The Greatest Horse of All

            Probably few people knowledgeable about Thoroughbred racing will truly argue against ranking Secretariat as top candidate for greatest 3YO, although dissenters can always be found.

            His Triple Crown races alone show that, when in top form, he was virtually invincible.

            His Kentucky Derby time of 119.40 s still represents the standard for that race, with only Monarchos in 2001 coming remotely close to Big Red’s time.

            Due to a faulty timer and reticence on the part of the Maryland Racing Commission to accept convincing evidence that he had established a new record, Secretariat was denied the Daily Racing Form time for the Preakness, that being 113.40 s.

Such facts aside, there shall always reverberate the undying echoes of those thundering hooves from Elmont, New York on that historic June Saturday in 1973.

Secretariat’s Belmont

Y = 97.92x – 3.17

            For those who demand more subtle proof of his greatness, there forever stands the Belmont, symbolized by that stark and singular equation speaking of greatness with muted eloquence one thousand words must fail to utter.

            For those whose souls respond to mathematics as the souls of most mortals harken to music or art, this solitary line, a mathematical Haiku in thirteen ciphers, is both ballade and portrait of the greatest twelve furlongs ever run.

            As most Thoroughbred fans know, Secretariat ran the 12-f Belmont in a world-record time, on dirt, of 144.00 s. He did it while looking nonchalant. He averaged twelve seconds per furlong. His record still stands nearly 35 years later.

            The allusion to subtlety regarding the Belmont is this: if one takes Secretariat’s fractional times for that effort (4 f in 46.20 s, 6 f in 69.80 s, 10 f in 119.00 s and 12 f in 144.00 s) and uses Linear Trend Analysis to generate a mathematically straight line for that single race, one can use the result – the singular equation displayed above - to find that Secretariat’s time at the 9.5-f point (the Preakness distance) was 113.11 s.

            The error in accepting this value will be vanishingly small because the COD of the equation is 0.9999.

            Realize that 113.11 s is 0.29 s faster than the accepted Preakness record, now shared by Tank’s Prospect, Louis Quatorze and Curlin.

            In addition, Secretariat broke his own Kentucky Derby record time at the 10-f point of the Belmont by running that distance in 119.00 s.

            For that matter, one can substitute 1.625 mi (13 f) for ”x”, do the indicated math, and find that Secretariat, had he kept his Belmont pace for another furlong, would have broken the current world record on dirt for 13 f (138.20 s by Swaps in 1956 at Hollywood Park) by 2.25 s.

            Secretariat actually did unofficially break that world record, according to one observer, by simply continuing a furlong past the finish line on his existing momentum with Ron Turcotte standing in the stirrups!

            Thus, further arguments concerning how fast Secretariat actually ran or was capable of running are really academic and superfluous. Perhaps these facts are axiomatically sacrosanct? However, enough has been said and proven. Let us not gild the lily.