‘People are coming.’ Secretariat’s Paris home honoring him with park, mural and sculpture.

By unofficial count, there are six bronze statues memorializing the greatest racehorse who ever lived on display across this great land of ours except for the one location that absolutely, positively deserves to have its own Secretariat statue.

That would be Paris, Kentucky.

And that omission will be officially rectified come November.

That’s because the Central Kentucky town where Secretariat spent his post-racing career — from 1973 until his death in 1989 — at internationally known Claiborne Farm, is deep into into its master plan to construct Secretariat Park, which will feature a larger-than-life mural and a life-size bronze sculpture of the great Thoroughbred right there at 525 Main Street.

The mural is already completed. Painted by equine artist Jaime Corum, the impressive likeness of Secretariat’s 1973 Kentucky Derby triumph spans three stories on the side of the old Baldwin Hotel building near the corner of Main and Sixth streets in downtown Paris, where the park will be located.

Later this year, the bronze statue will be on its way to Paris. It is being created by sculptor Jocelyn Russell of Friday Harbor, Wash., who also sculpted the Secretariat statue located at the traffic circle at Alexandria Drive and Old Frankfort Pike in Lexington. That statue portrays Secretariat in full stride as he won the Kentucky Derby. The Paris statue will portray Secretariat at Claiborne Farm.

The idea came when photographer Bobby Shiflet, owner of the Frames on Main Gallery in Paris, spoke with Russell at the unveiling of the Lexington statue. A few months later, Russell called Shiflet about a photo from the collection of the late equine photographer Tony Leonard. Shiflet is a part owner of the collection. Russell asked if she could use a Leonard photograph of Secretariat in his paddock at Claiborne for a sculpture.

“I said, ‘I’m sure we could work something out, Jocelyn, but there’s probably at least one stipulation,’” Shiflet said. “She said, ‘What’s that?’ I said, ‘It’s home would have to be in Paris.’”

That was February of 2020, just as the COVID pandemic was starting. The two continued talking about the project through 2021 until June of 2022 when the non-profit Secretariat Park Foundation held its first meeting and decided it would proceed with the park project, with a budget of $400,000.

“We had probably close to $100,000 (promised) in that first meeting,” said Shiflet, who is president of the foundation. “This is all done with private money. There’s no public money at all.”

After plans for the park were announced, donations have arrived from all over. Blue Grass Federal in Paris announced it will donate $25,000 to the project and match other donors up to an additional $25,000. Those who contribute $100 or more will be recognized at the park. There are also different levels of giving.

“We’ve got a P.O. Box (8) and we have checks come in almost every day,” Shiflet said. “There’s a lady in Georgia who sent us, I think originally, a money order for $9. She sent a note that she was going to give I think it was $200 or maybe $100. We get them from everywhere.”

The statue’s installation date is scheduled for Nov. 11, which will be the 50th anniversary of when Secretariat arrived at Claiborne Farm. A parade will be held. Presentations will be made.

There are numerous other Secretariat exhibits, including one that recently opened at the Kentucky Derby Museum at Churchill Downs to celebrate the 50th anniversary of Secretariat winning the Triple Crown.

As for Paris, the expectation is that the park will draw Secretariat fans to the town to see the statue, which will join the two at the Kentucky Horse Park, one at Belmont Park in New York, one at the National Racing Hall of Fame at Saratoga, one slated for Ashland, Virginia, as well as the one in Lexington.

“We first started (seeing) about five years ago that Claiborne Farm was getting 10,000 tourists annually,” said Lauren Biddle, executive director of the Paris-Bourbon County Chamber of Commerce. “We were asking, ‘How can we capture these tourists in the downtown district to get that economic impact?’ We’re so excited because people truly wanted to see this park happen.”

“As a business owner, the park has already started yielding returns,” said Margaret Layton of Loch Lea Antiques in Paris. “Jaime Corum did a fantabulous job on the mural. It is truly a big piece of art. The unveiling of that last November was a big day. People came. And people are coming. They see it on social media and even though we don’t have the bronze yet or the landscape, people are so excited.”

“Secretariat is the Elvis of the horse world, he really is,” Shiflet said. “I tell people me and my wife were in Nevada and Arizona and Utah and people in conversation ask what I do and I’ll say, ‘I’m from a little town in Central Kentucky, outside of Lexington, Paris, Kentucky. It’s kind of the heart of the Thoroughbred industry. Do you know anything about Thoroughbreds?’

“And they’ll say, ‘No, not really.’ And I’ll say, ‘Have you ever heard of Secretariat?’ And they’ll say, ‘Oh, yeah.’”

For a Secretariat Park, what better place than Paris.

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