Good Morning POU!
Today’s feature was the Groom for Triple Crown Winner Secretariat.
Eddie Sweat
Edward “Eddie” Sweat (August 29, 1939 – April 17, 1998) was an American groom in Thoroughbred horse racing who was the subject of the 2006 book by Lawrence Scanlan titled The Horse God Built: Secretariat, His Groom, Their Legacy.
Born in Holly Hill, South Carolina, Eddie Sweat was one of nine children of a sharecropper. Holly Hill was where future U.S. Racing Hall of Fame trainer Lucien Laurin maintained a Thoroughbred horse farm and he offered Sweat a job after he saw the wide-eyed teen frequently peeking at the horses through a fence to the property and sometimes skipping school just to watch the horses. In 1957, at age eighteen, Sweat accepted the offer of full-time work as groom for the Laurin stable of racehorses with a small fixed salary plus 1% of the horse’s earnings.
One of the first highly successful horses placed in Sweat’s care was the 1958 American Champion Two-Year-Old Filly Quill. In 1966, Sweat was part of the Laurin stables’ first American Classic win when Amberiod captured the Belmont Stakes. Six years later, Sweat gained national media attention for his abilities in handling Thoroughbreds when sportswriter William Nack spent many hours with him during 1972 and 1973 outside the Laurin stable stalls of Kentucky Derby winner Riva Ridge and Secretariat. In a Sports Illustrated feature article, Nack said he took notes compulsively, endlessly, feeling for the texture of the life around the horse. Secretariat was voted the 1972 American Horse of the Year, an extraordinary feat for a two-year-old, and leading up to and through the horse’s winning of the 1973 Triple Crown, all of the key people involved with Secretariat received massive national and international attention. Interviewed and photographed countless times, Sweat appeared on television and was on the covers of both Ebony and Jet magazines. Eddie was also the 1st groom to ever have groomed Kentucky Derby winners two years in a row, Riva Ridge in 1972 and Secretariat in 1973.
A son of tenant farmers who picked cotton as a boy, Sweat dedicated his life to horses. He cared for Secretariat, who in 1973, delivered one of the greatest performances in the history of sport. Completing a sweep of the Triple Crown, Secretariat won the Belmont Stakes by a staggering 31 lengths.
“I didn’t get to rub Secretariat until he was 3 in Florida,” Sweat said in a remembrance for the Kentucky Derby commemorative magazine. “Most of the people would tell me that I had that magic touch. But when I got him, he chased me out of the stall. I said, ‘Well, I’ll have to go back to my book now to figure out how to take care of this bad guy.’
“So the next day I go back in there, and he tried to hem me up in a corner, like he’s saying, ‘You don’t come in here and boss me around!’ I just had a little patience. I kept talking to him. Finally, he smelled me all over and said like, ‘All right. It looks like I got to put up with this guy here. I might as well be a gentleman.’
“He come around and started liking me pretty good. He’d kick at me and bite at me if I was rubbing on him too hard. He never hurt me, though. After a while, I had him spoiled for carrots.”
“Only way that horses win is if you sit there and spend time with ’em. Show ’em that you’re tryin’ to help ’em. Love ’em. Talk to ’em. Get to know ’em. That’s what you gotta do. You love ’em and they’ll love you, too.
“People might call me crazy, but that’s the way it is. I been on the racetrack 34 years, and I ain’t never gonna give up. I think they’ll take me to my grave with a pitchfork in my hand and a rub rag in my back pocket.”
Following Lucien Laurin’s retirement, Sweat worked for his son, Roger Laurin, and in 1984 once again received considerable national media attention with Chief’s Crown. The colt won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, was voted the Eclipse Award as American Champion Two-Year-Old Colt, and was the betting favorite for all three of the 1985 Triple Crown races.
There is a life-size statue at the Kentucky Horse Park of Eddie Sweat leading Secretariat and jockey Ron Turcotte to the winner’s circle after winning the 1973 Kentucky Derby.