The powerful bond between human and horse

The powerful bond between human and horse.


Eddie Sweat (Eddie “Shorty” Sweat) Secretariat’s groom, loyal friend, and protector, a skilled and much loved black man of the old South, who had a consuming fatherly passion and dedication to “his” horse had more contact with the horse than anyone and no one understand the horse better. Eddie spent more time with Secretariat than anyone else and understood the horse far better than anyone else. A wildly generous man who could read a horse with his eyes, he shared in little of the financial success or glamour of Secretariat’s wins on the track, but won the heart of Big Red with his soft words and relentless devotion.

“We get a groom’s-eye view of the racing world and the vantage of a man who spent every possible moment with the horse he loved, yet who often basked in the horse’s glory from the sidelines. More than anything else” Lawrence Scanlan The Horse God Built: The Untold Story of Secretariat, the World's Greatest Racehorse. He didn't benefit from Secretariat's great wins. He stayed with it for the horse. This is the story of their bond.

Sweat was delighted to see himself included in the piece and was able to offer more insight into Secretariat's unique personality and conformation.

Eddie and Secretariat from coworkers, jockeys, trainers and owners, all contributing not just to one man’s story, but to a portrait of a powerful bond between human and horse.

When Penny Tweedy Chenery commissioned a statue of Secretariat for the Secretariat Center at the Kentucky Horse Park, she insisted that Eddie Sweat be part of the statue. The relationship between Eddie and the great Champion was so intimate that it was a given, as far as Penny was concerned, that Eddie, too, should be so memorialized.

Everyone's going to say theirs is the best

Everyone's going to say theirs is the best. What else would they say – theirs is second best? Not a chance!