Secretariat's jockey Ron Turcotte understands Belmont's challenges
ELMONT, New York — Every time a horse wins the first two legs of the Triple Crown, a great deal of handwringing is done about the daunting mile-and-a-half oval at Belmont Park and whether the favorite will have enough gas left in the tank to make history.
If you ask Hall of Fame jockey Ron Turcotte, however, Belmont’s intimidating distance shouldn’t play much of a factor on this or any other Belmont Saturday — as long as it's the right horse paired with a rider who knows its limits.
Granted, Turcotte’s experience at Belmont is probably the exception to the rule, with the jockey having ridden Secretariat to the most impressive Belmont win in the race’s history, not to mention the history of the sport as a whole.
Beyond riding the great Secretariat, generally regarded as the Babe Ruth of thoroughbred racing, the New Brunswick, Canada, native Turcotte knows of what he speaks. He's won more than 3,000 career races -- the vast majority of them coming at the track where California Chrome will look to complete his Triple Crown sweep.
“A lot of things can happen in a race,” Turcotte told FOXSports.com Friday, on the eve of California Chrome trying to make horse racing history. “You can stumble out of the gate or you can get cut off, and I think the Belmont is the easiest race there is of the three (Triple Crown races) because these things can happen and you can overcome them because you’ve got a mile and a half to do it.”
Listen to enough trainers and owners, and you’ll hear the Belmont described as a “jockey’s race,” and that’s because winning and losing here often comes down to how the rider handles the distance, more so than the horse, itself. Most horses have the fortitude to finish the mile and a half strong, Turcotte said, but too often jocks don’t conserve energy properly, so their horses fade down the stretch when they should be closing.
“You’ve got to know the time so you can pace your horse just right to have him go a mile and a half and have strength at the end of a race,” Turcotte said. “You’ve got to get out there, pace him good, keep him out of trouble as best you can. Barring any bad luck — a horse breaks down in front of you or something like that, or you stumble out of the gate and a rider falls off; those are things you can’t help — a jockey can still put the horse in the right place to do his best.”
For Turcotte — whose racing career ended at Belmont Park in a 1978 fall that left him in a wheelchair after crushing his fourth and fifth vertebrae “to powder,” as he puts it — learning to win at Belmont was an acquired skill, having figured out how not to tackle the track the hard way in his first Belmont Stakes run around Big Sandy.
The year was 1965, and Turcotte, then 23, was aboard a horse named Tom Rolfe, whom he had ridden to a Preakness win after a third-place finish in the Kentucky Derby. Turcotte made his move too early in that race and ended up losing by a neck at the line to a Florida-bred horse called Hail To All.
“It was completely my fault,” Turcotte said. “I knew the horse’s fitness and all that, and I should have waited a little bit longer, and I got the horse beat. I don’t know if I was one of the best (that year), but the best can get beat the same way.”
In 1972, Turcotte got some redemption with Riva Ridge, who won the Triple Crown bookends. Riva Ridge won the Derby by an impressive 11 lengths but finished 5-1/4 lengths off the lead on a sloppy Preakness surface before winning by seven lengths at the Belmont. The following year, Turcotte was back on Secretariat, whose 31-length Belmont win is now the stuff of racing lore.
“He was an exceptional horse; he was the greatest horse that ever lived,” Turcotte said. “He was a machine.”
There’s little expectation that California Chrome (or any other horse for the rest of time, for that matter) will come close to matching Secretariat’s run, and for Chrome, who has a tendency to start in the middle of the pack, attempting to go wire-to-wire like Secretariat probably also wouldn’t be the best play.
Instead, Turcotte says flexibility is the best policy when it comes to running the Belmont, so California Chrome’s jockey, Victor Espinoza, needs to be prepared for anything.
“If I was to give him advice, I’d say come out of there running, set yourself up so you can ease on the outside,” Turcotte said. “Place yourself to be out of trouble, that way you’ll be able to make your move. That’s the main thing — keep the horse out of trouble, and you should have no trouble.
“... But he knows the horse, he knows what he can do, so he’s just got to ride him accordingly. I don’t think anyone can tell a jockey what to do. I had a free hand when I was riding most of the time, but when they tie your hand and give you orders to be placed somewhere or do this or do that — ‘I want you to lay third,’ or ‘I want you to lay fourth’ — it might be 10 horses in the race, and nine of them have the same orders.
“We can’t all be in the same place, so when the gate opens, you’re on your own.”
And if Espinoza rides the race correctly and he and Chrome do become the first in 36 years to join Turcotte and Secretariat in thoroughbred racing’s social register, they’ll be welcomed with open arms.
“I like the little horse; he’s training good,” Turcotte said. “Racing is very much in need of a hero, and he’s beautifully colored, with beautiful white legs, and everybody’s falling in love with him. And we need something like that to bring the younger generation to the racetrack. Racing needs it badly.”
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