Posts tagged Tim Layden

“Greatest Racehorse That Ever Lived”

“Hotshots” looks at a movie!

SECRETARIAT is based on a real-life racehorse, a real-life person, and a real-life series of events, and even though everyone in the audience already knows the ending going in, the movie is still an uplifting and inspirational experience to see.

After all, it isn’t just little girls who love horses and who love good stories about horses, right?

The movie begins in 1969 in Denver, and we meet a housewife and her family. She is Penny Chenery, played by Diane Lane, and she receives a phone call that her mother has died.

The whole family drives to Virginia for the funeral, where we learn that Penny’s father has been ill for some time and the horse farm he owns has been losing money “hand over fist.”

Penny sends her family back home to Denver, and she stays behind to help out on the farm and try to make it solvent again.

She fires the horse trainer, because he has been cheating the farm, and she tracks down Lucien Laurin, a French Canadian who has been trying to retire and who is played wonderfully by John Malkovich.

Penny offers Lucien the job of being her horse trainer, but he turns her down, saying that he doesn’t even follow racing anymore.

However, when Penny tells him that the farm is about to acquire a newborn foal that was sired by Bold Ruler, a famous racehorse, Lucien says, “Call me when she drops her foal.”

Of course, you can guess the rest, which, as they say, is history, and in this case is actually true, although some minor details have been altered or omitted in order to make the movie tighter, more exciting, and even better.

The Triple Crown is Thoroughbred horseracing’s greatest achievement, which is unofficially awarded a horse that wins the three most prestigious races in one season, the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes, and the Belmont Stakes.

Before Secretariat did so in 1973, no horse had won the Triple Crown since Citation won it in 1948, 25 years earlier, and Secretariat still owns the best winning time in two of those races, a remarkable achievement for a horse whose sire had a reputation for speed, but not for stamina.

SECRETARIAT is a marvelous film about a horse that is still known as the greatest racehorse that ever lived.

I’m Dan Culberson and this is “Hotshots.”