STB Wrote:
-------------------------------------------------------
> 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.

Condolences

He had huge pools of expensive, well bred, raw horseflesh and he certainly did grind them up. To my eye, his failure was never knowing when to stop on a horse with an issue. He just never developed the empathy and horse sense that many of the top horsemen have. It could be as simple as "It didn't matter" to him. Theres always more on the bench and new recruits next year. Better perhaps, in his mind, to get all you could out of them presently, use them up and fire with the new recruits when those with talent in the current crop have gone bad.

They are fragile beasts after all and my sense is that fragility never really mattered to him. You get the sense he doesn't really care for the animals. Maybe it has something to do with the best one he ever had essentially vegatizing his son. He showed that S.O.B. though, broke him down too. Actually, he was hard on them even before that incident.

Remember Cat Thief? Marveled at how many seasons he got out of that one. Horse must have been made of Iron.

Use to fault him for not being able to pick a horse at the sales. He burned millions on valueless horses. Silver is right though, now Baffert has the big clients and is burning the Millions too. Moral of that story, "Don't spend millions on untrained horses."

Whatever edge he had was more than numbers though. There was a time when his horses ran faster. That edge is gone. I have my views on that, but will leave it to others to contemplate why his horses were faster then, but generally slower now.

Dang, no red board for the Dubai Cup. Oh well, beggars can't be choosers.






Edited 1 time(s). Last edit at 03/26/2006 06:43AM by Chuckles_the_Clown2.