Secretariat's Triple Crown turns 50: Why there's no GOAT argument in horse racing

LOUISVILLE, Ky. — More than any Kentucky Derby in the last half-century, Saturday’s festivities at Churchill Downs will illustrate why horse racing is the rare sport without a simmering GOAT debate.

Do you like Joe Montana or Tom Brady? Jack Nicklaus or Tiger Woods? Serena Williams or Steffi Graf? Michael Jordan or LeBron James?

These "Greatest of All Time” arguments evolve over the years, rarely produce consensus and often rely on generational biases. But on the 50th anniversary of Secretariat’s stunning run through the Triple Crown, there is almost no discussion among horse racing experts about the all-time pecking order.

Sure, there might be a Spectacular Bid loyalist here or there. Historians could make a case for Man O’War in the 1920s or Citation in the 1940s. But in general, Secretariat’s place on the mountaintop remains as secure as ever — the evidence for which is all around Churchill Downs this week.

A massive bronze statue of Secretariat's run to the 1973 Belmont Stakes has been placed outside the main gate to the track this week. The Kentucky Derby Museum has installed an all-things-Secretariat exhibit for this 50-year anniversary and is selling retro 1973-style merchandise. Thousands of fans on the grounds Saturday will be wearing a Secretariat pin or shirt or something to commemorate owner Penny Chenery’s blue-and-white checkered silks.

Secretariat’s influence on popular culture remains that strong. So does the power of his on-track achievements.

“He was a freak of nature. He just was,” said Jerry Bailey, the Hall of Fame jockey and NBC Sports analyst who won the Derby in 1993 and 1996. “I’m not smart enough to know why. Once in awhile you get an anomaly, and he was just way better than anything I’ve ever seen.”

'Right now we're chasing greatness'

That is, almost without fail, the same story you will get from anyone who has spent their life around the racetrack — that Secretariat was a one-off, an exception, almost an immortal.

And even in an era when evolution and technology have brought bigger, stronger and faster to every sport, there is no expectation in horse racing that we’ll ever see Secretariat’s equal.

In 49 subsequent runnings of the Kentucky Derby, nobody has bettered his time of 1:59 2/5 seconds.

In 49 subsequent runnings of the Preakness, nobody has bettered his time of 1:53.

In 49 subsequent runnings of the Belmont, the closest anyone has gotten to Secretariat’s 2:24 is two full seconds.

That’s not the way things are supposed to work in our modern world. The oldest world records in swimming only go back to 2008 and are always under threat of being broken. Though some significant track and field records have held up since the 1980s, most of them get rewritten all the time. Comparing numbers from one era to the next in basketball or football has become almost fruitless because of how much more athletic and explosive athletes have become. Equipment and physical training advances have completely changed the way people play sports like golf and tennis, emphasizing power and speed over feel.

But to ask why there’s never been another Secretariat — and probably never will be — is a question that straddles the line between mythology and science.

“There’s a lot of opinions. I can't tell you if any of them are right,” said Sarah White-Springer, a Texas A&M associate professor of equine physiology with a specialty in skeletal muscle energetics.

The most popular clue to what made Secretariat unique was revealed after he died in 1989. Thomas Swerczek, the veterinarian who performed the necropsy, famously told Sports Illustrated that Secretariat’s heart was “almost twice the average size, and a third larger than any equine heart I'd ever seen.”

Scientifically, this makes sense both to the layman and the expert. Secretariat’s heart was pumping so much more blood through his body, providing so much more oxygen to all those muscles, that he was just naturally equipped to run harder and longer than his competition.

But how does that kind of athletically freakish anomaly happen in the first place? And how is it that among the tens of thousands of Thoroughbreds foaled every year in the U.S., we haven’t seen one that can do what Secretariat did?

Maybe the answer is that it’s better for the business of horse racing if there isn’t another one.

“Right now we’re chasing greatness,” White-Springer said. “What if we get greatness? Then what are we chasing?”

White-Springer is a researcher. These are the kinds of questions she thinks about: How do you make a better breed of horse? How could you map out a horse’s mitochondrial profile — essentially how energy powers cells — and match it with an optimized training program? What kind of things could you monitor and learn about a horse before it is born to control factors that will influence its development?

“You look at a lot of the research that goes on in reproduction on the beef cattle side of things and a lot of it is on epigenetics, and kind of what are we doing in utero to impact the outcome that come from that? No one has ever really done that in horses. There’s a lot of things I don't think we know enough about in the thoroughbreds to move the industry forward a little bit.”

Some science would change the sport of horse racing

One reason, of course, is practicality and cost. If your job is to sell cattle, you make more money and feed more people by breeding better cattle. But horse racing doesn’t have the same kinds of incentives.

In fact, the lack of certainty is what fuels the industry. The old saying in horse racing is that you breed the best to the best and hope for the best. Ultimately, the difference between a $10,000 horse or a $5 million horse will mostly come down to superficial factors — the bloodlines, the looks and any physical imperfections that might cause long-term concerns.

But nobody knows how fast a horse is going to run until it’s time to race. If you do anything to upset that balance or use science to subvert the guesswork that has gone into generations of breeding theories, it’s a different sport. Breeding practices are so sacred and controlled, the Jockey Club doesn't even allow for artificial insemination in registered Thoroughbreds.

"I had this idea that we could do EPD’s in horses I thought that would be really cool,” said White-Springer, referring to a way to measure genetic traits. “I was told by individuals in the industry that I’ll never get anywhere with that because the Thoroughbred people might not want to know, which is fair. If we know exactly what we're getting, you won't have these huge bidding wars at sales. There's a bit of excitement in the unknown."

But even if people poured millions of dollars into different kinds of genetic testing or other scientific ways to develop faster Thoroughbreds, would we get another Secretariat? It's impossible to say.

Today's horses don't have Secretariat's durability. Or do they?

What we know is that, in general, horses have become less durable since the 1970s because of inbreeding for particular traits and an emphasis on early speed over stamina. Secretariat, as an example, ran nine times as a 2-year- old and three more times in the spring of 1973 before the Kentucky Derby.

That simply does not happen anymore. Every horse in this year’s Derby has run between three and eight races in their careers, and many of them will be retired in the months following the Triple Crown. And because successful stallions can make millions more dollars than successful racehorses, there is an incentive structure to take fewer risks on the track.

To wit: American Pharoah, who broke a 37-year Triple Crown drought in 2015, raced just three more times after the Belmont. Justify, who won the Triple Crown in 2018, never raced again. And Flightline, the horse that many observers would identify as the most Secretariat-like animal of the modern era on sheer speed and brilliance, ran just six times and was retired after winning last year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic.  In other words, even if another Secretariat came along, we may never be in a position to realize it.

A half century is a very long time in sports. Every generation reaches a new peak, and finds a new hero. But on the eve of the 149th Kentucky Derby, the winner of the 99th is as secure as ever in his place atop the pantheon.

Follow USA TODAY Sports columnist Dan Wolken on Twitter @DanWolken

NO SWEAT DERBY BET:  New users can get up to $20 returned on Kentucky Derby bet with FanDuel

This article originally appeared on USA TODAY: Secretariat Triple Crown 50th anniversary: No horse racing GOAT debate