Secretariat ran a few more races after the Belmont, winning all but one. His value as a stud was too great for his owners to risk having him injured on the track, so he was retired to Claiborne Farm, in Lexington. He stood there for many years, siring countless progeny, but in 1989 he developed laminitis, a cruelly painful condition that affects the hooves, and he had to be euthanized. William Nack was in Lexington when it happened and wrote a piece about the experience for Sports Illustrated. He interviewed Dr. Thomas Swerczek, the vet who performed the autopsy on Secretariat. This is what Swerczek told him: