THE KENTUCKY DERBY : Lukas Tries to Scare Up Derby Winner : He Has 3 Horses and Bob Knight to Help Snap His Kentucky Losing Streak

Things are getting a little tense around Barn 39 at Churchill Downs.

So tense, in fact, that trainer Wayne Lukas, who will send a three-horse entry to the post in Saturday’s Kentucky Derby, has brought in reinforcements.

Relations between Lukas and reporters--never warm to begin with--have sunk even lower in recent weeks.

Enter Bob Knight, sometime basketball coach and, for the rest of this week at least, Lukas’ media-relations adviser.

“He doesn’t know anything about horses, you’ve got to understand that,” Lukas said. “But he’s very good at recognizing horses’ asses.”

That was but one salvo on a day when Lukas, with help from Knight, fired back at the critics who have second-guessed and criticized the trainer’s every move in preparing Capote, last year’s 2-year-old champion and Eclipse Award winner, for Saturday’s 113th Derby.

Long before Knight arrived at Barn 39, where Lukas’ three Derby hopefuls, Capote, War and On the Line, are stabled, the morning had gotten off to a bad start.

It began as soon as Lukas, who claims not to read newspapers, picked up Thursday morning’s Louisville Courier-Journal. There, bannered across the top of the sports section’s front page was a story detailing his 0-for-9 record in Derby starts.

The author, Dave Koerner, later was brave--or foolhardy--enough to show up at Lukas’ barn, at which point Lukas let fly with a stream of obscenities, ordering Koerner away from the barn and threatening to put Koerner’s article to novel use.

There was an earlier incident in which Lukas’ son and assistant trainer, Jeff, got into a fistfight with a Churchill Downs trainer, the cause being nothing more earth-shaking than an improperly parked car outside the Lukas barn.

Even Lukas had to try to downplay that one.

“It’s that time of the year,” he said. “It was a misunderstanding. I think both parties probably regret it. You always do in those situations. (Jeff) was looking out for the interests of the barn and I think tensions are a little edgy. . . . Don King was by, he says the rematches are always better.

“The car was in the wash area and Jeff asked (the other trainer) to move it and they had a misunderstanding. It happens. I don’t think either one of them is very proud of it.”

All of this--in a Derby week that has generally been without controversy--was enough to bring a crowd of reporters down to the barn, and Lukas, after calming down, tried to patch up relations while at the same time getting in a few barbs at his critics.

Knight wasn’t much help, as the following exchange at the end of the impromptu press conference showed:

Lukas: I told them you don’t know much about racing and I don’t know much about basketball.

Knight: Then you’ve spent about an hour talking to a hell of a lot of people who don’t know much about either racing or basketball.

It was that kind of morning. Even Knight’s attempt to establish his racing credentials--he became friends with Lukas through a mutual friend, basketball consultant Pete Newell--managed to strike a sour note, at least with the female sportswriters.

“My first experience with a race track was years ago when Pete (Newell) took me to Hollywood Park,” Knight said. “Pete’s telling me about how all the coaches have always been great at the race track, so we get up early in the morning and he takes out the Racing Form and explains everything to me.

“So the second race, I dunno what the hell horse we picked, No. 6, let’s say. So Pete says, ‘Come on, we’ve got to go to the window and I’ll show you all you’ve got to do.’

“So we’re standing there--and I love to go to Hollywood Park and just watch the people, it’s just amazing--and there’s a girl standing in front of Pete and she’s got on a halter (top). Big boobs, and she’s got on a halter.

“So we get to the window and I know we’re betting the 6 horse and then Pete puts all we have on the 2 horse--because this girl with the halter and the big boobs had bet the 2 horse.

“We go back to the table and I said, ‘I’ve seen all the evidence I need of the science of the race track.’ ”

To Lukas, though, racing is a science of sorts. He sees it less as a sport and more as a business. Dollars and cents and “the bottom line” creep into his conversations frequently.

It was in this vein that he responded to questions about his never having finished better than third with the nine horses he has entered in the last six Derbies.

“It doesn’t bug me (not to have won the race),” he said. “We train a lot of horses. If on the first Saturday in May one of those horses isn’t successful, all we can do is keep trying every year to come back.

“But my contention is that we will stand on our record. We’re already coming off a world-record year last year and we’re running about 48% ahead of that. I think last year on Derby day we had something like $2.8 million (in purses won) and we’re over $5 million right this minute. We had 13 or 14 stakes (winners at this time) last year and we’re up to 29 stakes.

“So it’s hard for me to look back and say, ‘Gee, we’re not doing things, we didn’t win the Derby,’ when in fact I feel like our program has progressed every single year since 1983, right straight up the ladder. So we’re proud of our achievements.”

Like any trainer, though, Lukas would desperately like to win a Derby. “I’m not obsessed with it (but) I think that it’s going to happen,” he said. “I don’t know if it’s going to happen in 1987 or 1990 or 1997 or whatever. But I think that with the amount of good horseflesh that comes under our shed row, you could pick against us every year, but watch out because it’s going to happen.”

His chances this year appear no better than average. Although he has three horses in the 17-horse field, only one, Capote, a son of Seattle Slew, would appear to have a legitimate chance to win.

Lukas admits his confidence in the group in not as high as he’d like.

“I don’t think I’m as confident this year as I was with Badger Land last year,” he said. “We were ready and that horse, I felt, was the best horse on that particular day and I felt very good about him.”

But Badger Land finished fifth, and there are those at Churchill Downs who believe Capote will be lucky to do that well. They point out that despite earnings of $709,130--much of that the result of winning the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile at Santa Anita last Nov. 1--Capote has done nothing as a 3-year-old.

In his only two starts, both on muddy tracks in the Gotham and the Wood at Aqueduct in New York, Capote was a well beaten fourth. Lukas defends the way he has prepared the colt, however.

“It’s very, very difficult sometimes to evaluate a horse coming off of mud, let alone the kind of tracks that I caught,” he said. “If I’d had two dry races, I think I’d have a better idea of where I am. But I know he’s a class horse and he ran well enough, I think, to get something out of those races.

“If I were to do it again, in this particular horse’s case, I would do it exactly the same way. Now next year, if I got a big, robust, fat, round horse, I may run him six times to get here. I’m not saying I would stay with this program.

“But for Capote, he’s a slight, rangy, immature horse. He had a sensational fall (season). I thought two races, then the Derby and then try to win the Triple Crown was the best program for him.

“I thought my plan was good. The weather messed me up terribly. I mean, I was sick all day. I knew that we were up against it when I led him (Capote) over there at the Wood. Anybody who was there with me can tell you I wasn’t grinning, smiling and saying, ‘Boy, this will be fun.’ I was sick.

“In fact, if you want to know the truth, when he went to the gate I said a little prayer. I said, ‘Look, to hell with the race, just get him back. You don’t even need to win.’ I was beyond even trying to win at that point. Of course, (jockey Angel) Cordero didn’t know that. All I wanted was a healthy, strong horse without his heels burned off or a sesamoid crack or anything else.”

Capote came out of the race in good shape and Lukas said the colt is ready for Saturday’s race.

“I feel good about it or I wouldn’t be in it,” he said. “We go into every race thinking we’re going to win them all. That goes for the second race on the program, the sixth or the Kentucky Derby.

“We’re optimistic people. You won’t knock our optimism by beating us, either. Every time you see one of those white bridles (a Lukas trademark), you better be ready to run because we will keep coming and coming and coming and coming and we’ll wear you down.”

As for War and On the Line, Lukas said they have peaked at just the right time. “The other two horses are horses of the moment,” he said. “War got good at the right time and, Lord knows, On the Line got good at the right time. We weren’t even considering him before (he won) the Derby Trial.”

Of the criticism that has been directed at him, Lukas said:

“In coaching and racing, you can’t sit back and explain everything that you’re trying to do to every one of you gentlemen. . . . All you can do is believe in yourself, believe in the horse that you’re training, work your plan, plan your work and never doubt you’ll succeed. It’s that simple.

“And if you’re right, everybody will write that it was a bad field, that the pace was slow and that you got lucky. But if you’re wrong, Lord help you, you’ve got your head on the chopping block. But that’s the nature of it. We get paid very well. We do. Very well. A lot better than you do.”

And:

--”You know how difficult it would be to call all you guys at 5 in the morning and get you up and take a poll of what you wanted me to do with Capote? I mean, most of you don’t know it’s even daylight.”

--”We won’t cut our wrists or hang our head or anything else (if no Lukas horse wins). “We’ll say, ‘Look, it’s a long year. The Derby comes and goes, and there is life after the Kentucky Derby. Believe it or not.’ ”

--”We’ve got good horses. We’re supposed to be here. Just like Kentucky’s supposed to be in the NCAA, and Indiana and South Carolina and North Carolina. Those teams are supposed to be there. We’re supposed to be here. I’m getting paid to put them here. As long as we can buy the yearlings we want and have got a solid program backing us, we’re going to be here.

“What do you think the odds are of us never winning?”