If you’re running out of fresh new content for the cocktail parties in May, dive into these tidbits about the Triple Crown winner, Secretariat!
• To this day, Secretariat holds the record for each race within the Triple Crown: the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes.
• Secretariat’s iconic royal blue and white checkered silks were a nod to Washington and Lee University, from which Chris Chenery, Penny’s father and the founder of Meadow Farm, graduated in 1909.
• In Secretariat’s Belmont victory, which secured his Triple Crown title, he won the race thirty-one lengths ahead of the second-place finisher.
• Dr. Thomas Swerczek, the veterinarian who performed Secretariat’s necropsy, reported that Secretariat’s heart was the largest he had ever seen in a horse—two and a half times the size of a normal horse heart.
• He was the only non-human included on ESPN SportCentury’s list of top fifty athletes of the twentieth century, and he became the first Thoroughbred to be honored with his own U.S. postage stamp.
If you want more great knowledge on all kinds of topics, you will enjoy reading Garden & Gun.. a unique magazine filled with terrific articles and photography – but start with this one where I gathered the tidbits above: Garden and Gun