Remember when housewives were seen as “little women” and not quite up to making it in a man’s world of finance, law—or horse racing? Well, the film Secretariat is more than a story about a horse, it’s a parable about the power of love to push us to achieve the impossible.
Penny Chenery is a Colorado housewife whose parents own and run a racing stable in Kentucky. When her mother dies and her elderly father can no longer operate the farm, Penny has to make some difficult decisions, including backing a young colt, later to become Secretariat, despite the objections of her brother and husband and the derisive jeers and the skepticism of the old boys’ network of horse owners.
When Chenery’s father, with whom she has a deep connection, tells her to let Red, Secretariat’s nickname, “run his own race,” she takes his advice to heart, not only letting the racehorse do his thing but running her race as well.
There are lots of lessons in the film that revolve around faith and love. (Watch our Reel Inspiration video to hear Randall Wallace, the film’s director, talk about what the story meant to him.) But the one that has stayed with me was the father’s prophetic advice to let Secretariat “run his own race.” That message to trust yourself, do your best and success will be yours is a powerful one.
So this weekend, run to your local theatre to take in this inspiring film. Then, in your own life, run with its message of love, of faith, of trust.
