occasion to create a sort of all-encompassing series that will take you through the video project that I have been working on for about the last year and a half over at YouTube, a collection of videos known collectively as The SECRETARIAT Project. Here is the link to my channel if you'd like to visit and explore on your own http://www.youtube.com/user/gfn02.

I have been fascinated by that horse every since I was 11-12 years old. My Dad would sometimes take me to the OTB at Arlington Park to bet on the harness and thoroughbred races and give me $10 that I could use in any way I saw fit. If I wanted to bet he told me to pick out a horse and he would make the bet for me, or I could use the $10 to buy concessions. I didn't really understand how to read the racing form, had no idea what the fractions and other data meant, and only had a vague notion of what the odds meant. I would get frustrated trying to read the charts, but I didn't want to ask my Dad for help because I didn't want him to know I didn't have a clue. Accordingly, I would get bored pretty quickly and start wandering around the place, and sometimes I would start talking with the old-timers, the guys who had been coming to the track watching and betting on races for decades. I struck up a friendly rapport with an old man (for the life of me I cannot remember his name), and he actually started talking to me about things to look for when watching races, generally providing me a method to make sense of what was going on out there. Most of the time that Dad took me to that OTB, that old man was there and I would end up talking to him.

Now, the day the horse died, October 4th, 1989, his death was most certainly national news, but in the Chicago area it was completely overshadowed by the Chicago Cubs opening the NLCS in one of their rare post-season appearances against the San Francisco Giants. A couple days later, however, my Dad and I were back at Arlington for an evening of watching and betting. I of course found the old man and, maybe 30 minutes prior to the first race, all of the closed circuit TV's in the joint went dark and an announcement came over the PA that said something like, "Good evening ladies and gentleman. As you know the 1973 Triple Crown Champion SECRETARIAT was euthanized on Wednesday. All of racing mourns the death of this great horse. We at Arlington are especially touched because SECRETARIAT graced our track with his presence on June 30, 1973 and powered to victory in front of one of the largest crowds we've ever had. Will everyone please stand, remove your hats and join us in a moment of silence."

During the moment of silence I actually could hear sniffles; it occurred to me that there were people quietly weeping, and I thought, "All this for a horse?" After the moment of silence was over all the CCTV's showed a very short, maybe 5-6 minute tribute to the horse, focusing mostly on his Triple Crown sweep. When the tribute showed the footage of him nearing the wire in the 1973 Belmont there was a spontaneous applause from the OTB crowd that lasted a good 10-15 seconds. I was amazed. It was clear that somehow this horse was special, that he in some way had stamped himself in the collective memory of all these people. I wanted to know more, so of course I sought out the old man and peppered him with questions for the next 2 hours. He was only too happy to oblige, and it was that day that I was first told, by this man who had actually been at Arlington the day SECRETARIAT raced there, of just how and why this horse was so utterly remarkable in every way.

In the next entry of this series, I'll share with you what this old timer told me.

gfn02