If Life Were A Horse Race, I'd Like to be Secretariat!

They were really big. That was the first thought I had as my grandfather set me on the fence post in front of him to watch the horses getting ready for the Preakness Stakes during a trip we took to Baltimore. Years later I realized that Ft. McHenry and the day trip to DC were just a cover for Preakness Day.

“Damn”, I said, shaking my head like I’d seen adults do so many times. “Papou, those are really big horses.”

My grandfather looked around to make sure that no one else had heard his eight year old grandson muttering and laughed softly to himself.

“Boy-mu,” he said, his Greek accent slipping through. “Not only are they big, but they are fast! But, uh, please, no more ‘damn’ OK?”

“OK. Which one is the fastest?” I asked.

“We’ll see in a few minutes.”

“Doesn’t that paper tell you who’s going to win?” I said, pointing to the Daily Racing Form rolled up in his hand. I had seen him perusing it intently the evening before.

He laughed again and said to me, as if I were the smartest person in the world, “It does Boy-mou, it does! I just don’t always understand what it’s trying to tell me!”

“It should be easy if it says it in the paper,” I declared.

“Ah, but races are not run on paper. A paper can’t measure the heart of a horse,” he said, beating his chest with the Form, “the desire inside of it to be a leader or a follower. You always want to make sure you have a leader, not a follower. The Form also can’t tell you what the humans that help the horse get ready to race are thinking. There is a lot the paper doesn’t tell us, Nicky.”

“Then why even get it?” I asked.

Laughing loudly now, and acknowledging the knowing smiles of the people around him, my grandfather exclaimed, “My Grandson…he knows already what we’re up against, no?!”

He lifted me up to go back to our seats and said to me, “Boy-mu that is a great question. When you’re old enough, I’ll help you answer it!”

I recall the winner of that Preakness Stakes as if it were yesterday. I was only eight years old and really, the winner shouldn’t have mattered to me anyhow, but it was 1973 and Secretariat was a household name. He was a big chestnut dream of a horse. We caught eyes as he made his way to the Pimlico track and, swear to God, he winked at me. He knew he would win and he was telling me. Sixteen years later I cried in my office when I learned that the big chestnut was euthanized after losing his battle with laminitis.