SECRETARIAT'S FOALING SHED

By: Tom Ferry

It happened here shortly after midnight on March 30, 1970. Outside, it was a cold and rainy early Virginia morning; yet, inside the small wood-frame foaling shed, Meadow Farm manager Howard Gentry, his assistant Raymond Wood and night watchman Bob Southworth were focused on an 18-year-old mare named Somethingroyal. She was giving birth and Gentry helped ease her foal’s folded foreleg out of the birth canal. After the newborn male’s hips popped out, Gentry exclaimed, “There’s a whopper.” The farm vet arrived shortly afterwards and said years later, “He was beautiful. He was well put together, correct; his legs were perfect. He had a beautiful head and was as red as fire.”1

The morning sun would soon rise and the world of horse racing had changed forever.

The real-life birth of Secretariat bore little resemblance to the one portrayed in the 2010 Disney movie. Owner Penny Chenery, trainer Lucien Laurin and groom Eddie Sweat were not there  but the modest little structure made of whitewashed barn board was and is present today. Located in the Meadow Event Park in Caroline County, Virginia, Secretariat’s Foaling Shed was named to the National Register of Historic Places by the National Park Service in 2015. It is a part of land that dates back to 1805.

In 1936, Christopher T. Chenery purchased The Meadow, an ancestral property near Doswell, Virginia and not far from his boyhood home in Ashland, Virginia. Soon afterwards, Chenery created Meadow Stud which bred Thoroughbreds and raced them in the now iconic silks highlighted by blue and white blocks. Over the years, Chenery and Meadow Stable produced numerous champions including Hall of Famers Hill Prince and Cicada.

In 1965, Chenery partnered with Ogden Phipps in a foal-sharing agreement. Phipps owned leading sire Bold Ruler and sought out Chenery’s best mares at Meadow Stable. After Chenery fell ill and was hospitalized in 1968, Phipps and Chenery’s daughter Penny flipped a coin the following year to determine who would win first choice of Bold Ruler’s foals out of Somethingroyal. Phipps won the toss and selected the first foal, a filly named The Bride. The filly ultimately ran four times and never won a dollar. Penny Chenery had to “settle” for the second foal, a male,  and the rest of the story is legendary.

The Chenery family sold the Meadow Farm land in 1978 and in 2003 it was purchased by the State Fair of Virginia who turned it into the Meadow Event Park. The 331-acre property is currently owned by the Virginia Farm Bureau Federation. Within the Event Park is the “Meadow Historic District.” This includes Secretariat’s training barn where he wore his first saddle and bridle, the yearling barn where he and the great Riva Ridge lived as colts, and a stallion barn, pump house, well house and horse cemetery. As the years rolled by, the original broodmare barn could not be restored, however, visitors can still gaze upon the “Cove,” the expansive grassy field in a valley where the Meadow mares and foals once grazed.

What most tourists from across the country and around the world come to see, however, is the foaling shed. There are few places its equal when it comes to sacred ground in the world of horse racing. When approaching the shed’s entrance, one instantly sees the remaining fragments of Meadow Stable blue paint which still cling to the lower half of the inside portion of the door. And upon entering the shed, you find yourself in a small partitioned area and it is here where Secretariat came into the world. There is very little to see, but so much to imagine.

Throughout the year, the Meadow Event Park provides “Hoofprints of History” tours of the Historic District. Visitors can stop by the legendary barns and grounds as well as view pictorial galleries and rare exhibits that illustrate Meadow Stable’s glory days. And they can marvel at how such humble surroundings could host what is arguably the greatest of all American Thoroughbreds.

From Secretariat’s Meadow: The Land  Family  The Legend. By Kate Chenery Tweedy and Leeanne Meadows Ladin. Dementi Milestone Publishing. 2010.