A housewife with little knowledge of horse-racing fosters one of the greatest race horses of all time as the story of the 1973 Triple Crown winner comes to the screen in this inspirational underdog drama based on the novel Secretariat: The Making of a Champion by William Nack and starring Diane Lane and John Malkovich. Penny Chenery (Lane) is a devoted mother and housewife whose ailing father is the proprietor of Meadow Stables in Virginia. When her father becomes too ill to tend to his horses, Penny agrees to take over the stables despite her inexperience. Desperate, she turns to veteran horse trainer Lucien Laurin (Malkovich) to help show her the ropes. Up to this point, horse racing has been a decidedly male-dominated sport. But with Lucien's help, Penny prepares to prove that gender has no bearing on one's ability to breed a fast race horse. As Secretariat blasts out of the gates to leave his competition in the dust, the whole world watches in amazement, and a legend is born.