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Greatness in a Race Horse

With this weekend’s completion of the Triple Crown, I thought I would mention the horse I regard as the greatest race horse of all time: Secretariat. If one is interestest in greatness, then the Secretariat is your horse. Secretariat was, of course, a Triple Crown winner in 1973 – the first triple crown winner in 25 years.

But the truly amazing thing about Secretariat is that he set records in all three Triple Crown races – and those records still stand today, more than 40 years later. In the Kentucky Derby, Secretariat ran a 1:59:40, the only horse to run the race in less than 2 minutes except for Monarchos’s 1:59:97 in 2001. Aside from Monarchos, no horse has ran below 2:01 and this year’s winner, California Chrome, ran a 2:03.66 – more than 4 seconds slower.

In the Preakness, Secretariat ran a 1:53, a whole second faster than any horse prior to that running and still the record in that race. By comparison, California Chrome’s time was 1:54.84. The story here is a bit more complicated, however, due to timing problems. According to Wikipedia:

The time of the race was controversial. The infield teletimer displayed a time of 1:55. The track’s electronic timer had malfunctioned because of damage caused by members of the crowd crossing the track to reach the infield. The Pimlico Race Course clocker, E.T. McLean Jr., announced a hand time of 1:54:40. However, two Daily Racing Form clockers claimed the time was 1:53.40, which would have broken the track record (1:54 by Cañonero II). Tapes of Secretariat and Cañonero II were played side by side by CBS, and Secretariat got to the finish line first on tape, though this was not a reliable method of timing a horse race at the time. The Maryland Jockey Club, which managed the Pimlico racetrack and is responsible for maintaining Preakness records, discarded both the electronic and Daily Racing Form times and recognized 1:54:40 as the official time. However, Daily Racing Form, for the first time in history, printed its own clocking of 1:53:40 next to the official time in the chart of the race.

On June 19, 2012, a special meeting of the Maryland Racing Commission was convened at Laurel Park at the request of Penny Chenery, who hired companies to conduct a forensic review of the videotapes of the race. After over two hours of testimony, the commission unanimously voted to change the time of Secretariat’s win from 1:54:40 to 1:53, establishing a new stakes record. The Daily Racing Form then announced that it would honor the commission’s ruling with regard to the running time.

The finale was the Belmont Stakes. The Belmont is a different, much longer, race, with a distance of 1.5 mile as compared to 1.25 mile and 1 3/16 mile distances of the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness. Could Secretariat run the longer distance?  Of course, he could – in fact, he was more dominant there than in the other races.

Secretariat again won the race, outdistancing his closest rival by 31 lengths and setting the record of 2:24, which continues to hold. No Belmont Stakes winner has even come close, with the next fastest time being 2:26:00. In fact, Secretariat’s time was the fastest 1.5 miles on dirt in history.

What does all of this have to do with law and politics? I am not sure, but I think greatness is an important value and recognizing greatness – even in a horse – is worthy of the occasional mention.

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