It was an early August morning at Saratoga in 1972. I was sitting several yards from the rail, having breakfast with a Daily Racing Form colleague when I heard this sound behind me, getting louder and louder. The pounding hooves and snorting nostrils sounded like the proverbial locomotive. I turned toward the track and there before me was a big chestnut, adorned in the blue and white colors of Meadow Stud, reaching out with gargantuan strides. It was a sight and sound that doesn't go unnoticed.

"That's got to be Secretariat," I said. "You know that 2-year-old everyone's been talking about. Look at him. Someday they’re going to make a movie about that horse."

OK, well, everything is true up until that last line.

It's taken 37 years for a movie to be made about Big Red, and we all have Disney to thank for bringing Secretariat to the big screen and surrounding him with major talent