SECRETARIAT, SUPERSTAR: Remembering Big Red by Elizabeth Searle

Check out our own film’s stirring trailer…

REMEMBERING BIG RED… by Elizabeth Searle

I had a crush on Secretariat.  Seeing the stirring trailer for the upcoming SECRETARIAT movie brought it all back to me: Big Red, the immortal horse who won the Triple Crown in the era of Nixon, when we all– especially an idealistic little girl like me– needed someone to admire.  Someone perfect.

Check out the YouTube clips of the great Secretariat and his unforgettable Belmont win, in which he blazed along (as the breathless announcer put it) like some ‘tremendous machine’– outdistancing the pack by 30 lengths and managing to run each quarter of the grueling race faster than the last.  He pounded down the homestretch at record-setting supernatural speed.

When he died, Secretariat was found to have a heart twice the size of a normal horse’s.  When he was born, his owner Penny Tweedy (played in the film by a fiesty and elegant Diane Lane) thought at first he was ‘too pretty to be any good.’  She (and millions of others) came to marvel over how one horse could truly have it all: superlative looks, heart, stamina, speed and brains.

Groping for appropriate athletic comparisons, video commentators mention Tiger Woods at his Masters’ Win. This week, a very different Woods finished his season at an alltime low.  In a happier sports story, tennis star Rafael Nadal ecstatically captured the Grand Slam.  Though not all implode like Woods, many big-leaguers struggle in ‘real life’ and few humans achieve the flawless athletic performance of Secretariat.

Golfing great Jack Niklaus has said he found himself weeping at Secretariat’s Triple Crown win.  Haywood Hale Broun remarked that even such a fine athlete as Niklaus stives so hard to be perfect– and in Secretariat’s Triple Crown win, that’s what we all saw: pure unmarred perfection.  What a win; what a horse.  WDYT?

(photos: Secretariat.com, tennisonlineblog.com, sportsstories.com)

Read Full Post »

Phil Mickelson Takes the Masters: A Putter’s Poetic Justice by Elizabeth Searle

Old hand Phil Mickelson snatched the green jacket and Master’s title from Tiger Woods. Of course, Tiger still qualified– after facing down doubts that he would implode in the middle stretch of the tournament– but he seemed sullen in his post-match interviews.

Mickelson, meanwhile, received warm hugs from his longtime Caddy Jim ‘Bones’ Mackay and his wife of 30 years.

Despite rumors already surfacing that Mickelson has had his share of scandals, there was no mistakening the rousing response from the crowd or the sense that a ‘putter’s’ version ‘poetic justice’ was in the air.

As Tiger has been learning in his Buddhism studies, and is now learning firsthand in life, struggle is constant.  Change happens. The green jacket does pass on, just as the surreal grass of a putting green cannot retain its color.

Will Tiger Woods ever again attain his former glory? Or is mortality catching up with him too, a little earlier than it might have had he not overplayed his lucky hand? Of course, this slight setback may only energize Tiger for future feats. And no doubt Mickelson will take some hits in his moment in the spotlight.

But from here, for this watcher, it felt right to see this shift in Tiger’s kingdom. Congrat.s to Mickelson and to those who’ve stood by him for years, his wife and family and his loyal caddy ‘Bones.’  We all come down to bones in the end, Tiger.  And it’s only a game…

(photos: images.students.ou.edu, blackchristiannews.com)

Read Full Post »