Secretariat again fails to make Virginia Legends Walk

VIRGINIA BEACH

The great racehorse Secretariat is an also-ran in the latest voting for the Virginia Legends Walk.

Again.

For the 13th year in a row, Secretariat failed to muster enough votes to get his name on the Legends Walk, which is on 13th Street, between Atlantic and Pacific avenues.

In fact, nobody earned enough votes to get on the Legends Walk this year. Not actor George C. Scott, not Civil War Gen. J.E.B. Stuart, not bluegrass legend Ralph Stanley, not sax player Clarence Clemons. The only other year that no one has been inducted was 2007, when Secretariat tied with writer Tom Wolfe for the most votes.

Secretariat was alone this year, as he was in 1973's Belmont Stakes, in leading the field. The Triple Crown winner was chosen on 48.5 percent of the ballots returned from the nearly 400 sent out to judges at historical societies, museums, libraries, colleges, TV stations and newspapers, including one ballot to The Virginian-Pilot. Secretariat needed 50 percent to earn his place on the Legends Walk.

The next closest of this year's 61 nominees were musicians Bruce Hornsby and The Statler Brothers, each earning 43.9 percent.

So the Virginia-born horse that set a world record and multiple track records, that was chosen by ESPN as 35th among the top 100 athletes of the 20th century, who was named the third-greatest Virginia sports figure of the century by Sports Illustrated, who was the only being ever to be on the covers of Time, Newsweek and Sports Illustrated simultaneously, who is pictured on a postage stamp, wasn't good enough to be on the Virginia Legends Walk alongside Katie Couric and 35 presidents, generals, musicians, writers, explorers and other notables.

Secretariat did come in first, in one respect - he was the only nonhuman in the voting.

Nominations for 2012 are being accepted now at www.va-legends.com or by calling (800) 333-6397.

You never know. Tom Wolfe finally got in.

Diane Tennant, (757) 446-2478, diane.tennant@pilotonline.com