Yankee Clipper, you contribute a refreshing breath of intellectual discourse and maturity to this discussion board. I am not attempting to persuade you or anyone else to agree with me and I do not care if anyone does. However, you -- and some of the tolerant others who participate on this discussion board -- might give respectful consideration to these final comments of mine.
Firstly, Secretariat, inarguably, was a great racehorse – a very accomplished and exceptionally strong middle-distance runner (esp. at 1 mile to 1-1/2 miles) but his reputation has since grown to incorporate a soft mix of hyperbole. Because of the consistency of the grass racing surface -- which I thank Yankee Clipper for informing everyone about by posting his enlightening comments -- top stakes horses can run 1-1/2 miles on a grass course about a full second faster than they will on dirt -- i.e., the grass surface usually being about a second faster.
Nonetheless, at Belmont Park, in 1973, Secretariat ran 1-1/2 miles on the grass course almost a full second slower than on the main dirt track.
It is understood, and I think most of us can recognize, that the setting of a new time record at any long-established racetrack in the U.S. is a rather infrequent event. Sometimes many years -- sometimes a decade or more -- might pass before a single new time record will be made. During the 1973 racing season at Belmont Park, an astounding seven (7) new speed records were made on the main dirt track and one was tied.
It was reported by the Daily News and the NY Times at that time (1973) that during the spring of 1973, the Belmont Park track stewards had ordered the main dirt track to be scraped, rolled and pounded to make it uncompromisingly speed-enhanced for Secretariat's attempted 25 year-drought Triple Crown.
The New York racing officials also were building hype for another hoped for speed dual pitting Sham vs. Secretariat in the Belmont Stakes. The more speed-enhancing the main track might be made for the event, then all for the better! The racing officials' speed-enhancing effort resulted in seven new track records within a time-compressed four-month period.
If Secretariat had run on the deeper-cushioned (slower) main track which has existed at Belmont Park for the past two decades, his running time for 1-1/2 miles could be a lot closer to around 2:26 – approaching the same range of running times as were posted by Easy Goer, AP Indy and Point Given. Conversely, had they been permitted to run on an artificially-enhanced fast track, comparable to what the track at Belmont was made to be like in 1973, their times could have been a lot faster than 2:26 or 2:26-2/5.
My parting comment: since this web-site is principally dedicated to Man O’ War, some of you may agree that it is interesting to observe that, when Secretariat ran at 1-5/8 miles in Canada in his last race -- which was run on grass -- he ran the distance in 2:41-4/5. Running on a reliable fast grass surface (in contrast to the artificially speed-enhanced Belmont dirt track), Secretariat ran a full second slower than Man O' War's record time for the same distance at Belmont Park in 1920, which was run on a deeper cushioned dirt track that was a few seconds slower to the mile in 1920 than the Belmont track was in 1973, or that it is today.
