Description
Collector's Note – Why This Issue Matters
In the spring of 1973, Secretariat did something that American sports had not witnessed in twenty-five years: he won the Triple Crown. And he did not merely win it — he shattered records at all three races in a manner that left sportswriters, bettors, and casual observers reaching for language that felt adequate to what they had seen. The Belmont Stakes finish on June 9, 1973, two days before this issue's cover date, remains one of the most discussed performances in the history of American sport. Secretariat won by 31 lengths, finishing in 2:24, a world record for a mile and a half on dirt that still stands. This Newsweek issue, dated June 11, 1973, went to press in the immediate aftermath of that race — making it one of the first major national newsweeklies to document the Triple Crown completion in print.
The timing is what gives this issue its documentary weight. Secretariat's Belmont performance had aired on television just days earlier, and the country was still processing what it had witnessed. A national newsmagazine cover in that precise window — before the inevitable retrospectives, before the commemorative publications, before the mythology had fully calcified — captures the story as news rather than legend. That distinction matters to serious collectors. For anyone building an archive of Newsweek magazine issues focused on landmark American sports moments, the June 11, 1973 issue is among the most historically grounded entries in the magazine's sports coverage across its entire run.
Secretariat's cultural reach extended well beyond horse racing. He appeared on the covers of Time, Newsweek, and Sports Illustrated in the same month — an almost unprecedented concentration of mainstream press attention on a single athlete of any species. The Newsweek cover, with its "Superhorse" framing, captured the slightly disbelieving tone of the national press in that moment: the sense that what had just happened needed a word that didn't quite exist yet. For collectors working through 1973 magazines as primary sources, this issue belongs alongside the most significant sports covers of the decade.
About the Publication
Newsweek, founded in 1933, was by the early 1970s one of the two dominant American newsweeklies — alongside Time — with a weekly circulation in the millions and a readership that spanned every sector of educated American life. Its format combined hard news coverage with cultural, sports, and international reporting, and its covers functioned as a reliable index of what the national press corps considered the most significant story of a given week. A Newsweek cover in 1973 was not a niche publication decision; it was a statement about what America was talking about. The magazine's sports covers from this era are relatively rare — the newsweeklies reserved their covers primarily for politics and world events — which makes the June 11, 1973 Secretariat issue a notable exception that underscores just how broadly the Triple Crown story had captured the public imagination.
Key Highlights Inside
- Secretariat Triple Crown cover story: The issue's central feature documents Secretariat's completion of the Triple Crown — the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes, and Belmont Stakes — in the immediate aftermath of the Belmont finish on June 9, 1973, the first Triple Crown in 25 years.
- "Superhorse" cover framing: The cover's headline language reflects the national press's response to Secretariat's Belmont performance in real time, before retrospective accounts had standardized the historical narrative — making this a primary document rather than a commemorative one.
- Contemporary sports journalism context: As a newsweekly rather than a dedicated sports publication, Newsweek's coverage approached Secretariat's achievement from a broader cultural angle, situating horse racing within the wider national conversation of mid-1973 America.
Condition & Rarity
Surviving copies of this issue present a specific and well-understood condition profile for a newsweekly of this age. The presence of a mailing label on the front cover indicates subscription origin rather than newsstand purchase — a meaningful distinction in the collector market, since subscription copies were delivered directly to homes and typically show different wear patterns than newsstand copies. Label presence does affect the visual presentation of the cover art and is the primary condition variable that separates upper-tier from mid-tier examples of this issue. Minor wear throughout is the expected condition for an unrestored copy now more than fifty years old, and it does not diminish the issue's value as a historical document when interior content remains legible and structurally intact. Protective plastic sleeve housing, applied after acquisition, is the appropriate standard for preserving current condition and preventing further atmospheric deterioration. Given the sustained collector interest in Triple Crown documentation from this era, complete copies with readable covers — label or no label — represent the realistic upper range of what the surviving population looks like.
Looking for More Issues Like This?
A June 1973 Newsweek in collectible condition is a genuinely specific find, and Secretariat-related print material from the Triple Crown year is among the most consistently sought-after sports collectibles in the newsmagazine category. If this issue is no longer available, the Newsweek collection at OriginalMagazines.com is the best starting point for tracking down related coverage from this era. The full 1973 magazine collection is also worth exploring — it spans multiple major publications from that year and includes other issues that document the Triple Crown season and the broader sports and cultural landscape of one of the most eventful years of the decade.