Lukas Has a Sharp Eye for Winners

When you and I look at a horse, what do we see? Four hoofs, a tail, mane, fiddle-head, maybe a blaze on the nose. Just a horse.

When Wayne Lukas looks at one, he sees a young Jack Dempsey, Pete Rose, Ty Cobb, Babe Ruth, Jim Thorpe. What he wants to see in a horse is Willie Mays. Willie Pep. A horse has to remind him of Dr. J at the foul line, Sugar Ray with his man on the ropes, Musial stepping into a curve before Lukas gets excited.

Most people tell the quality of a race horse with a stopwatch. Lukas does it with a look.

There’s a romance in racing that the great ones have “a look of eagles.” Lukas scoffs at that. Some great horses have had the hang-dog look of a guy brought in on kidnaping charges. Some quitters have the imperious look of a Caesar.

“Lots of ballplayers look good in the lobby,” Lukas reminds you.

Recognizing talent may be the most important attribute anyone in sports can have. A man who began his career as a high school basketball coach, Lukas believes it’s an instinct that can only be acquired by having your bread and butter depend on the performance of another individual, equine or human.

“Coaches have to know what to look out for,” he said. “It’s not so much a question of spotting the positives as of eliminating the negatives. You refine your eye. You learn to pick up on the most successful traits and where to look for them.

“It’s like those drawings where you were supposed to pick out the cat in all the foliage and landscape. You couldn’t find it for a long time. But once you found it, you couldn’t see anything else in that picture but the cat.”

Whatever Wayne Lukas’ shape-ups include, they have been extraordinarily successful. He’s been in thoroughbred racing full time for only eight years and has won two Preaknesses, two Arkansas Derbies, three of the last five Santa Anita Derbies, and may be the most successful trainer of young horses who ever hit a paddock.

He has won more stakes races this year than any other trainer ever has, 56 to date, and more than $7 million. The other day at Santa Anita, the Oak Tree meeting was only a few hours old when he won his 56th stake this year, the Sunny Slope with Louisiana Slew.

It is fitting that a former sports coach’s greatest successes should come in partnership with a former sports owner.

Gene Klein used to own the San Diego Chargers, which gave him all the background he needed in also-rans.

Klein revels in his new team ownership. “The help doesn’t want to renegotiate if they win a couple of times, they have no objection to random urinalysis and you never have to get them out of jail,” he gloats.

It has long been the view in some quarters that this country would be better off if it were run by an ex-football coach, say the way Vince Lombardi ran the Packers. For one thing, we’d go into foreign relations with a good game plan, the country would be in great shape physically, and we would have triple-accurate scouting reports on the opposition.

All any good coach ever needs is an unlimited budget. “I always felt I could turn this game upside down if I could get the right financing,” Lukas said.

With Klein, Lukas got the financing. Klein who had spent millions on the Chargers’ draft rights, was intrigued by the possibility of getting athletes who wouldn’t fumble on the goal line, throw an interception, shank a punt or miss a field goal. Not only that, he got the rights to their children, too.

He remembers that he and Lukas went to their first auction in Keeneland “to find something I liked” and ended up with 12 horses. “We had a good bench,” Klein said.

They also had a good first string. Klein, who had never come close to a Super Bowl in his years with the Chargers, had a Triple Crown prospect almost immediately. The Klein-Lukas colt, Tank’s Prospect, was seventh in the Kentucky Derby but first in the Preakness, first at Arkansas, then broke down in the Belmont and was syndicated at stud for $16 million. Football was a pool-hall game by comparison.

Like all good coaches, though, Lukas wanted more. He needed a team training site. The first plot of ground Klein picked was hilly. “I don’t want horses with two legs shorter than the other two,” protested Lukas.

The present location, 220 acres near Rancho Santa Fe, is as flat as a dollar bill.

The athletic coach mentality is such that, you win a game, you want a season. You win a season, you want a dynasty.

Lukas understands this. “Winning breeds winning,” he said. “It has its own environment. We’d like to have our own plane, fly our horses ourselves, produce our own feed. We’d like a tradition. Like Notre Dame. Or the Yankees.”

But first comes the selection. “When you get your stable out of the (auction) ring like we do, you have to keep your instincts adjusted,” he said.

If you can’t tell Musial from a .220 hitter, if every hip number in the auction ring looks like Man o’ War to you, you end up in the cellar in this game, too.

Lukas, who has bid as high as $13 million for a colt at auction, doesn’t have that problem. “He gets this glazed look when he sees a horse he doesn’t want,” Klein said. “He says, ‘He isn’t a Saturday afternoon horse.’ ”

A Saturday afternoon horse is one with the instinct for the end zone, the strikeout pitcher, the cleanup hitter, the ace server and KO puncher.

What the coach wants is the ultimate Saturday afternoon horse, one that he looks at and all he sees is roses. The Kentucky Derby is a Saturday afternoon race.