Author Biography ... Marianna Haun

A member of the National Turf Writers Association, Marianna Haun has covered the racing industry since 1992,  first as a staff writer for the Thoroughbred Times for two years, and now as a free-lance writer for the Associated Press for the past two years, while working on The X- Factor project and book.

Haun has a long association with Secretariat. Like many people, she cried as she watched him win the Belmont on television in 1973. She later photographed him in 1987 and was on the farm the day he died in 1989. Her first story, "Great Heart," which appeared in the Thoroughbred Times in April, 1993, led to the quest to understand the meaning of Secretariat's enormous heat. Nearly a year later, after months of intense pedigree research, she discovered a genetic link from Secretariat's mighty heart to Eclipse's great heart through the mare Pocahontas on the X chromosome trail. This link was called the X Factor.

This was the discovery that led to the ongoing research to prove the sex-linkage of the characteristic and to find the genetic marker.

Marianna Haun's Web site with photos of her X-factor horses.

For more information on the book, "The X Factor" ... click here.

Click here to read "Heart of the Matter" Part 1

Click here to read "Heart of the Matter" Part 2

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