By the 1920s, horse racing was rebounding from the trying circumstances of the previous two decades, where the sport has contracted from more than 300 racetracks prior to 1900 to only 25 by the end of the 1910s.
For those that ponied up $190,000 apiece for membership in Secretariat’s breeding syndicate, the period between the powerful chestnut’s loss in the April 21 Wood Memorial Stakes and the May 5 Kentucky Derby was gut-check time.
With an off-the-pace victory in the Bay Shore Stakes and a front-end triumph in the Gotham Stakes to welcome in his 3-year-old campaign, Secretariat had taken the requisite steps that would land him in Louisville on the fi
Having proved in the Bay Shore Stakes three weeks earlier that he had progressed through the winter and come back bigger and stronger than ever, Secretariat returned to competition in the Grade 2 Gotham Stakes at Aqueduct April 7 at a mile, an eighth of a mile longer
