Free Secretariat by William Nack Page B

the winner of the flip would automatically get first choice of the first pair of foals—the two born in 1969—either the Somethingroyal filly or the Hasty Matelda colt. The loser, while getting the second choice of the first pair, automatically would get the first choice of the second pair of foals. And the winner would get the second choice of the second pair.
    But there would be no second foal in the second pair. Somethingroyal was pregnant, but Cicada was barren.
    So neither party wanted to win. The winner would get only one of the three foals, the first choice of the first pair. The loser of the flip would get the second choice of the first pair but also the only foal to be born in 1970—the foal that Somethingroyal was carrying on that day in August.
    The coin sailed in the air. Ogden Phipps returned to his box seat and dourly told his son, Ogden Mills Phipps, “We won the toss.” And that was it. The Phippses took the filly foal from Somethingroyal. They called her The Bride; she couldn’t run a lick, finishing out of the money in four starts as a two-year-old before she was retired to the Phippses’ stud at Claiborne. The Meadow Stable got the Hasty Matelda colt, who was named Rising River because he was foaled when the river below The Meadow was flooding. He always had more problems than future.
    The Bride was weaned at Claiborne in the fall of 1969 and taken from her mother at Claiborne. On November 14, Somethingroyal was loaded on a van and returned across the Alleghenies to Doswell. She was almost seven months pregnant. She spent the winter that year at The Meadow, with the other broodmares, her belly growing larger and rounder until came that chilly night of March 29, 1970, when Southworth rang Gentry from the foaling barn in the field.

Chapter 7
    The newborn Somethingroyal foal gained his legs just forty-five minutes after birth and began suckling when he was an hour and fifteen minutes old. He was well made, well bred, healthy, and hungry, and that made him as much a potential Kentucky Derby winner as any of the other 24,953 thoroughbreds born in America in 1970.
    The mare and the foal were turned loose together the following day in a confined one-acre paddock behind the foaling barn. So that the newborn foal does not injure himself trying to stay at her side, a mare is not given much room to run and roam about. After the foal had gained the strength to stay with her—four days later—the pair was turned out with other mares and their foals in a three-acre pasture near the broodmare barn. The routine of farm life began.
    For six weeks the mare and foal were pastured in the daytime, and returned at night to their single Stall 3 in the broodmare barn. The routine changed in mid-May, when groom Lewis Tillman began taking them outdoors in the early afternoon, leaving them out all night, and then returning them in the morning to Stall 3. The foal subsisted on Somethingroyal’s milk for the first thirty-five days of his life. Then Tillman began to supplement the youngster’s regimen with grain, preparing him for the day of weaning in October. Tillman would tie up the mare in the stall and give the colt small portions of crushed oats and sweet feed. He grew quickly as the summer passed. Christopher Chenery’s personal secretary of thirty-three years, Elizabeth Ham, visited the farm and looked at the foals. Miss Ham noted in her log, dated July 28, 1970:
    Ch. C Bold Ruler-Somethingroyal
    Three white stockings—Well-made colt—Might be a little light under the knees—Stands well on pasterns—Good straight hind leg—Good shoulders and hindquarters—You would have to like him.
    Summer cooled into October. The daily rations of the Bold Ruler colt were boosted periodically, up to five and finally to six quarts of grain a day by the time he was separated from Somethingroyal on October 6, 1970. Like other newly weaned colts, the youngster howled and stomped around the stall and field, but that passed in a