They Brought Tears to Secretariat in ’73

It was 25 years ago that the lightly regarded Onion upset Secretariat in Saratoga’s Whitney Handicap. Trainer Allen Jerkens and jockey Jacinto Vasquez, who engineered that shocker, may do some reminiscing this weekend at the upstate New York track, Jerkens trying to win another Whitney with another longshot Saturday and Vasquez in town for his induction into the Racing Hall of Fame on Monday.

Secretariat won nine of 12 starts in 1973, the year he swept the Triple Crown, and Jerkens and Vasquez had roles in the three losses. Besides saddling Onion in the Whitney, Jerkens beat Secretariat that fall with Prove Out in the Woodward Stakes at Belmont Park. And besides riding Onion, Vasquez was aboard Angle Light, Secretariat’s stablemate, that spring, when he won the Wood Memorial at Aqueduct, casting some doubt--unfounded, it turned out--on Secretariat’s Kentucky Derby chances two weeks later.

Jerkens’ latest Whitney candidate is Banker’s Gold, a stakes winner whose stamina may be wanting for Saturday’s 1 1/8-mile race. But few people liked Onion’s chances in 1973, either.

“It was pretty exciting to beat Secretariat,” Jerkens said. “It’s still exciting, just to think about it. That must rank with Jim Dandy for upsets at Saratoga.”

Historic Saratoga comes with a long list of upsets--hence its nickname, “the graveyard of champions”--but Jim Dandy’s defeat of Gallant Fox in the 1930 Travers remains one of the biggest stunners. Jim Dandy was 100-1 that day, his feat so compelling that Saratoga named a race after him, a traditional prep for the Travers that will be run Sunday.

After the Triple Crown, Secretariat squeezed in a win at Arlington Park in late June before he went to Saratoga. He was 1-10 in the Whitney, facing older horses for the first time, and was full of speed in two workouts for the race. He worked a mile on a muddy track in 1:34, which would have been fast enough to break the Saratoga record, and then he breezed a half-mile in :48 1/5.

“The timing was right,” Jerkens said. “The Triple Crown races had to have taken something out of him.”

Onion won by a length, and those who were there remember Vasquez for perhaps being the difference. The track had been hit by rain in the days before the race, and Vasquez, sensing that the dead ground next to the fence was the worst place to be, kept Onion on the outside all the way.

“I know [trainer Lucien Laurin] didn’t want that mile in 1:34,” Jerkens said. “But his horse fought us all the way. We got lucky.”

Secretariat might have been sick. He registered a fever when his temperature was taken the next day.

Two years later, in 1975, Jerkens was voted into the Racing Hall of Fame, which is located across the street from Saratoga. He was 45, the youngest trainer ever to be enshrined.

Vasquez, a Panamanian who began riding in the U.S. in 1960 and retired in 1996, has been eligible for the Hall of Fame for more than 20 years, but the roadblock was the one-year suspension that he received for race-fixing in 1984. The races Vasquez allegedly tampered with were run in New York in the 1970s.

Vasquez, who has denied that he fixed races, had trouble getting on the Hall of Fame ballot, and when he did, many voters discounted a brilliant career that included 5,231 wins, two of them with Foolish Pleasure and the filly Genuine Risk in the Kentucky Derby.

Eddie Maple, who retired from riding this year, testified that Vasquez had offered him a bribe before a race at Saratoga in 1974.

“Maple made a deal when he testified, and then he contradicted himself four or five times,” Vasquez said in an interview the The Times years ago. “If I was guilty, I’d be the first . . . to admit it. I’ve never been connected with gamblers. Why would I go around offering bribes?”

Horse Racing Notes

High weight in the Whitney is Frisk Me Now with 119 pounds. At 114 pounds, Tale Of the Cat has won four of six starts in a star-crossed career and his trainer, John Forbes, says that he might be the favorite. Also in the eight-horse field is Crypto Star, who’s shipping in from Del Mar. Weighted at 116 pounds, the 4-year-old colt will be ridden by Corey Nakatani for trainer Wally Dollase, who won last year’s Travers with Deputy Commander, the first horse he saddled at Saratoga. Crypto Star, trained last year by Wayne Catalano, won the Arkansas and Louisiana derbies, and was fifth in the Kentucky Derby and fourth in the Belmont. A ligament injury slowed him down this year.

At Del Mar on Saturday, Silverbulletday, aiming for her third consecutive victory, will race seven rivals in the $100,000 Sorrento Stakes for 2-year-old fillies. Running for owner Mike Pegram and trainer Bob Baffert, who won this year’s Kentucky Derby and Preakness with Real Quiet, Silverbulletday is undefeated in two tries at Churchill Downs, having won the Debutante there in her last start.

Jane Goldstein, who was publicity director at Santa Anita for most of her 23 years at the track, will retire Oct. 15. “My responsibilities at Santa Anita have changed in the last few seasons,” Goldstein said. “As a result, I find myself less interested than I once was, so it seemed like the appropriate time for a change. I have had a fabulous time being involved in racing.”