June 10, 2024

Adapted from “Riva Ridge – Penny’s First Champion” by Kate Chenery Tweedy and Leeanne Meadows Ladin

Secretariat’s legendary Belmont of 1973 is indelibly etched in horse racing history.  But on June 10, 1972, his stablemate Riva Ridge became the first horse of Meadow Stable to win the mile-and-a-half test of champions. And he accomplished it under very challenging circumstances.

The pressure to win the Belmont was immense since Riva’s loss in the Preakness on May 19 had dulled some of the luster of his Kentucky Derby win of May 6. However, a freak accident almost knocked Riva out of the race before he even left the paddock. Trainer Lucien Laurin was walking the somewhat frisky colt around the paddock after saddling him when an overly enthusiastic fan reached over the fence and playfully slapped Riva on the rump. The startled colt kicked out, striking his own hind leg. A guard hustled the spectator away, but the damage was done.

Lucien’s face blanched when he saw the cut and growing lump below the back hock of Riva’s left leg. Riva took four or five limping steps and Lucien feared that his leg was broken. He was ready to scratch Riva from the Belmont. Then amazingly, Riva seemed to just walk it off. Lucien determined that the injury was not as serious as it looked.

 He boosted Ron Turcotte in the saddle and sent the pair to the post parade. Breaking well out of the gate, Riva went to the lead. By the quarter pole, Riva was sailing away. By the eighth pole, he was flaunting a seven-length lead.

Riva won the Belmont Stakes by the same margin -- seven lengths – that he had lost the Preakness on the infamous muddy track. He posted the third fastest time ever run at the Belmont Stakes at 2:28, surpassing the times of Triple Crown winners Count Fleet and Citation. (Though impressive, it was four seconds slower than Secretariat’s blazing time of 2:24.)

Riva became the eighth horse in history to win the Kentucky Derby and Belmont with a Preakness defeat in between.

With such a decisive victory, Riva reclaimed his position as the best three- year-old in the country. He accomplished all this with a sore leg. Lucien marveled at Riva’s resilience, “To go out there and run like that…he’s a hell of a horse.”

Groom Eddie Sweat told his colt after the Belmont, “You did all right, you big dude, and now you’re going to rest awhile.” He rubbed Riva’s leg with a healing unguent. Later his “big dude” wolfed down four quarts of sweet feed and corn, a clear sign that all was well.

After the Belmont, many racing experts thought that on a dry track, Riva very likely would have won the Preakness. “It just kills me that we got beat at Pimlico,” Lucien said after the Belmont. “We wanted the Triple Crown very much.”

For Penny Chenery, the Belmont victory was bittersweet.  Her father, the indomitable Christopher Chenery, founder of Meadow Stable, was in the hospital suffering from Parkinson’s disease and Alzheimer’s. She felt that winning the Belmont was really for him, as that race, like the Derby, had eluded him for many years. The Belmont was the “right race” to win before his and her peers in the elite New York racing world. It re-established the Chenery name and that of Meadow Stable as formidable competitors on the track.

It was a golden moment for Penny and her “Golden Boy” Riva Ridge.