Ron Turcotte, Secretariat's jockey and horse racing legend, dies at 84

Ron Turcotte, the jockey who rode the legendary Secretariat to the Triple Crown in 1973 and won more than 3,000 races over his two-decade career, died Friday morning of natural causes at his home in Canada, per the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame. He was 84.

Turcotte began his career as a jockey in the 1960s, and entered the national spotlight when he won the 1965 Preakness Stakes aboard Tom Rolfe. But his greatest fame and greatest accomplishments would come beginning in 1972, when he won the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes as the jockey for Riva Ridge. Following Triple Crown season, he would take over for Paul Feliciano as the jockey for a two-year old stallion named Secretariat. The combination would proceed to win races at Saratoga, Belmont, Laurel, Garden State and Aqueduct leading into the fateful 1973 slate of Triple Crown races.

Secretariat not only won the Triple Crown, but he also set speed records in all three races, including at the Belmont Stakes where he sealed the Triple Crown by winning by an incomparable 31 lengths. Turcotte became a central part of Secretariat's legend, as he would become the subject of a famous photograph as he looked back at the rest of the field far behind his horse.

"I was amazed with that horse, all along," Turcotte wrote of Secretariat in 2023. "But then, he was doing something that you'd never seen before, and will probably never see again. He was the type of horse that you'll never see again."

By the end of Secretariat's Triple Crown run, Turcotte had become the first jockey to win the Kentucky Derby in back-to-back years since Jimmy Winkfield in 1902, and he was also the first jockey to win five out of six consecutive Triple Crown races. His feat would not be replicated until it was matched by Victor Espinoza in 2015.

Turcotte continued to ride Secretariat until the Man o' War Stakes in October 1973, after which point Eddie Maple jockeyed Secretariat for his final race at the Canadian International. Turcotte would continue his jockey career until 1978, when he suffered career-ending injuries after falling from Flag of Leyte Gulf during the eighth race at Belmont Park. Turcotte's injuries rendered him paralyzed from the waist down, ending his career after a total of 3,032 victories.

Turcotte was inducted into the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame in 1979, and he would later become the first recipient of the Avelino Gomez Memorial Award for Canadian jockeys in 1983. Later, he would become the first thoroughbred racing figure to ever be awarded the Order of Canada.

"The world may remember Ron as the famous jockey of Secretariat, but to us he was a wonderful husband, a loving father, grandfather, and a great horseman." the Turcotte family said in a statement through his longtime business partner Leonard Lusky.

At the time of his death, Turcotte had been the last living member of Secretariat's connections. Christopher Chenery, Secretariat's breeder, had died after a long illness in January 1973 several months before his horse's Triple Crown run. Penny Chenery, who was credited as Secretariat's owner and manager, died in September 2017 at age 95. Secretariat lived to be 19 before dying in October 1989.