Chic Anderson's Tremendous 1973 Belmont Stakes Call Stands Test of Time

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Secretariat Chic Anderson 1973 Belmont Stakes Triple Crown Meadow Stable
Secretariat pulls away from the opposition in the 1973 Belmont Stakes en route to winning the race in world-record time. (BloodHorse Library/Winants Bros. Inc.)

There’s no doubt that Secretariat’s performance in the 1973 Belmont Stakes ranks among the greatest performances ever by a Thoroughbred racehorse.

Many, without pause, will say it’s the greatest of all time.

The same kind of accolades also can be attached to the call of the race on CBS television by Chic Anderson. It surely stands among the sport’s most unforgettable calls and for some ears it has, like the Triple Crown champion himself, no peers.

To understand how it stands alone, it was two minutes and 24 seconds of spellbound story-telling that transcended horse racing.

“I think Chic’s call has to be compared to the other famous sports calls,” said John Imbriale, the track announcer at Belmont Park who has been calling New York Racing Association races as a lead or backup announcer since 1990. “It stands so high among race calls that you have to compare it to ‘Do you believe in miracles?’ in hockey or ‘I don’t believe what I just saw’ in baseball. It ranks with the greatest sports calls. He gave us words that have stayed with people for 50 years.”

In the world-record time of 2:24 that it took Meadow Stable’s Secretariat to circle Belmont Park’s mile-and-a-half oval June 9, 1973, Secretariat ran a hole in the wind with a performance that has remained the sport’s gold standard for five decades. He also put Anderson, and others who called the race, in the daunting position of finding the right words to describe something that he or anyone else never could have envisioned.

In an era when calling a horse race was much more vanilla and announcers did not have rehearsed catch phrases, Anderson had to detail the sight and emotion of an incomparable 3-year-old pulling away at will and opening an insurmountable lead in world-record time on his way to becoming the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years.

Not only did Anderson perform that task flawlessly, never being at a loss for words despite watching an unbelievable effort, but he also interjected words into it that have been repeated countless times over the ensuing 50 years.

After Secretariat left the mile pole and enjoyed a double-digit lead over his archrival Sham, Anderson looked out on the racetrack and in the spur of the moment uttered the most famous seven words in racing history:

“He is moving like a tremendous machine.”

“I’m pretty sure that Chic Anderson did not write down beforehand, ‘moving like a tremendous machine.’ That was as extemporaneous as it gets and it comes from being in the moment and watching carefully what was going on,” said Tom Durkin, one of the sport’s most famous announcers who will come out of retirement to call the June 10 edition of the “Test of the Champion” for FOX television. “That image works in a lot of different ways. He was running against flesh and blood animals and he was beyond that. He was not only a machine, but a tremendous machine. So, the imagery is great but the metaphor, which was probably subconscious, was great as well. It’s also poetic. There was a beat to it. Like-a-tre-mend-ous-ma-chine.”

Five decades later, it’s still impossible to watch or recall the 1973 Belmont without marveling at how the big red colt from Meadow Stable was indeed “a tremendous machine.”

“Who would think that 50 years later those seven words would separate that call from every other,” Imbriale said. “How many times have we heard someone in racing say ‘These horses aren’t machines,’ but on that day he was. It was an incredible moment.”

It was also a sterling moment for Anderson, who did not allow the moment to overwhelm him as he smoothly found the right words and vocal tone to describe the spectacular performance he and everyone else was beholding.

“The call was appropriate for the race. It was not hyperbole. There was no superlative that didn’t fit. It was easily the greatest performance in America ever,” said Durkin, who was calling races at a county fair at the time and spent 43 years as an announcer, the last 24 at NYRA tracks. “He was well within himself vocally which is hard to do in that situation. There were people in the grandstand yelling, jumping up and down, and carrying on like crazy people, and he held it together so that he could elocute every word and it was heard perfectly.”

As much as “He is moving like a tremendous machine” are the most memorable words of Anderson’s famous call, they were not his only moments of brilliance. There are numerous other times when Anderson, who died in 1979 at the age of 47, so vividly detailed what was unfolding before a mesmerized crowd of 69,138.

The drama began just before the four-furlong marker when Secretariat and Sham pulled away from the other three 3-year-olds and Anderson said:

“They are on the backstretch. It’s almost a match race now. Secretariat’s on the inside by a head. Sham is on the outside. They have opened 10 lengths on My Gallant who is third ...”

Judging by the battles Sham gave Secretariat in the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes, Imbriale said a heated battle was probably the kind of race Anderson expected to call.

“When he used that match race phrase I wonder if he thought that was what was going to happen,” Imbriale said.

Yet by the time they raced six furlongs, Secretariat was beginning to draw clear of Sham, the runner-up in both the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes who suffered a career-ending leg injury in the Belmont.

“For the turn, it’s Secretariat. It looks like he’s opening. The lead is increasing. Make it three, three and a half.”

After the son of Bold Ruler widened his lead with every stride, leaving the mile marker, Anderson no longer had a race to call. He was suddenly an art critic describing one of the world’s great masterpieces.

“They’re on the turn and Secretariat is blazing along. The first three-quarters of a mile in 1:09 4/5. Secretariat is widening now. He is moving like a tremendous machine. Secretariat by 12. Secretariat by 14 lengths on the turn.”

A tremendous machine indeed, with only the history books and the sport’s greatest stars as his competition on that afternoon 50 years ago.

“Secretariat is all alone. He’s out there almost a sixteenth of a mile away from the rest of the field. Secretariat is in a position that he’s impossible to catch.”

From there, it was simply a coronation.

Durkin says that in preparing to call the 1995 Breeders’ Cup Classic with Cigar, he scripted three words intending to use one of them to describe Cigar if he crossed the wire first to cap an undefeated season. But when Cigar pulled clear with a sixteenth of a mile left, it gave Durkin the time he needed to say all three words and coin the unforgettable phrase the “unconquerable, invincible, unbeatable Cigar.”

Anderson had even more time to fill and no preparation for what would happen, but he closed out the call with the proper respect for the greatness he had just witnessed.

“Secretariat has opened a 22-length lead. He is going to be the Triple Crown winner. Here comes Secretariat to the wire. An unbelievable, an amazing performance. He hits the finish 25 lengths in front.”

Even after the race was over, Anderson continued to put the historic feat in the right perspective, calling Secretariat a “miracle horse.”

“Just look at [owner] Mrs. Tweedy, she is having the time of her life. She and [trainer] Lucien Laurin ...  this magnificent animal who has today run the most sensational Belmont Stakes in the history of this race. Secretariat has accomplished the unbelievable task of breaking the mile and a half record by 2 and 3/5th seconds. That is a record that may stand forever.”

True to Anderson’s words, 50 years later that record stands as tall as ever.

“Chic said this record may last forever,” Imbriale said. “He was right for 50 years and he might be right forever.”

He may indeed be right and as new generations marvel at Secretariat’s tour de force on the sport’s grandest stage, it’s a certainty that they will also embrace the seven words that will always be a coupled entry with Secretariat in any viewing of the 1973 Belmont Stakes.

“He is moving like a tremendous machine.”

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