(If anything, they’re more incredible, in the true sense of the word, than they are in Disney’s version.) As if second-guessing the power of the story-which lacks the underdog propulsion that fuels most sports films-the film focuses less on the extraordinary horse and more on owner Penny Chenery Tweedy’s transformation from laundry-folding homemaker to a self-empowered owner of a champion horse, in what amounts to a kind of conservative version of bra-burning feminism. The film doesn’t capture Secretariat the way the book does, though in a sense, Secretariat was destined for a Disney film, because his accomplishments had something of the fairy tale about them. Now that book has been used as the basis for Disney’s new film Secretariat, starring Diane Lane and John Malkovich, opening nationwide today.

Numbers don’t really convey it, especially if you’re not much of a railbird.īecause he stopped racing in 1973, before I was born, Secretariat’s feats occupied the vague realm of legend-at least until the day my mother gave me her copy of sportswriter William Nack’s wonderful Big Red of Meadow Stable (as it was then called), a biography of Secretariat that I read and reread, scouring it for every detail of his races. As a three-year-old he not only set the track record for the Derby-1:59 and 2/5 for a mile and a quarter-he demolished the field in the Belmont Stakes, the third and most challenging leg of the series, and broke the world record by an extraordinary 2 and 3/5 seconds, finishing in 2:24, an accomplishment that has not yet been rivaled. Ruffian was the undefeated front-running filly who had broken down in a match race with Foolish Pleasure in 1975, and Secretariat, of course, was the gawky, brilliant colt who in 1973 became the first horse in 25 years to win the Triple Crown, doing it with the kind of authority never seen before or since. It was our horse-race-loving mother who taught my brothers and me the litany of these great thoroughbreds’ accomplishments, usually on days we spent together at Belmont Racetrack, the wind ruffling the manes of the colts and fillies dancing out to the post. Every home has its household gods and in our rather pagan one their names were Ruffian and Secretariat.

Bill nack secretariat