Ladies’ Man Lukas Is Some Sweet-Talker

If I had D. Wayne Lukas’ touch with females, you can bet you wouldn’t find me hanging around a messy old stable, drinking coffee out of cardboard cups, getting up at the crack of dawn, going to bed with the chickens. And my idea of a good time wouldn’t be checking the ankles or wrapping the bandages of some creaky old plating horse.

I’d be hanging around tango parlors or discos, or showing up in white tie and tails at society balls. I’d probably marry a movie star or the richest woman in Palm Beach. I’d sleep till noon, eat in bed, have a phone in my car, hang around stage doors and never do another day’s work in my life.

Females do for him what they won’t do for any other living man--like win the Kentucky Derby. They’ve made him a millionaire. They’ve made him famous.

If you think Don Juan was a ladies’ man, you should see D. Wayne. Errol Flynn, eat your heart out.

If you think it’s easy to cajole a female into winning the Kentucky Derby, be advised that it’s happened three times in more than a century. A female wins the Kentucky Derby about as often as Zsa Zsa Gabor does the dishes. Female horses have better things to do in the spring of the year.

Lots of guys have luck with the ladies, showing up with flowers or candy, or booking them on cruises, or singing under their balconies.

No one knows what Don Juan’s secret was, but D. Wayne’s is probably similar: He’s fickle.

Maybe each one of those females in D. Wayne’s stable thinks he can’t live without her. Lukas makes sure they feel that way. He kills them with kindness.

The first thoroughbred Lukas ever trained was a filly. Terlingua was by Secretariat and she was almost as good a runner as that great champion would produce.

Lukas’ second headline horse was the ill-starred Landaluce, who died at the height of a brilliant career that would have made her the most famous horse since Lady Godiva’s, if Lukas had had his way.

In 1984, Lukas, setting his sights on the one triumph that had eluded him, the Kentucky Derby, showed up at Churchill Downs with not one but two filly horses. One of them co-favored in the race, finished 19th. The only horse Althea beat almost bled to death on the way around.

You would think Lukas wouldn’t show up in Kentucky again with anything that didn’t, so to speak, sing bass and positively need to shave twice a day. But he showed up this year with another filly who had run only six times in her life. Winning Colors won the Kentucky Derby, wire to wire.

Lots of men would like to know Lukas’ secret. Keeping your women happy with a credit card and a permanent parking spot on Rodeo Drive is one thing. Keeping them in love with you in the stretch drive at Churchill Downs is another.

Lukas feels his real talent is, he’s not a trainer, he’s a coach. It’s not a stable, it’s a team. You do what any coach does, you motivate.

Are the females easier to motivate than the colts?

“You’ve got to get inside their heads,” says Lukas. “You can train anybody with a gun and a whip. You can make anyone do things out of fear.”

They might jump through burning hoops if they’re scared of you. But they won’t win Kentucky Derbies. The Lukas touch runs more to sweet-talk than strong-arm. His methods run more to “You can do it, baby,” than “Don’t quit on me now or I’ll kill you.”

“You can’t make generalities,” he says. “Women horses, like women generally, are not consistent. Althea had a mean streak in her. Winning Colors would do anything for you. Anyone can train a Lady’s Secret. Anybody can coach a Julius Irving. Anyone can tell Babe Ruth, ‘Go up there and hit a home run.’ Anyone can tell Magic Johnson, ‘Go get me the ball.’ It’s getting the potential out of the one who’d prefer to dog it that challenges you.”

Lukas approaches a Breeders’ Cup the way Vince Lombardi approached an NFL schedule. He has a squad here, not a horse. He’s not here for a race, he’s here for a season--12 horses for 16 races.

“I approach a Breeders’ Cup the way a coach would the Final Four,” he says. “I could see right away it was going to make a major difference in your career.”

It might not be the Kentucky Derby, reasons Lukas, but neither is it be the fifth at Caliente, or the feature at Delta Downs. Lukas wants a lineup of all-pros for this bowl game.

The irony of this Breeders’ Cup is that racing’s ladies’ man is being upstaged by a guy who, so to speak, can’t even dance. Lukas is here with a historic filly, Winning Colors, who was the toast of two coasts the last time she appeared on this track, last May.

But another trainer, Shug McGaughey, a macho type who probably never sent anyone flowers in his life and who may treat his fillies the same way he would treat Man o’ War, has shown up with a lady horse who is not only undefeated but who defeated Winning Colors in her next- to-last race.

Personal Ensign may very well get woman of the year, be the Katharine Hepburn of the track, in this year’s racing despite Winning Colors’ becoming only the third female in history to have won a Kentucky Derby.

The prospect daunts ladies’ man Lukas not at all. He still has a night to convince Winning Colors she’s the most gorgeous creature he’s ever seen in his life, that she’s the fairest in the land, that nobody can touch her and why doesn’t she just go out there and become Miss America again as she deserves?

Nobody does that any better than D. Wayne Lukas. Clark Gable could have taken lessons.