The 81-year-old jockey, paralyzed in a race in 1978, lives in Canada, where he’s happy to recall his three rides into history. Of the human connections, only Ron Turcotte is still alive. The hoof disease defeated the horse on Oct. Big Red himself died in 1989, laminitis doing what few equine challengers could.
With each passing year, the connections to Secretariat dwindle. But time pauses for neither man nor horse. Thanks to Walt Disney Pictures and YouTube, the great horse lives on, forever “moving like a tremendous machine,’’ as he did in his triumphant 3-year-old campaign in 1973. In the half-century since, no horse has touched Secretariat’s Kentucky Derby record of 1:59.4 or, for that matter, his Preakness (1:53) or Belmont (2:24) finishes, either.
On Friday, as the fillies load for the Kentucky Oaks, it will be 50 years to the day since a 3-2 favorite broke from the starting gates on a gallop toward immortality. This weekend, 400-odd miles and a world away from here, horse racing fans, bucket list makers and those just in search of a good party will descend on famed Churchill Downs for the 149th running of the Kentucky Derby. At the top of the drive sits a serviceable gray barn where inside, in the first stall to the left, is a 34-year-old mare by the name of Trusted Company. To the right is a pleasant, if unassuming, house sided in hemlock, and to the left a chicken coop. The farm sits at the end of a narrow, rutted driveway gone muddy by days of rain.
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