NEW KENT -- Penny Chenery sat behind a table in the lobby at Colonial Downs yesterday, selling nostalgia and doing quite nicely at it. Which is to say Secretariat has brand identification still. Three and a half decades after the thunderclap and 19 years after his death, he tugs at emotions and purse strings. And looms over a wobbly industry that would kill to hitch its wagon to someone like him.

A meager field of seven horses took flight in this year's Virginia Derby, and -- no disrespect to winner Gio Ponti -- none of'em could hold a candle wick to Secretariat, the Virginia-born titan who transfixed the commonwealth and country in 1973 and burns brightly today.

That's why Chenery -- Penny Tweedy in '73, before her marriage dissolved -- was at the track, signing photographs, reproductions, T-shirts and other items while aides swiped credit cards and stuffed a cash box with funds earmarked for the charitable foundation that bears Secretariat's name.

Secretariat's name also adorns the turf course on which the Derby was run yesterday. Colonial Downs additionally stages the Chenery Stakes during its 45-day program as well as races named for Secretariat's mother and first rider. The joint (it's for sale) can't get enough of Big Red, in other words. Neither, apparently, can a public still smitten with his aura.

"I think part of it is that when he went to stud, he was so available," Chenery said. "He loved to have people come see him. Sometimes you go see a horse, he's just looking at you. Secretariat would engage you. I think that added to the affection people had for him. And, of course, I've been talking about him for 35 years."

About Chenery: She's 86 now and still sharp as a horseshoe nail. Preparing to autograph a print, she looked up and asked the buyer (sweetly), "Have you paid for this?" Nor is she into handing out free bromides. She'll tell you she loves racing. She'll tell you she loves horses. But she'll tell you the sport she loves is hurting.

"I think the industry is in serious trouble," she said. "You have the Eight Belles breakdown [in May's Kentucky Derby] and people's concerns about whipping, and they breed horses today more to sell them than to race them, so it's a frailer animal. Racing is going through perilous times."

It's been 30 years since we've anointed a Triple Crown winner. It'd been 25 when Secretariat went to the post for the Belmont Stakes of 1973. Vietnam and Watergate formed grim backdrops (sound familiar?), and a splintered country saw in one very large chestnut colt wish fulfillment as much as horse flesh.

And the big guy delivered. Matter of fact, he smoked that Belmont field by -- get this -- 31 lengths, a ridiculous margin that looks just as absurd in the photos of the finish you could've bought at Chenery's table. Time magazine slapped Secretariat on its cover. Chenery was proclaimed the "First Lady of American Racing." The country went nuts. Our state puffed out its chest.

"He's still the measuring stick -- that's what he is to me," said Kent Desormeaux, the jockey who won this year's Kentucky Derby and Preakness on Big Brown and was second in the Virginia Derby aboard Court Vision. "Any time a 3-year-old starts to perform, you hope he's the next Secretariat. Those are the words out of any horseman's mouth."

The landscape is much changed from that thunderous time. Meadow Stable, the north-of-Richmond farm where Secretariat was born, has been parceled out to a paper company, private land-owners and the organization that plans to relocate the State Fair to the property. Chenery lives in Colorado, near her four children. Secretariat is buried at Claiborne Farm outside Lexington, Ky.

And he remains larger than life. Disney, no back-lot outfit, has a Secretariat movie in the works, and if that's not a bow to staying power, I don't know what is. Chenery said she can't wait to find out who'll play her. No horse that ran yesterday at Colonial Downs -- no horse alive -- can handle the Big Red role.