Secretariat was a complete beast. And that was really in the hay day of horse racing.
My parents owned a couple Quarter Horse sprinters. One was a real good filly - Three Heats. As kids we got to go watch the races a few times at Los Alamitos. I was there the first time she won a race. My dad put $2 on her to win for each of us kids at 13-1. I don't know if he put anything on her for himself or my mom. But we were all excited about getting $26. That was big money. Of course he took his $2 out to teach us about how money works.
He was sitting on the railing to the stairs and was so excited, he almost fell off when she won.
On another night, we got to go down to the winner's circle after she won some big race. Great fun as a 10-12 year old. They had the big flower collar on the horse and my parents and the trainer in their fancy duds, along with the tiny jockey, and a whole bunch of people no one knew
. In the picture, it shows what the purse and odds were. Pretty cool.
That horse ended up setting a couple track records at Alamitos - one still stood the last time I heard - over a decade ago. That horse raced other tracks but Alamitos was apparently big on Quarter Horses. I still remember my amazement at how the dirt would fly what seemed like hundreds of feet in the air as they ran down the straight away.