You know the ending of "Secretariat" walking into the theatre so it is up to the director, 
Randall Wallace,  writer, Mike Rich and cast, lead by Diane Lane, to
keep you interested enough to see how they get to the end.

Diane
Lane plays the real Penny Tweedy, a housewife and mother, who believes
in a horse, Secretariat, that she gets by losing a coin toss and puts
him before everything and everyone in her life, fighting the 'good old
boys' in racing to prove the horse is a winner.

With the exception of Lane the only other woman in the film with much of a role is Margo Martindale who, having been the assistant to Penny's father, upon his death becomes her assistant. AJ   Michalka plays Penny's daughter but the role, and the actress, add nothing to the film.

It
is the actors surrounding Diane Lane that offer the strong support.
There is her father played by Scott Glenn, her husband, acted by Dylan
Walsh, who believes the tradition of the wife in the kitchen and being
the mother, her brother, Dylan Baker, who wants her to sell the horse.

Penny turns to her trainer, a hammy performance by John Malkovich, a jockey,  Ron Turcotte,  acted by a real jockey Otto Thorwarth, who believed as strongly in Secretariat as Penny did and a groom, actor Nelsan Ellis, who truly believed he knew what the horse thought. Nester Serrano plays an obnoxious, braggart owner who owns the closest competition, and makes you dislike him, while James Cromwell eventually comes around to support her in her belief of the horse.

Knowing how the races would play out the director, along with the cameraman Dean Stemler, had the job of maintaining the suspense to carry the audience along and they succeed.

In many ways this film does bring to mind last year's "Blindsided" and Diane Lane matches
Sandra Bullock's performance, both playing strong Southern women having
enough faith in their beliefs to invest their life in them.