The best way to describe the late Bill Nack’s passion for horse racing and his beloved Secretariat is to allow the master storyteller to do it himself.

“Horses have a way of getting inside of you, and so it was that Secretariat became like a fifth child in our house, the older boy who was off at school and never around but who was as loved and true a part of the family as Muffin, our shaggy, epileptic dog,” he wrote.

Havre de Grace possessed talent in such abundance she brought Larry Jones out of retirement to train her in 2011.