Owner of Secretariat, Triple Crown winner
Penny Chenery, who bred and raced 1973 Triple Crown winner Secretariat as well as realizing her ailing father’s dream to win theKentucky Derby in 1972 with Riva Ridge, has died. She was 95.
Ms. Chenery died Saturday in her Boulder, Colo., home following complications from a stroke, according to her children.
In 1973, Secretariat captured the imagination of racing fans worldwide when he became the first Triple Crown winner in 25 years, sweeping the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont. He won the last leg by awhopping 31 lengths.
The previous year, Riva Ridge won the Derby and Belmont Stakes.
Both colts were inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame.
“We are deeply proud of our mother, her accomplishments, and her courage,” daughter Kate Tweedy said. “As we mourn her loss, the example of her strength, her intelligence and her enduring spirit continue to inspire us.”
Ms. Chenery developed a love of horses as a child and learned to ride at age 5. She attributed her affinity for horses to her father, Christopher Chenery, who founded Meadow Stable, a thoroughbred racing and breeding operation, in Caroline County, Va..
After graduating from Smith College in 1943, Ms. Chenery worked as an assistant for a company that designed landing craft for the Normandy invasion. Before the invasion, she quit her job, and at her father’s urging, volunteered for the Red Cross. In 1945, Ms. Chenery traveled to France as a Doughnut Girl to help war-weary soldiers transition to ships headed home at the end of World War II.
Ms. Chenery returned from Europe in 1946, and attended Columbia University’s business school, where she was one of 20 women in her class. Six months from graduation, she got engaged to Columbia Law graduate John “Jack” Tweedy. Her father encouraged her to quit and focus on her wedding. The couple married in 1949.
For nearly 20 years, Ms. Chenery was content to be a housewife and mother to the couple’s four children in the Denver area. She and her husband helped found and raise the initial money for the Vail ski resort in the early 1960s.
Her life changed in 1968, when her father’s health and mind began failing and her mother died. His Meadow Stable, which had been profitable, began losing money. Her two siblings had planned to sell it.
Ms. Chenery took the reins of the racing stable, with the help of siblings Margaret Carmichael and Hollis Chenery, and her father’s business secretary. Ms. Chenery commuted monthly from Colorado to Virginia, but after two more years in the red, selling the stable seemed almost inevitable.
By 1971, her colt Riva Ridge swept the juvenile stakes. In 1972, Riva Ridge won the Kentucky Derby, fulfilling her father’s dream in the last year of his life.
In 1973, Secretariat became a pop culture icon with his Triple Crown victory, landing on the cover of Time magazine. For the next four decades, Ms. Chenery served as a careful steward of the colt’s legacy.
She charmed as an engaging and quick-witted owner who represented her equine champions with poise, dignity and a keen business sense.
“The horse can’t talk, but I can,” she said.
Ms. Chenery was portrayed by actress Diane Lane in the 2010 movie “Secretariat.” Ms. Chenery had a cameo role as a spectator at the Belmont Stakes.
Following Secretariat’s retirement, Ms. Chenery became an ambassador for thoroughbred racing and remained so after the colt’s death in 1989.
She served as the first female president the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association and president the GraysonJockey Club Research Foundation. She became one of the first women admitted to The Jockey Club and helped found the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation.