Word: belmont
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Dates: during 1970-1979
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...find impossible to travel at anywhere near their top speed without falling apart from fatigue. Can Secretariat go the distance? If he can, he may not only capture the Triple Crown but also break the record for the race-2:26%, which is also the track record at Belmont Park, set by Gallant Man in 1957. The Belmont track is extremely fast this year for some reason -possibly because of the unusually heavy spring rains that have packed the surface, possibly because of the particular combination of sand and loam and clay that is being used...
Suspense may be building for fans, owners, trainers and jockeys, but the star remains supremely serene. Belmont is Secretariat's usual home between races elsewhere, and he is unconscionably comfortable there despite his celebrity status. The famous old track is a delightful place on a sunny morning in early June. The barns are set far apart; the buildings and roads are shaded by ancient trees. The slanting early sunlight casts shifting patterns on the grassy plots where horses graze...
Secretariat's home-ordinarily-is especially serene. Trainer Laurin, who races one of the best strings of horses at Belmont even without Secretariat, has a cluster of buildings all to himself, surrounding an outdoor walking ring and a grazing plot. The area is its own little world, isolated from all outside influence, peopled only by the same familiar faces that work there every day, going about their business with quiet and calming assurance...
Like Riva Ridge, winner of last year's Belmont Stakes as well as the Run for the Roses, Secretariat was raised in the lap of equine luxury at The Meadow, a rolling, tree-shaded retreat in Doswell, Va., with a century-old mansion surrounded by stables, swimming pool, tennis courts and a cemetery for thoroughbreds. Penny Tweedy, 51, inherited the 2,600-acre farm from her father Christopher Chenery, the public utilities magnate who founded the stable. The wife of John Tweedy, executive vice president of The Oil Shale Corp., and the mother of four, Mrs. Tweedy has been...
...overcome his appetite and mediocre mounts, he turned to horse training in New England. Laurin soon won a reputation for nursing sore-legged horses back to good form. After training such winners as Quill, the champion two-year-old filly of 1958, and Amberoid, winner of the 1966 Belmont Stakes, he joined A.B. ("Bull") Hancock's Claiborne Farm. On one memorable afternoon in 1969, he saddled Claiborne's Dike to win the Wood Memorial while another of his entries, Jay Ray, was winning the California Derby. Lucien succeeded his son Roger as trainer of Meadow Stable...