Career
Born in Holly Hill, South Carolina, Eddie Sweat was one of nine children of a sharecropper. Holly Hill was where future United States. Racing Hall of Fame trainer Lucien Laurin maintained a Thoroughbred horse farm and he offered Sweat a job after he saw the wide-eyed teen frequently peeking at the horses through a fence to the property and sometimes skipping school just to watch the horses. In 1957, at age eighteen, Sweat accepted the offer of full-time work as groom for the Laurin stable of racehorses with a small fixed salary plus 1% of the horse"s earnings.
One of the first highly successful horses placed in Sweat"s care was the 1958 American Champion Two-Year-Old Filly Quill.
In a Sports Illustrated feature article, Nack said he took notes compulsively, endlessly, feeling for the texture of the life around the horse. Secretariat was voted the 1972 American Horse of the Year, an extraordinary feat for a two-year-old, and leading up to and through the horse"s winning of the 1973 Triple Crown, all of the key people involved with Secretariat received massive national and international attention.
Interviewed and photographed countless times, Sweat appeared on television and was on the covers of both Ebony and Jet magazines. Eddie was also the 1st groom to ever have groomed Kentucky Derby winners two years in a row, Riva Ridge in 1972 and Secretariat in 1973.
Sweat made his home in Saint Albans, Queens, New York, a short drive from the Belmont Park racetrack.
After 41 years in the business, he died of leukemia in 1998. Widely recognized for his talent, dedication, and important contributions to Secretariat"s racing career, Sweat was the subject of a 2006 book by Lawrence Scanlan, titled The Horse God Built: Secretariat, His Groom, Their
In the 2010 film Secretariat, Eddie Sweat was portrayed by actor Nelsan Ellis.
