Racing loses a great lady
In real life or portrayed on screen by Diane Lane, Penny Chenery exuded class at the highest level of Thoroughbred racing.
It helped that some of her horses, two in particular, were really fast.
When Riva Ridge and Secretariat raced in the colors of her family’s Meadow Stable, their owner’s glistening blonde hair and warm smile became instantly recognizable in winner’s circles across North America. Riva and Big Red won back-to-back runnings of the Kentucky Derby and five of the six Triple Crown races in 1972 and ‘73; Secretariat was twice named Horse of the Year, a feat not many achieve once.
Secretariat, in particular, and his telegenic owner were good for each other and even better for the sport. Secretariat gave horse racing its first Triple Crown winner since the advent of television. With America reeling out of Vietnam and deeper into Watergate, a horse chased Richard Nixon off the covers of Time and Newsweek. William Nack, whose Sports Illustrated also made Big Red a cover boy in the spring of 1973, wrote a definitive biography.
Chenery’s own tale provided a storyline for the 2010 Disney Studios film Secretariat with Lane ideally cast as the horse’s owner, John Malkovich as trainer Lucien Laurin and Hot Springs’ own Otto Thorwarth as jockey Ron Turcotte.
Though her marriage to John Tweedy, the father of her four children, suffered, Chenery kept Meadow Stables solvent upon the death of her father, Chris, in early 1973. Along with young Seth Hancock of Kentucky’s world-famous Claiborne Farm, Chenery formed a syndication deal for a then-record $6.08 million that would keep Secretariat on the track through his 3-year-old season. (Although not a smashing success in the breeding shed, Secretariat gained through his daughters a reputation as an influential broodmare sire.)
And what a year it was for the chestnut colt, whose Belmont Stakes victory by 31 lengths while “moving like a tremendous machine” (announcer Chic Anderson) still leaves one tingling. He was not perfect — losing to Laurin-trained stablemate Angle Light in the Wood Memorial and twice to longshots trained by Allen Jerkens — but set track records in the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes that still stand. Cameo appearances on turf were enough to make him, at 3, the male grass champion of 1973.
Behind it all was Penny Chenery, sending the big horse to Arlington Park, Saratoga and, for his final race, Woodbine in Canada.
Chenery’s passing on Saturday at age 95 came on the corresponding date that in 1973 Secretariat beat Riva Ridge by 3 1/2 lengths in the inaugural Marlboro Cup, setting a world record for nine furlongs on dirt (1:45 2-5) at Belmont Park. She spent her sunshine years giving back to the sport in which her horses excelled. One of the first women admitted to The Jockey Club, she received the 2006 Eclipse Award of Merit for lifetime contributions to Thoroughbred racing. She sought a cure for laminitis, the disease that killed Secretariat at 19, and to ban the use of performance-enhancing drugs in racing.
Suffering a stroke at her Colorado home, Chenery died on the opening Saturday of the September meeting at Churchill Downs. It was at the Louisville track on the first Saturday in May 1973 that Secretariat ran five consecutively faster quarter-miles in the Kentucky Derby, stopping the clock after a mile and a quarter in 1:59 2-5.
Kevin Flanery, president of Churchill Downs, paid tribute to Chenery in a statement Sunday: “Mrs. Chenery’s wonderful life had a deep and lasting impact on all in Thoroughbred racing and to countless individuals beyond our industry. If anyone ever deserved the title ‘First Lady of American Racing,’ it was Penny Chenery.”
Whether on film or in print, Chenery is depicted as a shrewd businesswoman and a hands-on horse owner. Nack, in particular, documents that Chenery put trainer Laurin under intense
pressure following Secretariat’s shockingly poor Wood Memorial, the colt’s first on-race defeat since his career debut. It was not known until later that Secretariat raced in the Wood with a painful boil in his mouth.
Chenery’s passing comes a few weeks before Academy Award winner Emma Stone plays Billie Jean King in “Battle of the Sexes,” a movie account of the tennis star’s celebrity match against Bobby Riggs in September 1973. BJK, at 73, is still with us. Another great lady of sport has left the stage — with dignity.