Eddie Sweat

Childhood and Farm Work

A son of tenant farmers in Holly Hill, South Carolina, Eddie Sweat spent his boyhood picking cotton, digging sweet potatoes and harvesting corn, soybeans and watermelons. As a teenager, Sweat would walk the two and a half miles from his home to the Thoroughbred training center of Lucien Laurin. There, he dug fencepost holes, and walked and groomed horses. He soon became Laurin's most trusted groom, as he cleaned out stalls, rubbed alcohol on horses' legs, wrapped their legs, gave them baths, and brushed them. Sweat began driving Laurin's horse van, transporting the horses from farm to track and between tracks. Eventually he worked the backstretch grooming Laurin's best horses.1

Working with Secretariat

By 1971, Sweat had teamed up with Charlie Davis, an exercise rider, to form the duo who would later take care of Secretariat. First, they won the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes with Riva Ridge in 1972. In 1973, it was Secretariat’s turn and Davis noted of Sweat, “Eddie would be coming up the shed row and Secretariat would be looking at him every step, like, ‘Here comes daddy'.”2 The new partnership turned historic when Eddie Sweat became one of the most famous grooms. He showed up on television broadcasts and newspapers included him when detailing the Secretariat team’s successes. Through it all, Sweat remained humble and was dutifully bound to his charge in Secretariat.

Legacy

In his lifetime, Sweat endured many ailments, including a heart attack, open-heart surgery, asthma, and leukemia. In 1991, he lost most of his cherished Secretariat memorabilia in a fire that gutted his home in Queens, New York. When Sweat died of leukemia at the age of fifty-nine, he was destitute. A charitable organization paid for his funeral so that his lifetime of dedication and hard work within the equine industry was not forgotten. When reflecting on his years in racing, Sweat stated “I been on the racetrack thirty-four years, and I ain't never gonna give up. I think they'll take me to my grave with a pitchfork in my hand and a rub rag in my back pocket."3

• 1Keyser, “Life With ‘Big Red’ Only Rich In Telling Horse Racing.”
• 2Doolittle, “Eddie Sweat Had The Touch With Secretariat.”
• 3Keyser.