<i> Breeders’ Cup</i> : THE PAPER TIGER : Lukas and the Press Are Having Trouble Getting Out of the Gate Together

A couple of years ago, Wayne Lukas was asked to fill out a questionnaire to be used for a sketch of him in the New York Racing Assn.’s press guide.

Under a category called dislikes, Lukas wrote: “Sportswriters who try to train my horses.”

If Wayne Lukas were asked the same question today, he probably would abridge his answer. It most likely would be this: “Sportswriters.” Period.

The feeling among a growing number of sportswriters is mutual. With Lukas, the more he wins, the less he’s liked. And Lukas does so much winning--more than any trainer in the game--that this amounts to a slew of disliking.

Saturday, Lukas and his son, Jeff, who is the stable’s aide-de-camp, will saddle 14 horses, five more than any other trainer, in the Breeders’ Cup at Hollywood Park. This will give Lukas 36 starters in the 28 races that will have been run during the four years of the Breeders’ Cup.

Charlie Whittingham, who has nine horses running Saturday, will be second with 16 starters.

Lukas may go over the $15-million mark in 1987 purses Saturday, which would just add to the record he set earlier this fall. His coast-to-coast operation has won more than 80 stakes races, another record.

But he will be 100-1 to win the year’s Eclipse Award as outstanding trainer. Too many sportswriters have votes to let that happen.

Lukas has won the Eclipse the last two years but he has deserved it for the last four. He has led the country in purses each of those years, starting with $4.2 million in 1983 and escalating to $12.3 million last year. Six of his horses have been voted champions, but the 52-year-old trainer didn’t win the trainer award in 1983 or 1984, the honors going to Woody Stephens and Jack Van Berg.

This year, his relationship with turf reporters has hit such a low that the election is bound to be affected by these personality conflicts. One of the horses Lukas is running in the Breeders’ Cup is named Contempt. That word aptly describes Lukas’ attitude toward journalists, and theirs toward him.

How did this happen?

When Lukas left a successful quarter horse business to try thoroughbreds in 1978, he became an immediate media darling. Frequently saddled with Gary Cooperish trainers who talked in one-word sentences, the turf press, almost to a man, liked the cut of Lukas’ jib. And he was the guy with the perfect-32 smile for everybody, the teeth all seeming to be in the top row.

A former basketball coach, Lukas was smart enough to know that many reporters covering the Kentucky Derby didn’t see another race all year, so he gave them analogies using sports that they knew better.

He called the rich yearling sales in Kentucky racing’s National Football League draft. The Breeders’ Cup was racing’s Super Bowl. When a lesser horse in his barn would win a race, he would say that it pays to have a strong bench.

The baseball reporter who bought a pair of binoculars and went to Churchill Downs loved it. People covering Lukas couldn’t take notes fast enough to catch all the gems. He had something fresh for everybody.

So what happened? Why does Lukas now harangue sportswriters in the winner’s circle after races? Why does he chase them away from his barn with barrages of billingsgate? And why did he recently say: “There may come the day when we turn down all requests for interviews.”?

A few weeks ago, when the theme for this story was suggested, Lukas said: “Sure, I’ll talk about it some day.” But then, he added the caveat of a distrustful man: “If you quote me correctly.”

About 10 days later, when the same reporter stopped by his barn office at Santa Anita, Lukas said: “I’ve changed my mind. I can’t win with the media. There’s nothing to be gained by talking about it.”

When it was suggested that the story might be written, anyway, Lukas said: “I can’t tell you how to do your job. But there won’t be anything gained by it.”

Lukas’ loathing of the press didn’t happen overnight. At the Derby--the race he most wants to win and the race that’s thwarted 12 of his 3-year-olds in the last seven years--he tired of the prerace claptrap long ago and his habit in recent years has been to arrive at Churchill Downs as late in the week as possible.

This year, when he did arrive, Lukas put on a sideshow in Louisville, at what he thought was the media’s expense. He wasn’t laughing with them, he was laughing at them.

In tow one morning at Lukas’ barn was Bob Knight, the Indiana basketball coach, Lukas’ pal and a fellow media-hater.

Lukas-Knight day at Churchill Downs produced this quote for the ages: “Here (pointing toward the barn) are the horses. Here (pointing toward the press) are the horses’ asses.”

It doesn’t make any difference whether Lukas or Knight said it. Whoever did was probably given the line by the other.

Lukas’ coolness toward turf reporters has been building all year, and his crusade to win the Derby with Capote is more responsible than anything else.

Capote was the champion 2-year-old colt in 1986 but he was seriously ill during the winter, and Lukas got a late start with him this year. Playing catch-up, Capote had only two races--run in a two-week stretch at Aqueduct in April--before the Derby.

“He’ll run last, and we’ll never hear from him again,” Woody Stephens said.

Which is just about what happened. Capote was next to last--in front of only Demons Begone, who was pulled up after he started bleeding from the nose--and he was recently retired, not having won a race all year.

Before the Derby, however, Lukas’ upper lip was starched. After a brilliant workout shortly before Capote was shipped from Hollywood Park to New York, Lukas said: “That’ll show those . . . in the press box.”

A few days before Capote was going to run in the 1 1/8-mile Wood Memorial at Aqueduct, Lukas was asked if only one start this year was enough preparation for the race.

“Don’t you guys in the press box push back your typewriters long enough to pay attention to anything?” Lukas said. “This horse has had a series of carefully planned, hard works that have gotten him just as ready as a bunch of races could.”

Capote was a soundly beaten fourth in the Wood.

One Lukas-watcher speculates that the pressures of juggling the most expensive collection of horses in the country have reduced him to a frazzle.

The trainer is unquestionably a workaholic, a man who gets up about 4 in the morning, and when he’s running the division in New York--as he was during Capote’s spring campaign--the pressures are even greater. He has to wait for the assistant trainers of his outfits in the later time zones to wake up before he calls them. That only extends the day.

Calling Lukas at his barn is usually an invitation to a busy signal. It was once suggested that he needs a full-time public relations man, who at least could field routine questions from the press.

“It’d never work,” Lukas said.

Why?

“Because they’d still want to talk to me. Even with Jeff when he’s in New York, they still want to talk to me.”

Father and son were at Saratoga in August, when a critical column written by Andrew Beyer appeared in the Washington Post. Because of it, several reporters from Upstate New York newspapers were denied interviews.

Jeff Lukas reportedly kept a list of the New York papers that also had run Beyer’s column, and reporters from those papers were told to move on.

Twice this summer in the winner’s circle at Del Mar, Lukas and his principal owner, Gene Klein, directed tirades at Phil Norman of the San Diego Tribune.

Norman had written: “Lukas’ horses may break down or disappear from view before they reach a ripe age, but the man is the epitome of glitter and always has enough money to buy a new pair of pants. Still, the SPCA (Society for the Prevention of Cruelty to Animals) has a right to frown on the system.”

Even when Lukas gets an award, it sometimes becomes a negative.

“The New York turf writers will honor Wayne and Jeff Lukas this week,” Bill Finley of the New York Post wrote this year from Saratoga. “This is an ironic occasion, considering their poor treatment of, and apparent fear of, the media. . . . Wayne Lukas should be able to be content with his own success and not care so much what others write about him, of which 90% is positive. The only thing more remarkable than his incredibly successful record is his incredibly thin skin.”

This week at Hollywood Park, Lukas has gone from Mr. Hyde back to Dr. Jekyll. The fangs are gone, the charm of yesteryear has returned and he has been regaling the press with some delicious new lines. Perhaps the thought of shutting out everybody is on the back burner.

One thing about Lukas, he is capable of burying the hatchet.

Dave Koerner of the Louisville Courier-Journal incurred Lukas’ ire at the Derby this year by referring to Capote as the “blunder horse.” The Lukases double-teamed Koerner at the barn the morning the story appeared, saying that if the reporter ever returned, they would put one of his papers in a particular part of his anatomy.

Koerner has a good relationship with Randy Bradshaw, however. Bradshaw is Lukas’ top assistant in the Midwest, and after he vouched for Koerner, Lukas forgave the reporter the Capote article when they met at a recent horse auction in Kentucky.

“They keep knocking me but one thing they can’t say about me is that I don’t show up,” Lukas said. “I’m there all the time, and I work hard at making this a success. But you don’t see them writing about that.

“Some of the guys knocking me are the same guys that I saved at the Kentucky Derby. For the first few years, I practically wrote their stories. They wouldn’t have had anything to send back if it hadn’t been for me.”

Lukas says that he’s frequently maligned because reporters haven’t checked their facts. He said that an especially harsh story by Kelso Sturgeon in Racing Action, a weekly publication, was poorly researched. Sturgeon, citing injuries as the cause, ran a long list of prominent Lukas horses that have had short-lived careers.

After last month’s Oak Leaf Stakes, there was criticism of Lukas when he took Sandy Hawley off Dream Team, the winner of the race, and replaced him with Chris McCarron. McCarron had ridden Dream Team to her maiden victory at Del Mar but was out of town for another race the day of the Anoakia Stakes, which the 2-year-old filly had won with Hawley two weeks before. Many trainers leave a jockey on a horse after winning a race.

On the same day as the Oak Leaf, Hawley could have ridden a stake in New York if he had known he had lost the mount on Dream Team.

“What they wrote on that one was ridiculous,” Lukas said. “Hawley would have been my ninth choice to ride that filly, but he’s trying to beat cancer, and with Chris gone, we decided to give him a shot (in the Anoakia), figuring it might help his business. Hell, Chris has had the (long-term) call on Dream Team ever since Del Mar.”

McCarron will be riding Dream Team Saturday in the $1-million Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies, and although Lukas is saddling four other good horses in the race, Hawley has to settle for the mount on Pearlie Gold, a 20-1 longshot.

One guess on which horse many of those in the press box will be pulling for.

WAYNE LUKAS’ CAREER RECORD WITH THOROUGHBREDS

Year Starters Races Purses Won 1978 194 37 $942,786 1979 440 63 $1,360,772 1980 466 64 $2,010,841 1981 526 71 $2,658,981 1982 561 89 $3,522,725 1983 595 78 $4,267,261 1984 801 131 $5,835,921 1985 1,140 218 $11,155,188 1986 1,510 259 $12,344,595 1987* 1,547 315 $14,316,117 Totals 7,820 1,325 $58,415,187

*Through Nov. 15.

WAYNE LUKAS’ BREEDERS’ CUP RECORD

Year Race Horse Finish Earnings 1984 Juvenile Tank’s Prospect Second $225,000 1984 Juvenile Fillies Fiesta Lady Seventh None 1984 Juvenile Fillies Tiltilating Eighth None 1984 Distaff Life’s Magic Second $225,000 1984 Distaff Lucky Lucky Lucky Sixth $10,000 1985 Juvenile Ketoh Ninth None 1985 Juvenile Louisiana Slew Eleventh None 1985 Juvenile Fillies Twilight Ridge First $450,000 1985 Juvenile Fillies Family Style Second $225,000 1985 Juvenile Fillies Arewehavingfunyet Eighth None 1985 Sprint Mt. Livermore Third $108,000 1985 Sprint Pancho Villa Fifth $50,000 1985 Distaff Life’s Magic First $450,000 1985 Distaff Lady’s Secret Second $225,000 1985 Distaff Alabama Nana Fourth $70,000 1986 Juvenile Capote First $450,000 1986 Juvenile Pledge Card Tenth None 1986 Juvenile Fillies Sacahuista Fourth $70,000 1986 Juvenile Fillies Anything for Love Tenth None 1986 Sprint Pine Tree Lane Second $225,000 1986 Distaff Lady’s Secret First $450,000 1986 Distaff Twilight Ridge Sixth $10,000

TOTALS: 22 starts, 4 wins, 5 seconds, 1 third, $3,243,000 in purses.

WAYNE LUKAS’ 1987 BREEDERS’ CUP STARTERS

Race Horse Jockey Odds Sprint On the Line Randy Romero 12-1 Sprint Pine Tree Lane Chris McCarron 10-1 Sprint High Brite Jose Santos 20-1 Juvenile Fillies Lost Kitty Laffit Pincay 2-1* Juvenile Fillies Blue Jean Baby Randy Romero 2-1* Juvenile Fillies Dream Team Chris McCarron 2-1* Juvenile Fillies Over All Jose Santos 2-1* Juvenile Fillies Classic Crown Angel Cordero 3-1 Distaff Clabber Girl Laffit Pincay 5-1 Distaff North Sider Chris McCarron 6-1 Distaff Sacahuista Randy Romero 2-1 Juvenile Contempt Angel Cordero 7-2* Juvenile Success Express Jose Santos 7-2* Juvenile Tejano Laffit Pincay 3-1

* Coupled in the betting.