Where is the racehorse secretariat buried

Book a Tour. Breeding Shed Requirements. Postage Stamp Honoree. I was involved with the taxidermy horses on exhibit at The Kentucky Horse Park, so in my mind I thought Secretariat would be the perfect horse to do something like that with and preserve him for future generations to admire as we had.

He had developed laminitis, a painful and debilitating hoof condition, which was first diagnosed on Labor Day of By October 4th, he would be dead. Swerczek explained. They wanted the horse to have an autopsy close by and return for a prepared burial at their farm. However, they struggled to reach Dr.

They all had plastic bags with them. This horse meant so much, especially to those who worked with him every day, that it was emotional and difficult for those who loved him to witness the necropsy.

And, although Dr. Swerczek performed hundreds of necropsies each year, the one he performed that day on the great Secretariat brought with it an epic sense of respect and reverence felt by everyone - not just in that laboratory room - the entire country was mourning the loss of this historic beacon of light that touched the very soul of anyone fortunate enough to come in contact with him.

Normally, I would do a typical necropsy and frankly, end up mutilating and dissecting everything needed for that exam.

With Secretariat being insured, a necropsy was required, despite the obvious answer of his untimely death being laminitis. There was no chance of a cure or improvement, they had done the right thing for the horse by humanely euthanizing him. I examined everything related to the laminitis, with no necessary reason to examine every other inch of this horse.

I just needed to conclude my findings in terms of the laminitis. When I was finishing up, Dr. Kaufman, the resident veterinarian at Claiborne Farm, asked with really just a passing curiosity, "I wonder what his heart looks like? I was trying to leave as much of this specimen intact, it was difficult to even cut into him, to be honest, everyone idolized this horse. Swerczek proceeded to carefully extract the heart, setting it on the table. Both standing there in utter silence for a moment, Dr.

Kaufman finally asked,. There were no pathological abnormalities of the heart, typically found in an animal with an enlarged heart. All of the chambers were normal.

There were no lesions. I estimated his heart to be lbs. I did the necropsy on his sire, Bold Ruler, who did not have a large heart. Ironically, he had the second largest heart I had ever seen, at 19 lbs. It was the perfect combination of, well His large muscled body, deep chest cavity and broad girth, paired with his large heart that acted like a V8 engine in a sports car. He continued to run faster with each stride he took due to this phenomenon.

His stride length already surpassed nearly every horse on the track due to his flawless conformation. Secretariat was the exact combination of all that made the perfect racehorse. B2B Publishing. Business Visionaries. Hot Property. Times Events. Times Store. When Man O' War died in , a dynamic bronze statue of him was installed over his farmyard grave. His casket and the monument were later moved to the Lexington Horse Park in Let's pause there for a moment. Man O War was so larger than life that his body was embalmed, and he was actually buried in a casket.

Elderly horses die of the same things people do — cancers, heart attacks, falling — but what happens next looks quite a bit different. Very few horses go into the ground the same way human remains do are. Most are cremated or buried in pieces. Blowen actually explained this to me better than anyone else probably could have. He has 83 grave markers in his cemetery, and he only buried the first horse to pass, Precisionist, in A backhoe worked for 13 hours to dig a hole big enough for Precisionist, Blowen told me.

The Kentucky limestone that makes our bourbon so delicious also makes it incredibly difficult to dig a hole large enough for a 1,pound horse. Every other horse at Old Friends since then has been cremated. A horse hearse of sorts comes to pick up the bodies and transports them to the University of Kentucky to be cremated.

When they come back to the farm, they're in a large box the size of a small chest.