Re: A Maiden in the Derby (545 Views)
Posted by:
STB (IP Logged)
Date: March 26, 2006 01:16AM
Do you deserve to be respected when you run Deeds Not Words in the Derby, just to say you were there?
He dominated with personality, all right. The force of his personality pretty much sealed his deal. Maybe I don't know my ass from a hole in the ground, especially here three sheets to the wind in the middle of the night, trying (unsuccessfully, of course) to drink away a death in the family, but my mind's eye sees D Wayne Lukas as just another in the long line of Great American Salesmen.
He won a lot of races, but how many hundreds of millions of dollars of horseflesh did he have to run through the meat grinder to get those wins? Sacrifical lambs such as Union City start to run through the mind, like some sort of perverse racing version of the last scene from my favorite seventh-grade book, "Good Bye, Mr. Chips."
How many other trainers could have done as much, if not more, if they'd had the same talent pool to work with?
Of course, that's a moot point. They didn't have the same talent pool to work with. Lukas got that talent, and he got the glory, because he was and perhaps, still is, a master salesman. Since the early 1980's he's been selling an idea to people with more money than they know what to do with, and he's found enough takers to keep himself in the clover and in the limelight.
But me, I'm not buying the idea that he's the equine version of Palmer or Ali.