{"id":2381,"date":"2017-09-29T08:55:25","date_gmt":"2017-09-29T13:55:25","guid":{"rendered":"https:\/\/doctoraviation.com\/?p=2381"},"modified":"2017-09-29T12:16:47","modified_gmt":"2017-09-29T17:16:47","slug":"secretariat-aviation-connection","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"https:\/\/doctoraviation.com\/secretariat-aviation-connection\/","title":{"rendered":"Secretariat and Aviation: What is the Connection?"},"content":{"rendered":"

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Secretariat and Aviation: What is the Connection?\u00a0 All this came to mind as this week, Penny Tweedy (aka Penny Chenery), Secretariat\u2019s owner, died.\u00a0 Regular readers have, by this point, figured out that Doctor Aviation likes to tie aviation to the rest of life.\u00a0 At first glance one would wonder, \u201cWhat on earth does a race horse have to do with aviation\u201d?\u00a0 Good question, as an educator, I often like to make connections between concepts.\u00a0 Sometimes the connections are not clear at first.\u00a0 Read on, and I hope to make the connection clear.<\/p>\n

Penny Tweedy was a typical housewife and mother of three in the late 1960s.\u00a0 She was busy raising her three children in Colorado when her Dad suddenly fell ill.\u00a0 Dad owned a horse farm in Virginia called, Meadow Stables.\u00a0 Penny inherited the farm and upon inspection realized that it was in deep financial trouble.<\/p>\n

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Tweedy had arranged to have two mares bred to Bold Ruler, the greatest sire of the 20th<\/sup> Century.\u00a0 Through a coin toss with Ogden Phipps (the owner of Bold Ruler) she was awarded the offspring of a mare called Somethingroyal<\/em>.\u00a0 They named the colt, born in March of 1970, Secretariat.<\/p>\n

Secretariat began racing as a two year old (the norm for thoroughbreds) and was the best two year old of the bunch.\u00a0 Three year olds race for the Triple Crown.\u00a0 However, financial troubles were mounting at Meadow Stables farm.\u00a0 In a desperate move, Tweedy sold Secretariat\u2019s breeding rights for a record 6 million dollars before the three year old racing campaign started in order to save the farm.\u00a0 Secretariat\u2019s career as a stud was sold before he had the chance to even start a Triple Crown race.<\/p>\n

The Pursuit of the Triple Crown<\/em><\/strong><\/p>\n

Secretariat started the three year old campaign with several wins.\u00a0 He was upset in the Wood Memorial (with a sore in his mouth).\u00a0 \u00a0However, Secretariat began to grow in fame by winning the Kentucky Derby in (a still) record time of 1:59 and 2\/5ths.\u00a0 The Preakness Stakes was also won convincingly.\u00a0 It too was a record time; however, the official clock malfunctioned, so it is not officially counted in the record books.<\/p>\n

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The cr\u00e8me de le cr\u00e8me came three weeks later in the Belmont Stakes.\u00a0 Secretariat won in a stakes and world record time of 2:24 for the 1.5 mile course.\u00a0 More amazing was the margin of victory \u2013 31 lengths.<\/p>\n

Secretariat was the first horse to win the Triple Crown in 25 years and the only one to set a record in each race.\u00a0 Secretariat and Penny Tweedy were famous across the land.<\/p>\n

Secretariat died in 1989 at the age of 19.\u00a0 Penny Tweedy died in 2017 at the age of 95.<\/p>\n

So what does all of this have to do with aviation?\u00a0 William Nack is a talented sports writer and specializes in horse racing.\u00a0 Nack is considered the literary authority on Secretariat as he covered the great horse from his two year old campaign forward.\u00a0 Upon Secretariat\u2019s death, Nack wrote a wonderful article for Sports Illustrated.\u00a0 In the article he writes about the autopsy performed on Secretariat.<\/p>\n

His body was trucked immediately to Lexington, Ky., where Dr. Thomas Swerczek, a professor of veterinary science at the University of Kentucky, performed the necropsy. All of the horse\u2019s vital organs were normal in size except for the heart.<\/em><\/p>\n

\u201cWe were all shocked,\u201d Swerczek said. \u201cI\u2019ve seen and done thousands of autopsies on horses, and nothing I\u2019d ever seen compared to it. The heart of the average horse weighs about nine pounds. This was almost twice the average size, and a third larger than any equine heart I\u2019d ever seen. And it wasn\u2019t pathologically enlarged. All the chambers and the valves were normal. It was just larger. I think it told us why he was able to do what he did.\u201d<\/em><\/p>\n

(For the Full article see:\u00a0 https:\/\/www.si.com\/longform\/belmont\/index.html<\/a> )<\/p>\n

The reason that Secretariat was so great was his heart.\u00a0 A large, powerful and efficient heart.\u00a0 One thing essential for an airplane to be great is a big heart.\u00a0 In airplanes, we call the heart the engine.\u00a0 Without a great engine you don\u2019t have a great airplane.<\/p>\n

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The F-15 Engine<\/em><\/p>\n

Take for example the F-15 Eagle.\u00a0 The airplane set several time to climb records in its early days.\u00a0 The reason: Its engine had a thrust to weigh ratio of greater than one.\u00a0 In other words, the engines could produce more pounds of thrust than the airplane weighed. As a result, the F-15 could accelerate while going straight up.<\/p>\n

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The KC-135 Engine<\/em><\/p>\n

Another example, the KC-135 has been the Air Force\u2019s most durable refueling aircraft for decades.\u00a0 When the original water injection engines (circa 1957) were replaced in the early 1990s by the General Electric CFM-56, it made the KC-135 a new plane.\u00a0 It could fly on just one of the four engines at altitude.\u00a0 The thrust produced at takeoff could push a pilot back in his seat.<\/p>\n

So if you want a great plane, you got to have a great engine.\u00a0 If you want a great racehorse, you got to have a great heart.\u00a0 That\u2019s what Penny Tweedy\u2019s Secretariat taught us.<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

  Secretariat and Aviation: What is the Connection?\u00a0 All this came to mind as this week, Penny Tweedy (aka Penny Chenery), Secretariat\u2019s owner, died.\u00a0 Regular readers have, by this point, figured out that Doctor Aviation likes to tie aviation to the rest of life.\u00a0 At first glance one would wonder, \u201cWhat on earth does a […]<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":338,"featured_media":2379,"comment_status":"open","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"_acf_changed":false,"jetpack_post_was_ever_published":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_access":"","_jetpack_dont_email_post_to_subs":false,"_jetpack_newsletter_tier_id":0,"_jetpack_memberships_contains_paywalled_content":false,"footnotes":"","_jetpack_memberships_contains_paid_content":false,"jetpack_publicize_message":"","jetpack_publicize_feature_enabled":true,"jetpack_social_post_already_shared":false,"jetpack_social_options":{"image_generator_settings":{"template":"highway","enabled":false}}},"categories":[35],"tags":[452,451,142,450,449,448,456,455,453,454],"jetpack_publicize_connections":[],"acf":[],"yoast_head":"\nSecretariat and Aviation: What is the Connection? - Doctor Aviation<\/title>\n<meta name=\"description\" content=\"Secretariat and Aviation: What is the connection? 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