As we approach the Preakness this Saturday anticipating the rematch of Bodemeister and I'll  Have Another, the Kentucky Derby winner,  who can not help but think of the greatest race horse ever to run.....the incomparable Secretariat. 
Winner of the Triple Crown in 1973, the first in 25 years, he set records in both the Preakness and the Belmont that still stand.  Even more amazing, he won the Belmont, the longest race of the three, by an unheard of 31 lengths.
His owner, Penny Chenery, acquired ownership of Secretariat after losing a bet to another race horse owner. Best bet she ever LOST.
The story of Secretariat began with the toss of a coin in 1969 between Christopher Chenery of Meadow Stables and Ogden Phipps of Wheatley Stable.
The idea of a coin toss came from Phipps, the owner of Bold Ruler, and "Bull" Hancock of Claiborne Farms as a way to get the very best mares for Bold Ruler, and when the toss went their way, to add well-bred fillies to their own broodmare band.
Bold Ruler was considered one of the important stallions of his time. He had a fine balance between speed and stamina, and
though he finished fourth in the 1957 Kentucky Derby at a mile and a
quarter, Bold Ruler won the Preakness two weeks later at a mile and
three sixteenths, and won three major stakes at the Derby's 10-furlong
distance.
After his racing career, Bold Ruler was retired to Claiborne Farms, but
still was controlled by the Phipps family. This meant he would be bred
mainly to Phipps' mares and not many of his offspring would find their
way to the auction ring.
Phipps and Hancock agreed to forgo a stud fee for Bold Ruler in exchange for getting to keep one of two foals
produced by the mare he bred in successive seasons or two mares he bred
in the same season. Who obtained which foal or even received first pick
would be decided by a flip of a coin.
In 1968, Chenery sent two mares named Hasty Matilda and Somethingroyal to Bold Ruler, and in 1969, a colt and filly were the result. In 1969,
Hasty Matilda was replaced by Cicada, but she did not conceive. Only one
foal resulted between Bold Ruler and Somethingroyal.
As stated in the
original agreement, the winner of the coin toss could pick the foal he
wanted, but could only take one, while the loser would get the other
two. Both parties assumed Somethingroyal would deliver a healthy foal in
the spring of 1970.
The coin toss between Penny Chenery and Ogden
Phipps was held in the fall of 1969 in the office of New York Racing
Association Chairman Alfred Vanderbilt II, with Hancock as witness.
Phipps won the toss and took the weanling filly out of Somethingroyal, leaving Chenery with the colt out of Hasty Matilda and the unborn foal of Somethingroyal.
On March 30, at 12:10 a.m., Somethingroyal foaled a bright-red chestnut colt with three white socks and a star with a narrow blaze. By the time the colt was a yearling,
he was still unnamed.
Meadow Stables' secretary, Elizabeth Ham, had
submitted 10 names to the Jockey Club, all of which were denied because
they were used already.
Approval finally came with the 11th submission, a
name Ham herself picked from a previous career association,
Secretariat.
Secretariat started off his three-year-old year with an easy win in the Bay Shore Stakes at Aqueduct. In his next start, the Gotham Stakes, Secretariat led wire-to-wire for the first time in his career. He ran the first 3/4 of a mile in 1:08³⁄₅ and finished the one mile race in 1:33²⁄₅, equalling the track record. However, in his next start, he finished third in the Wood Memorial to his stablemate Angle Light and Santa Anita Derby winner Sham,
in their final preparatory race for the Kentucky Derby. Because of the
Wood Memorial results, some were considering Sham the top pick for the
Kentucky Derby. Sham was at the top of the list in the Louisville
Courier-Journal and Times Derby Ratings on April 22, 1973.^[6]

The Triple Crown

The Kentucky Derby

Churchill Downs bettors made the entry of Secretariat and Angle Light the 3–2 favorite in the 1973 Kentucky Derby. (Sham was next at 5—2.) Secretariat broke last, but gradually moved up on the field in the backstretch, then overtook Sham at the top of the stretch, pulling away to win the Derby by 2¹⁄₂ lengths. Our Native finished third.
On his way to a still-standing track record (1:59²⁄₅), Secretariat ran each quarter-mile segment faster than the one before it. The successive quarter-mile times were 25¹⁄₅, 24, 23⁴⁄₅, 23²⁄₅,
and 23. This means he was still accelerating as of the final
quarter-mile of the race. No other horse won the Derby in less than 2
minutes until Monarchos in 2001.

The Preakness Stakes

In the Preakness Stakes, Secretariat broke last, but then made a huge, last-to-first move on the first turn. After reaching the lead with 5¹⁄₂ furlongs to go, he was never challenged, and won by 2½ lengths, again with Sham finishing second and Our Native third.
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 1:54²⁄₅. However, two "Daily Racing Form" clockers claimed the time was 1:53²⁄₅, 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 is not
a reliable method of timing a horse race. 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 1:54²⁄₅ as the official time. However, the "Daily Racing Form", for the first time in history, printed its own clocking of 1:53²⁄₅ next to the official time in the chart of the race.
Subsequently, Tank's Prospect (1985), Louis Quatorze (1996), and Curlin (2007) have run 1:53²⁄₅, equaling the time attributed to Secretariat by the Daily Racing Form. Farma Way won the 1991 Pimlico Special in 1:52²⁄₅, setting the current track record.
As Secretariat prepared for the Belmont Stakes, he appeared on the covers of three national magazines: Time, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated. He had become a national celebrity.

The Belmont Stakes

Only four horses competed against Secretariat for the June 9, 1973, running of the Belmont Stakes,
including Sham, which had finished second in both the Derby and
Preakness, along with three other horses thought to have little chance
by the bettors: Twice A Prince, My Gallant, and Private Smiles. With so
few horses in the race, and with Secretariat expected to win, no "show"
bets were taken.
Secretariat was sent off as a 1–10 favorite to win as a
$2.20 payout on a $2 ticket and paid at 20 cents more – $2.40 – to
place. Before a crowd of 67,605, Secretariat and Sham set a fast early pace,
opening ten lengths on the rest of the field. After the six-furlong
mark, Sham began to tire, ultimately finishing last. Secretariat
astonished spectators by continuing the fast pace and opening up a
larger and larger margin on the field. Viewers heard the wonder in CBS
Television announcer Chic Anderson's voice as he described the horse's pace: "Secretariat is widening now! He is moving like a tremendous machine!"
In the stretch, Secretariat opened a 1/16 mile lead on the rest of
the field. At the finish, he won by 31 lengths (breaking the
margin-of-victory record set by Triple Crown winner Count Fleet in 1943, which won by 25 lengths), and ran the fastest 1½ miles on dirt
in history, 2:24 flat, which broke the stakes' record by more than two
seconds.
This works out to a speed of 37.5 mph for his entire performance.
Secretariat's world record still stands, and in fact, no other horse has
ever broken 2:25 for 1½ miles on dirt. If the Beyer Speed Figure calculation had been developed during that time, Andrew Beyer calculated that Secretariat would have earned a figure of 139, the highest he has ever assigned.
Many
bettors holding 5,617 winning parimutuel tickets on Secretariat never
redeemed them, presumably keeping them as souvenirs (and because they
paid only $2.20 on a $2 bet).
Retirement:
As part of his first crop at stud, Secretariat sired Canadian Bound, who was the first Thoroughbred yearling racehorse ever sold for more than US$1 million. At the 1976 Keeneland July sale, the auction bidding for Canadian Bound broke the $1 million barrier, selling for $1.5 million.
Canadian Bound was a complete failure in racing, so for several years,
the value of Secretariat's offspring declined considerably. However, he
eventually sired a number of major stakes winners, including 1986 Horse
of the Year Lady's Secret, 1988 Preakness and Belmont Stakes winner Risen Star, 1990 Melbourne Cup winner Kingston Rule, which broke the course record in Australia's richest race, and the 1994, 1995 winner of the G1 Pacific Classic, Tinners Way, born in 1990 to Secretariat's last crop.
He also sired General Assembly, which won the 1979 Travers Stakes at Saratoga while setting a still-standing race record of 2:00 flat.
Andrew Beyer has said General Assembly's speed figure in that race was
one of the fastest in history.
Like Secretariat in the Belmont, General
Assembly never duplicated that performance in the races that remained on
his schedule. Secretariat was retired at three years old and General
Assembly at four.
There has been some criticism of Secretariat as a stallion, due in
part to his perceived inability to produce male offspring of his same
caliber.
However, he turned out to be a noted broodmare sire, being the
maternal grandsire ("damsire") of 1992 Horse of the Year and successful
sire A.P. Indy, Secretariat's grandson through his daughter Weekend Surprise, and sired by another Triple Crown winner, Seattle Slew.
AP Indy is the sire of 2007 Belmont Stakes winner Rags to Riches, the first filly to win at Belmont since 1905.
Secretariat is also the damsire of the great stallions Storm Cat (by Storm Bird), through his daughter Terlingua, herself an excellent racemare, and of Gone West, through his daughter Secrettame.
Secretariat is also the great-grandsire of Giant's Causeway through his grandson Storm Cat and daughter Terlingua.
Secretariat's genetic legacy may be linked in part to the likelihood
that he carried the "x-factor", a trait linked to a large heart, carried
only on the X chromosome, and thus, a trait Secretariat could only pass on via his daughters.

Death

In the fall of 1989, Secretariat was afflicted with laminitis, a painful and often incurable hoof condition. When his condition failed to improve after a month of treatment, he was euthanized on October 4 at the age of 19.
Popular both as a Triple Crown champion and in retirement, Secretariat was mourned by millions and buried at Claiborne Farm in Paris, Kentucky,
given the rare honor of being buried whole; usually only the head,
heart, and hooves of a winning race horse are buried, and the rest of
the body is cremated.
A necropsy revealed his heart was significantly larger than that of an ordinary horse
An extremely large heart is a trait that occasionally occurs in
Thoroughbreds, linked to a genetic condition passed down via the dam line, known as the "x-factor".
The x-factor can be traced to the historic racehorse Eclipse,
which was necropsied after his death in 1789. Because Eclipse's heart
appeared to be much larger than other horses, it was weighed, and found
to be 14 pounds (6.4 kg), almost twice the normal weight.
Eclipse is
believed to have passed the trait on via his daughters, and pedigree
research verified that Secretariat traces in his dam line to a daughter
of Eclipse.
In the 20th century, the heart of Phar Lap was weighed and also documented to be 6.35 kilograms (14.0 lb), or essentially the same size as that of Eclipse.
At the time of Secretariat's death, the veterinarian who performed
the necropsy, Dr. Thomas Swerczek, head pathologist at the University of
Kentucky, did not weigh Secretariat's heart, but stated, "We just stood
there in stunned silence. We couldn’t believe it. The heart was
perfect.
There were no problems with it. It was just this huge engine."
Later, Swerczek also performed a necropsy on Sham, who died in 1993.
Swerczek did weigh Sham's heart, and it was 18 pounds (8.2 kg).
Based on
Sham's measurement, and having necropsied both horses, he estimated
Secretariat's heart probably weighed 22 pounds (10.0 kg), or about two-and-three-quarters times as large as that of the average horse.