Readings: Nack
“Pincay thought he had won his first Kentucky Derby. Before him stretched the emptiness of the racetrack. He was in front and handriding, his whip uncocked and at his side. As they all came to the five-sixteenths pole, Turcotte looked ahead and saw Sham and thought he was running very easily and wondered for a moment if he could catch him. Already the move had lasted three-quarters of a mile, and in it Secretariat had run every quarter mile faster than the preceding quarter — the first in 0:25 1/5, the second around the clubhouse turn in 0:24, the third down the backside in 0:23 4/5, and now he was rushing through the fourth quarter at the rate of 0:23 2/5. Through it all, Turcotte had remained a figure of patience in a whirl of motion, his actions deliberate, his timing precise, his earliest instincts sound. He had ridden with an insight into the momentum of the race and the way the colt had been responding to it, sensitive to the scope of the move and to the possibilities it implied if it were left alone to run its course. And that was what he had done — he was confident it would leave him close to the lead at the turn for home — and now they were racing past the five-sixteenths pole and he measured Shecky Greene, saw Sham, and decided he had waited long enough. He was hand-riding, pumping on the colt, when he first chirped to him. Nothing happened, so he chirped again. Nothing happened again. Turcotte cocked his stick, turning it up, like the stave of a picador arming himself, and flashed it in front of Secretariat’s right eye, and that was when he felt the surge of power, suddenly, as if there’d been a change of gears.” — From “Secretariat: The Making of a Champion,” by William Nack
