It's Friday, May 19, the day of the week when I reprise quotations intended to be uplifting or educational. Today is also the day of the Black-Eyed Susan Stakes at Baltimore's Pimlico Race Course. Tomorrow Pimlico will host the 148th running of the Preakness Stakes, the middle jewel of horse racing's prestigious Triple Crown. Fifty years ago today, the race (and the Triple Crown) was won by Secretariat, with star Canadian jockey Ron Turcotte aboard.
I've written several times about Secretariat, whom I consider the greatest thoroughbred ever to race on American soil. I've also written about his rider, now 81 and living back home in New Brunswick. And this morning's understated words of inspiration come from Ron Turcotte.
Ron Turcotte always expressed gratitude that trainer Lucien Laurin put him aboard his prized 2-year-old colt in a middling allowance race in Saratoga on the last day of July in 1972. The horse and rider won that day -- and crossed the wire first in nine of their next 10 races, the 10th race being the 1973 Kentucky Derby.
Everybody in racing knew they were seeing something special when Big Red stepped on the track. His jockey knew it, too.
"It was love at first sight and love at first ride," Turcotte said about Secretariat in a recent interview with Canadian journalist Avery MacRae. "He was a beautiful horse to work with. He was like an older horse that had done it all his life. He galloped beautifully, right close to the other horses. Nothing bothered him. I really loved him."
After winning the Derby and the Preakness, the pair headed to Belmont and into racing immortality.
Turcotte's luck ran out five years later, however, at the start of a routine Belmont race. On July 13, 1978, he was aboard a horse called Flag of the Leyte Gulf when, just out of the starting gate, a horse named Small Raja, ridden by Jeff Fell, began drifting toward him.
Turcotte reined his mount sharply, and screamed, "Jeff!" but not in time. Flag of Leyte Gulf went down, taking his rider with him. In his mid-30s, Ronnie Turcotte was a paraplegic.
After his injury, Turcotte became a spokesman for the handicapped, yet remained a racing fan. He was still going to the track in person until 2018, 45 years after his accident, until it finally became too arduous. Ron Turcotte spoke poignantly about what he'd lost, but never bitterly, and still derived joy by imagining himself on the back of a thoroughbred, one in particular.
"That's the thing I missed the most, sitting on a horse," he told MacRae. "I just loved race riding and love horses as a whole."
"I just feel lucky I was in a position to do what I did. I got on a lot of good horse," he said. "Got on Northern Dancer, Canada's greatest horse, and I got on the greatest horse of all time, Secretariat."
"I always lived my life one day at a time," he added, "and I never think myself better than the other guy."
And that's our quote of the week.
Carl M. Cannon is the Washington bureau chief for RealClearPolitics. Reach him on Twitter @CarlCannon
