People call Secretariat Virginia’s greatest athlete for good reason. The thoroughbred racehorse, foaled near Ashland at Meadow Stables, not only won the American Triple Crown in 1973 but set and still holds the record in all three of its races.
Yet, until recently, all monuments dedicated to Big Red were found outside his home state. Kate Tweedy, daughter of Secretariat owner Penny Chenery, and Leanne Ladin, her co-author of the book Secretariat’s Meadow, knew Virginia needed one. Sculp- turing such a horse with the physical features he was known for, along with funding the project, was daunting.
They found a collaborator in acclaimed artist Jocelyn Russell, who had created a life-and-a-half size Secretariat statue for Lexington, Kentucky. Then they partnered with Randolph-Macon College to use their property and the Ashland Museum as a fiscal sponsor that took donations for the project. “Contributors came from all across the country,” says Betsy Hodges, museum administrator. “People with no chance of ever getting to Virginia made donations.”
It’s because “people remember his Belmont race when he was 31 lengths ahead, blazing down that track,” Ladin says. “People talk about, ‘Do you remember where you were?’ It’s like the moon landing. It’s baked into the memories.” Ladin vividly recalls where she was for that race—“I sat in front of our black-and-white TV screaming my head off.”
Tweedy was in the stands with her mother at Belmont, and she remembers it clearly—from the weather to the train ride there to hoping desperately that Secretariat’s jockey Ron Turcotte wouldn’t fall off. Then, the pandemonium that erupted in the crowd when they crossed the finish line. “I kept thinking, ‘We saw this, what are we going to see next? What else will come along?’ And nothing has,” she says.
The huge sculpture depicts Secretariat and Turcotte mid-Belmont Stakes Race and was dedicated in Ashland’s Secretariat Plaza in March 2023—50 years after Big Red’s big win that earned the Triple Crown. Hodges says people are often in the plaza gawking at it.
“He was larger than life in the way he ran and in the way he inspired people,” Tweedy says.
Secretariat died in 1989 at Claiborne Farms in Kentucky where he retired. The vet who performed his necropsy observed that the champion’s heart was in perfect condition and estimated it to be 2.5 times larger than the average horse’s. Stunned, he remarked, “It was just this huge engine.”
The Ashland Monument
The mythic proportions behind the Ashland monument:
- 3,500 pounds
- Bronze
- 21 feet long, from hoof to hoof
- 11 1⁄2 feet tall (~35 hands)
- Laid on top of dirt from Secretariat’s birthplace and all Triple Crown racetracks.
Secretariat’s Actual Stats
- 16.1 1⁄2 hands
- 1,131 pounds
- Number of foals sired: 663
- Stride: 25 feet (a typical thoroughbred’s is 20 feet; Man ’o War’s, 1917–1947, was 28 feet.)
Secretariat was exceptionally well-balanced, with nearly perfect conformation and stride biomechanics and large, powerful hindquarters. His extra-large chest required a custom-made girth and increased his heart-lung capacity. As one trainer remarked: “He is incredible, an absolutely perfect horse. I never saw anything like him.”
This article originally appeared in our December 2024 issue.
