In the Money

The storied annals of Canadian thoroughbred racing are full of unforgettable moments. There was Man o’ War and Sir Barton battling each other at the 1920 Kenilworth Gold Cup in Windsor, Ontario. Northern Dancer’s thrilling comeback victory in his last start, the 1964 Queen’s Plate, was another. But perhaps the best-known moment, captured in historic footage and recreated in a Walt Disney Pictures feature film, came on June 9, 1973. Sitting aboard the greatest racehorse of the modern era was a diminutive jockey in blue and white checkered silks, the Acadian Ron Turcotte, born in Drummond, New Brunswick, in July 1941. At the age of thirty-two, Turcotte had already ridden the chestnut stallion to wins at the Kentucky Derby in Louisville and the Preakness Stakes in Baltimore. And now he was completing the Belmont Stakes in New York: the third jewel of the Triple Crown of North American horse racing.

Burying his head into Secretariat’s mane, before briefly looking back...