March 29, 2024
BANGOR DAILY NEWS (BANGOR, MAINE

Ron Turcotte gets his GED diploma

VAN BUREN — Ron Turcotte, the renowned jockey who rode Secretariat to the Triple Crown champion in a quarter of a century in 1973, was among the graduates honored at the SAD 24 Adult Community Education commencement ceremonies at Van Buren District Secondary School Thursday night.

Turcotte, a native of Grand Falls, New Brunswick, received a high school equivalency diploma. He said he had quit school in 1955 as a seventh-grader.

He worked in the lumber industry for five years before leaving for Toronto, Ontario, where he eventually went onto to become one of the greatest jockeys in the history of sport.

Turcotte said he had been considering seeking his GED four years prior to actually enrolling in the SAD 24 program last August. “This is something I’d been looking to do for a long, long time. (When it comes to) procrastinators, I’m probably one of the very worst,” he said.

“Things went much better than I thought. I passed all my tests,” he said.

Turcotte said earning his GED was “one stage I have to go through if I want to go ahead to something else.”

Turcotte rode his first race on June 21, 1961, and rose to the top of the North American jockey circuit. Among the horses he rode were Northern Dancer, Damascus, Fort Marcy, Dalia and Riva Ridge, all of them “Hall of Fame horses,” he said.

On July 13, 1978, Turcotte was injured in a racing accident at Belmont Park in New York that left him paralyzed from the waist down.

In his 16-year career as a jockey, Turcotte rode 23,000 mounts and won 3,033 races, earning more than $28 million in purses for the owners of the mounts.

During the United States off season, he raced in Africa, Hong Kong, Puerto Rico, Panama and other places around the world. His many major stakes victories include winning the Kentucky Derby twice, the Preakness twice and the Belmont twice. He is best known, however, for winning the Triple Crown of horse racing — the Kentucky Derby, the Belmont and the Preakness.

— aboard Secretariat in 1973. He was awarded the Order of Canada, Canada’s highest civilian award, in 1973, the Canadian Sovereign Award in ’78 and the George Wolfe Award in ’79.

Turcotte is a member of five Halls of Fame: the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame, the Canadian Racing Hall of Fame, the Sports Hall of Fame of Long Island, the New Brunswick Sports Hall of Fame and the Canada Sports Hall of Fame.

On earning his GED, Turcotte said, “It was fun. I encourage everyone (who has not done so yet) to do this. It’s really a must today.”

Turcotte said he is considering working toward a degree in business administration next, possibly at SAD 24, which he said is “wheelchair accessible.”

Commissioner of Education Eve Bither, the keynote speaker, said Turcotte’s “spirit soars and his (accomplishment) lifts all of us to a source of inspiration…. His achievement, she said, “shows us (such thing are) possible in spite of a physical barrier.”

Turcotte was one of 36 SAD 24 adult education graduates who received diplomas or certificates.


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