Secretariat at 50: How the Big Red Five have kept the story alive

They are the keepers of the legend, the tellers of the tale. Four men, one woman. One living, four gone. It has been 50 years since Secretariat won the Triple Crown (the first in 25 years at the time; prelude to a longer drought that would commence just five years later) and passed into a singular racing afterlife with his ethereal Belmont. The story stood tall in its own moment, deservedly and meaningfully; but it has since undergone that rarest of sports metastases: A moment already seen, forever becoming must-see. Big Red, long interred in rich Kentucky earth after a career less than 16 months in length, has grown bigger.

Because a woman stood strong.

Because a jockey sat just as strong.

Because a race caller went for broke.

Because a writer wrote.

Because a photographer shot.

Five of them, all born in the years from 1922 to 1941, two in the Midwest, two in New York, one in Canada. Together they have ferried the story across time. In the words that became a book, that became a documentary, that became a movie. In a photograph that silently transports its viewer. In a rhythmic voice that reached to describe perfection and nearly matched it. In a life that inspired women (and girls) generations younger and showed them a future that had been mostly just a concept. In the hands, the heart, the soul of a small man who sat hunched in irons with something otherworldly pumping blood beneath him.

On May 5 of 1973, Secretariat won the 99th Kentucky Derby, a 3-5 favorite despite having lost his final prep race, the Wood Memorial (almost certainly due to a mouth abscess discovered after the race). He rolled into the lead four wide on the far turn and pounded away to a 2 ½-length victory, his face covered – yet oddly