Secretariat. William Nack

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      Starter George Cassidy, standing atop a platform about ten yards in front of the gate, watched for the moment when the heads stopped turning. Then Cassidy pressed the button, the gates popped open, and the eleven liberated horses started bounding forward as one.

      Secretariat broke alertly, as he did July 4, his head emerging from the gate with the others in the first jump, but with that first single stride he was already running last, already a half length behind Jacques Who at the break. Ten feet from the gate, with the others barreling for the lead and beginning to string out, he was still nearly trailing the field. This start, among others, would later give rise to the false notion that the battering he took in his first race made him timid in all his starts, made him afraid to leave the slip with his field, causing him to take himself back.

      But he didn’t take himself back that afternoon. He was pumping and driving with his front and back legs, trying to move his bulk apace with the field. He was reaching for whatever ground he could grab beneath himself, but he wasn’t getting there as fast as the others.

      Up in the box seats, Laurin’s mouth dropped open as the colt fell back to last, astounded that it was all happening a second time.

      Feliciano sensed the colt was having no easy time finding his stride, so he sat tight on him as they started to race for the bend, not reaching back and strapping him, not hollering at him. Instead, Feliciano sat pumping with his arms, in rhythm with the stride. Through that first quarter mile, Feliciano wondered whether Secretariat would ever get it together. All he could do for the moment was keep the colt to the outside, clear of traffic, and wait for him to find himself. He began to worry in earnest as the field pounded through the first 220 yards, leaving him with only five furlongs to go and still no running horse beneath him. He was asking Secretariat to run, but without the whip, pumping on him as they raced to the bend.

      Bet On It was sprinting toward the half-mile pole a length in front, zipping along at an eleven-second clip through the first eighth, with Master Achiever right behind and Impromptu third. They were rolling as Secretariat finally came alive.

      As the field raced down the backside for the turn, Paul suddenly began to feel it happening beneath him, a coming together of stride and movement, a leveling out and smoothing of motion that retired exercise boy Jimmy (The Squirrel) Weininger once recalled, in tones of reverence: “It’s the oddest thing. It’s like you’re a pilot and you’re out there warming up the engine and then it shifts into that one gear that sends your ass down the runway. A horse drops down and he’s in first gear and then he’s in fourth gear and it’s sort of like flying, taking off.”