Glory, Grief, and Secretariat's race for the Triple Crown

"Horseman, Pass By" was the winner in the feature writing category of the American Society of Magazine Editors' Best American Magazine Writing 2003. It was written by John Jeremiah Sullivan, and appeared in Harper's.

"Sham led the field going into the first turn. He was flying. Everyone watching the race knew that he was going too fast. The strategy for Secretariat, for any horse, would have been to hang back and let Sham destroy himself, but [Secretariat's jockey] Ronnie Turcotte decided to contest the pace. It was, to all appearances, an insane strategy. William Nack writes that up in the press box, turfwriters were hollering, "They're going too fast!"

"Secretariat caught him just after the first turn, and for the first half of the race it was a duel between the two rivals. Then, around the sixth furlong, Sham began to fall apart. [Jockey] Laffit Pincay pulled him off in distress, and Secretariat was alone. Turcotte had done nothing but cluck to his horse.

"This is when it happened, the thing, the unbelievable thing. Secretariat started going faster. At the first mile, he had shattered the record for the Belmont Stakes, and at a mile and an eighth he had tied the world record (remember that he was only three years old; horses get faster as they age, up to a point). Everyone -- in the crowd, in the press box, in the box where the colt's owner and trainer were sitting -- was waiting for something to go wrong, because this was madness..."