Book Takes Look at Lukas’ Buying Power

Eugene Klein, who has redefined racehorse ownership since the day he purchased his first thoroughbred, will liquidate his equine interests shortly after the Breeders’ Cup in November, and poof, the largest client of the nation’s dominant stable will vanish from the sport.

Lady’s Secret raced under his silks. Winning Colors gave him a Kentucky Derby, Tank’s Prospect a Preakness. Open Mind’s Triple Tiara is still fresh, and she will be a prohibitive favorite in the Alabama Stakes here Saturday.

He owns a virtual stable of bronze horses standing atop Eclipse Awards, but his racing epitaph may read simply: It wasn’t cheap.

As he watches his horses pass before the auctioneer, Klein will be hoping, likely in vain, to break even for all his record-breaking success, although his horses have earned tens of millions and many have been sold for millions more.

But those days are over for Klein. His absence from the Keeneland yearling sales last month was a conspicuous one, as was his absence from the Fasig-Tipton yearling sales, which opened here Tuesday night and will continue through Thursday.

The man next to whom Klein sat while spending millions on yearlings was an aggressive bidder at Keeneland, and Wayne Lukas, still spending millions for yearlings despite the loss of Klein as a client, will be a force here as well.

Lukas confronts this period of transition within his ubiquitous operation while suffering through the embarrassment so lavishly heaped upon him by the 3-year-old Houston, a $2.9 million yearling who has come to be called “The Yellow Ruse of Texas.”

Lukas arrived at the summer sales in Kentucky last month under the normal scrutiny inflicted upon any buyer with so high a profile and such deep pockets.

The pressure was intensified by the recent publication of a daunting compilation of his performance as a judge of yearling horseflesh -- a field in which his advertised expertise borders upon mysticism.

Joe Bagan’s book, “Lukas at Auction,” despite a disappointingly naive approach, presents much evidence to indicate that the price of the trainer’s perceived success has been borne heavily upon the ledgers of his clients. The best reading in “Lukas at Auction” -- and there is much to be learned from Bagan’s research -- happens between the lines, and it suggests strongly that the only one really making any money in the long term is Lukas.

Bagan’s primary interest is pedigree analysis, and for all his research into more than 300 horses, primarily yearlings, purchased at auction and developed by Lukas between 1979 and 1988, he fails to ask the right questions or question what appears to be suspicious.

Bagan will be hard-pressed, for instance, to find someone else who believes that Capote really was syndicated for $12.8 million after his ludicrous 3-year-old season.

Klein admittedly holds 31 of 40 shares in Tank’s Prospect, another formidable asset on his ledgers, but the figures provided to Bagan by the Lukas organization claim that horse to be worth $16 million. Saratoga Six, who broke down as a 2-year-old, is also worth $16 million, the stable’s accountants claim. Bagan, at least in print, accepts these figures.

There is great financial carnage documented too matter-of-factly by Bagan and there is one pearl of meaningful discovery -- a pedigree factor common to a significant majority of the horses with which Lukas has enjoyed the most success, and this is the pearl beneath the mountain of statistics.

Almost unwittingly, Bagan has debunked Lukas’ claim to having developed some esoteric measure, based upon conformation, for judging horses.

Bagan said the idea of checking nicking patterns of Lukas’ auction purchases occurred midway through the research, and he said he regarded the findings as the overall work’s most important contribution to analyzing Lukas’ racing success.

Bagan has worked with California Bloodstock consultant Jack Werk, whose company provides its clients with data on nicking patterns. Werk has developed software that rates nicks on a scale ranging from A-double-plus to F, the former indicating a match of certain bloodlines that has produced a percentage of stakes-winners far above the percentage produced by the same families when bred to other lines -- an affinity of bloodlines.

According to Bagan’s research, of 34 Lukas-purchased horses who actually earned more than their original purchase prices through the conclusion of the 1988 season, 20 had the A nick in common.

The A nick is common, as well, to the majority of horses trained by Lukas during the last 10 years who have won major stakes, although even the majority of these failed to recover the cost of their purchases while racing because their careers often were too brief.

Lukas is not Werk’s client and his success with the magical A nick, Bagan said, is entirely coincidental. But Bagan’s research certainly casts a long shadow over the notion that Lukas has some uncanny ability to judge a yearling’s potential based primarily on a 10-point rating of conformation, the basis of which is known only to him.

If Bagan has raised a number of interesting questions concerning the Lukas phenomenon with his findings, the message has fallen on at least one pair of deaf ears. At the Keeneland sales, Bagan said, “Lukas bought about an equal number of A nicks and F’s.”

According to Bagan’s research, the eventual owners of the D’s and F’s on which Lukas makes a final bid can expect to lose 88 percent of the auction price -- plus expenses.