It has been a very long time since I cared enough about a movie to make the effort to see it the day it was released.

In fact, it had been almost two years since I had gone to the movies at all before yesterday. They are just too many irritating things about the experience these days, from $9.50 tickets for <em>bargain matinees</em> to $7 for medium popcorn to 20-30 minutes of pre-movie advertising. Throw in the fact that most movies aren't that interesting anymore and it's way too easy to wait six months or so for the DVD to come out.

But for some reason, I really wanted to see<a title="Secretariat" href="http://disney.go.com/disneypictures/secretariat/?cmp=dmov_dpic_sec_psg_title_secretariat%20movie_Extl" target="_self"> "Secretariat."</a>

Part of it was that I remember the horse so well. I remember 1973, watching Big Red win the Kentucky Derby, the Preakness Stakes and the Belmont Stakes. I'll never forget his 31-length victory in the Belmont, watching him thunder down the stretch with no other horses even visible on the television screen. It's the only athletic accomplishment I can watch on video even 37 years later and get chills. Someone -- I think it was ESPN -- rated the greatest athletic performances of the 20th century, and ranked that race second behind Wilt Chamberlain scoring 100 points in a single NBA game.

ESPN ranked Secretariat the 35th greatest athlete of the 20th century; I think Sports Illustrated ranked him in the top 10.

I suppose this movie wouldn't have been made except for the success of "Seabiscuit" a few years back. Hollywood has such a tendency to look at what worked in the past and keep redoing it, but in this case at least, I'm glad the movie got made. I'm sure a lot of folks who never knew anything about the great racehorse will now know his story, and watching Secretariat pull away to an unbelievable lead in the backstretch of the Belmont never gets old no matter how many times I see it.

http://www.youtube.com/watch?v=2c_ylcxgCaI

"He is running like a tremendous machine." Those were the words of race announcer Chic Anderson as Secretariat put challenger sham away in the Belmont. One of the things the movie fails to mention is that after finishing a strong second in both of the first two Triple Crown races, Sham couldn't sustain the killing pace in the Belmont and wound up finishing last in the field of five.

The greatest moment for me in the movie was almost a throwaway. Trainer Pancho Martin, who was convinced he had the better horse in Sham, loved the fact that the pace was so fast early in the Belmont. He was convinced that Secretariat would fade over the 1 1/2 mile distance. But when the great horse just ran away from Sham as if he had found an overdrive gear, when he extended his head to five, 10, 15, 20 lengths, Martin has only two words.

<em>"That's impossible."</em>

Secretariat won the Belmont by 31 lengths, finishing more than six seconds ahead of the second-place horse. His time of 2:24 for the distance is still the world record on dirt more than 37 years later. It might be horse racing's most unbreakable record.

Movies are best when they touch something deep inside us. When I sat in my parents' family room and watched the Belmont Stakes in 1973, I was 23 years old with my whole life in front of me. I certainly had no way of knowing I was watching the most amazing performance I would ever see.

In fact, I might have echoed Pancho Martin.

That's impossible.

Only both of us were wrong.