It has been nearly a half-century since Secretariat thundered through the Triple Crown, but the strapping chestnut colt’s Canadian jockey, Ron Turcotte, still receives thousands of requests for autographs. Pictures, programs, old racing forms and newspaper clippings jam his post-office box in Van Buren, Me., across the border from where he lives in northern New Brunswick.
“I still get as many as I did when I was riding,” said Turcotte, who is 78 and remembers details from 1973 as though they happened yesterday. “I look at some things people send me and wonder where they got them.
“Some packages don’t even have an address on them. They write ‘Ron Turcotte’ on the front and somehow it reaches me.”
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Secretariat’s unmatched sweep of horse racing’s most prestigious events began on the first Saturday in May 47 years ago. No thoroughbred has ever run faster than Secretariat did in the Kentucky Derby and the Preakness and Belmont Stakes that followed. Because of that, both the horse and the man in the saddle will never be forgotten.
This year’s annual Run for the Roses was postponed because of the COVID-19 pandemic and has been rescheduled for Sept. 5. In its place, NBC will televise a computer-generated virtual race among 13 Triple Crown winners on Saturday.
Secretariat, who was beaten only four times in 21 starts, is listed as the 2-to-1 favourite in a field that includes Seattle Slew, American Pharoah, Affirmed, Justify, War Admiral and Sir Barton, among others.
“Anybody who picks against Secretariat doesn’t know anything about horses,” Turcotte says over the phone.
Turcotte lives on a farm in the small village of Drummond with Gaetane, his wife of 54 years. From their back deck, they enjoy a stunning view of the Appalachians.
Left a paraplegic in a racing accident in 1978, he used to enjoy gabbing over coffee at the nearest Tim Hortons.
“It was like a ritual for me,” he says. “I’m the kind of guy who likes to hang around with old friends.”
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But because of the spread of the coronavirus, he spends days and nights poring over his computer.
“I am like everybody else, in a cage now,” he says good-naturedly. “My doctor locked me in. He told Gaetane to weld the wheels shut on my [wheel]chair.”
Over a riding career that spanned 17 years, he landed in the winner’s circle 3,032 times. He won almost every major stakes race that exists – some multiple times – but is best remembered for his and Secretariat’s supremacy in 1973.
For years, fans brought roses to the breeding farm in Kentucky where Secretariat died in 1989 of laminitis, a painful foot disease. Many made pilgrimages to his grave in the bluegrass during derby week each year.
Seth Hancock, the long-time operator of Claiborne Farm, where Secretariat lived out his retirement as a breeding horse, once said that if you want to know who Secretariat is in human terms, “Just imagine the greatest athlete in the world. Now make him 6-foot-3, the perfect height. Make him intelligent and kind. And on top of that, make him the best-lookin’ guy ever to come down the pike. He was all those things as a horse.”
In Turcotte, Secretariat also had one of the greatest riders in the world.
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“I get requests from fans as far away as Australia, and from countries I’ve never heard of,” he says. “If people can take the time to send me things, I should sign and send them back.”
In 1972-73, he became the first jockey to win five of the six races consecutively in the Triple Crown. When he won the Kentucky Derby in 1973, he was the first to do it in back-to-back years since Jimmy Winkfield in 1902.
Racing fans would wait for him at the end of each day at the track, and follow him into the parking lot to ask for an autograph. Some riders didn’t like it, but it never bothered Turcotte.
“I always put myself in the place of the fans and the kids that would ask me. If I was impolite, they might not ever come to the races again. And without fans, there would be no races.”
Secretariat won 15 of 18 starts with Turcotte at the reins. He finished fourth in his first race under a different rider after being bumped at the start, but was never worse than third after that.
Turcotte says Secretariat was sick or unprepared to race the only other times he didn’t win.
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“That horse should have never been beat except for his first race,” he says. “He never failed us. We failed him.”
Once, Secretariat finished second in a stakes race while running a fever of 105 F.
“I remember bringing him back to be unsaddled afterward and I was crying as I jumped off him,” Turcotte says. “I had never had a horse try that hard that was that sick. How he finished second is beyond me.”
One of 12 children, Ron Turcotte grew up a little more than two kilometres from where he lives today. His family’s home had neither running water nor electricity, and the kids slept two and three to a bed.
At 14, he quit school to become a lumberjack. He was all of 5-foot-1 and 128 pounds but helped his dad by driving a team of horses to haul lumber out of the woods.
At 18, he and a friend went to Toronto looking for work in construction. When that didn’t pan out, they got jobs with a bait company picking up nightcrawlers on a golf course. They earned $3 for every 1,000, which was just enough to pay for the room they shared in a downtown boarding house.
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In 1960 on the first Saturday in May, Turcotte discovered his landlord watching the Kentucky Derby. There was more than usual interest that year, thanks to a Canadian-bred entry named Victoria Park.
After the race, in which Victoria Park finished third, Turcotte’s landlord turned to him and said, “You ever thought about being a jockey?”
“What is that?” the little New Brunswicker asked.
“I had never heard about horse racing,” Turcotte says. “The only race of any kind I ever saw was between cowboys challenging one another to see who had the best horse. I had never even sat in a saddle.”
After learning there were race tracks in Toronto, Turcotte hitchhiked to the old Greenwood track and was twice turned away when he attempted to ask for a job. The third time, at the new Woodbine, a horseman got him a job walking horses after their workouts for Windfields Farm. Very quickly, a trainer recognized that he was good at handling horses, and within a year he rode in his first race. After winning riding titles at Woodbine Racetrack in 1962 and 1963, Turcotte took his talent to the United States and quickly joined the ranks of the sport’s most elite jockeys.
The list of famous thoroughbreds he piloted included the Canadian icon Northern Dancer – whose 1964 Derby record Secretariat broke – Preakness winner Tom Rolfe and Riva Ridge. He also rode Fanfreluche, a bay mare bred in Canada, which he piloted to victory in 1970 at the Manitoba Centennial Derby, where the Queen presented Turcotte with the winning trophy.
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“She could talk all about horses,” he says. “She talked about Northern Dancer. She is very great for that. If she has anything in common with anybody, she can talk at length.”
Two years later, Turcotte won the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes on Riva Ridge. In 1973, he and Secretariat won the Triple Crown.
Turcotte says he knew Secretariat better than anyone, and had schooled him from the time he was a yearling.
“They were anxious to race him, but I didn’t want to rush,” he says. “I was working to make him a classic horse. For me, it was love at first ride. He was so beautiful.”
Turcotte misses the massive colt with a stride nearly eight metres long. Secretariat ate 15 quarts of oats a day during that three-year-old campaign in 1973. Secretariat would push his nose against the jockey’s hand as he unwrapped a mint or sugar cube.
“He wasn’t like a horse,” he says. “He was like a human; I really loved him.”
There will be no Kentucky Derby this weekend because the pandemic made it unsafe for more than 100,000 people to cram into Churchill Downs in Louisville, Ky.
“I would have loved to see another derby while I’m still here,” Turcotte says, teasing about his age. “I’m getting up there.”
He will watch Saturday’s virtual race with great interest.
“It is kind of a no-win situation,” he says. “Somebody is going to end up mad. I hope it’s not me. But it doesn’t really matter. He set records that in 47 years have never been broken.”
The winner of the Western Conference was decided on Wednesday night and, with it, the Vancouver Canucks’ opponent in the first round of the 2024 Stanley Cup Playoffs.
The Dallas Stars needed just a single point to secure first in the West, preventing the Canucks from potentially tying them in points in their final game of the regular season. A tie would have seen the Canucks move into first as they have the edge in regulation wins, which is the first tie-breaker.
The Stars were facing the St. Louis Blues on Wednesday night, who had already been eliminated from playoff contention. The Blues still had pride on the line, however, and put up a stalwart effort. The Blues took a 1-0 lead in the second period on a goal from Robert Thomas, but the Stars responded in the third with a goal from Mason Marchment.
With no further scoring in regulation, the Stars ensured at least one point by taking the game to overtime. The Stars then added another superfluous point by winning the game in the shootout.
That means the Canucks will finish second in the Western Conference behind the Stars no matter the result of their game on Thursday against the Winnipeg Jets. Accordingly, they’ll face the team in the first Wild Card spot in the first round of the playoffs: the Nashville Predators.
On paper, it seems like the ideal match-up for the Canucks, as they swept their three-game series against the Predators this season, out-scoring them 13-to-6. They certainly seem like a better match-up than the Los Angeles Kings, who won three of their four meetings with the Canucks, or the defending Stanley Cup champion Vegas Golden Knights, who split their four games with the Canucks and will be getting Mark Stone back for the playoffs.
The Predators won’t be an easy out, however. Since their last meeting with the Canucks in December, the Predators have caught fire. They went on an 18-game point streak from mid-February to late March, going 15-0-3 in that span. They’re a dangerous team with a Norris-candidate defenceman in Roman Josi, great forward depth, strong goaltending, and solid underlying numbers.
Of course, so are the Canucks, only more so.
They don’t just have a Norris-candidate defenceman; they have the likely Norris winner in Quinn Hughes. They don’t just have great forward depth; they have better top-end talent than the Predators as well as the likes of Conor Garland, Elias Lindholm, and Dakota Joshua on the third line. They don’t just have strong goaltending; they have Thatcher Demko.
As for underlying numbers, well…
Okay, the Canucks and Predators are nearly identical by the underlying numbers. Eerily similar, really.
The one thing the Canucks have done distinctly better than the Predators is actually score on the chances they create. And prevent the opposing team from scoring on the chances they create. So, two things, really. Pretty important things, as things go.
The schedule for the Canucks’ first round has yet to be released, though it’s expected to begin on Sunday, April 21 as opposed to Tuesday, April 23, as was initially expected.
The Toronto Raptors’ Jontay Porter received a lifetime ban from the NBA over a betting scandal.
If you think that’s a crisis for the NBA, think again: The NBA is happy to make an example of Porter.
The NBA — and lots of other institutions — really wants sports betting to thrive. This move is supposed to give bettors confidence to keep betting.
How dumb do you have to be to throw away an NBA career in a betting scandal?
Or, if you don’t like that framing, try this: How much trouble do you have to be in — financial or otherwise — to throw away an NBA career in a betting scandal?
In fact, you can argue that Porter’s case is good for the NBA: It allows the league to set a clear-as-day bright line for any other players dumb or desperate enough to do this stuff. And, crucially, it allows everyone else to believe that Porter’s case is an anomaly and that they should get right back to betting on NBA games.
You can debate the accuracy of that theory — yes, people are betting tons of money on sports now ($120 billion in the US last year alone). But is that a narrow-but-deep niche of bettors or a wide swath of people who occasionally drop a couple dollars on a game? And you can also debate the morality of the theory — even if gambling is something people like to do, should we encourage it?
You may see some tweaks in the future to make it even less likely to see future Porters — even though sports betting scandals keep cropping up in allkinds of sports. NBA boss Adam Silver, in a statement about Porter’s ban, referenced “important issues about the sufficiency of the regulatory framework currently in place, including the types of bets offered on our games and players.”
Silver is presumably talking about “prop bets,” which move beyond basic who’s going to win/by how much bets even non-betters may have heard of, and to much more narrowly focused bets, like how many points an individual player might score — or even how long the national anthem might last at a Super Bowl.
Sportsbooks often push props because they can entice betters with big payouts. (The entire plot of “Uncut Gems” hinges on the preposterous, low-odds, high-return prop bets Adam Sandler’s character makes.) But you can see the obvious downside there, especially with prop bets focused on individual players — it gives players the ability to directly affect the results.
And that’s reportedly happened with Porter: The NBA says a bettor placed an $80,000 prop bet that could have won $1.1 million wagering that Porter would have a bad game — and then Porter took himself out of that game after a few minutes, saying he was sick.
But these are details: What the NBA can’t — or at least thinks it can’t — allow is to give lawmakers a chance to rethink their stance on sports betting and make it illegal again. There’s simply too much money at stake.