He’s Got Style, but There’s Substance, Too

If Grand Canyon, the race horse, were human, his trainer, Wayne Lukas, says he’d be Mike Tyson. Or Hulk Hogan. Or Dick Butkus.

He’s a juvenile but if a human equivalent tried to enroll in Little League, they would throw his application out, saying he was over-age. If he could talk, it would be in a deep bass. In grade school, he’d need to shave twice a day.

“When I bring him in a paddock, no one can believe he’s a 2-year-old,” Lukas asserts. “They say, ‘You sure you didn’t get him mixed up with one of your handicap horses?’ They think he’s at least 4 years old.

“He’s massive,” Lukas explains. “He weighs over 1,200 pounds. He looks chiseled. He’s all business. He’s like Tyson. He would come in the ring with no socks on and just a towel over his shoulders, too.

“I’ll tell you one thing: He will win the post parade hands down. You figure Man o’ War must have looked like this. He’s like one of those athletes who looks good in the gym, looks good in the shower, looks good in the hotel lobby, looks good on the dance floor. Not a muscle out of place.”

Unfortunately, a horse race isn’t a beauty contest, a Derby not a Mr. America competition. You are not judged for form, only speed. It’s not what you do in the post parade, it’s what you do at the eighth pole.

Grand Canyon usually looks good there, too. He faltered a little bit in the Breeders’ Cup, taking the scenic route and stopping to smell the flowers along the way in the homestretch, but he still finished a charging second.

“He’s too alert,” Lukas said. “He sees too much. He jumps tracks in the stretch. He eyes the crowd. I put a shadow roll on him, but he could still see the crowd. He’s snoopy. He checks the infield like a pickpocket.”

Great athletes don’t always look the part. Look at Babe Ruth. In the early days, a pitcher couldn’t wait to bust a fast one inside on that fat old party.

The best-looking specimen I ever saw in a ring was Charlie Powell, a heavyweight built like a triangle. He even looked good lying down. Which was a good thing because that’s where he was most of the time.

Jack Nicklaus didn’t look as if he was going to take over golf when he first came out. He looked more as if he were going to take over the buffet table.

Native Dancer would have been called Spot if he’d been a dog.

Betting on a horse’s looks is like dating a chorus girl. Chances are, you’ll end up broke and sorry.

But Lukas thinks Grand Canyon is as safe as T-bills. Wayne is one of those guys who can look at a polo pony and see Citation.

He has finished first in a Kentucky Derby--and he’s finished last in a Kentucky Derby. And most places in between. He tries to win Kentucky Derbies the hard way--with fillies. He did it once, but he’s taking a more conventional approach next year. Grand Canyon is all man and a yard wide.

“He’s the best 2-year-old in the country right now,” insists Lukas, an extravagant claim in view of his second to Shug McGaughey’s colt, Rhythm, in the Breeders’ Cup. “That was the only stakes race Rhythm ever won,” Lukas said. “He had only won an allowance up to then and hasn’t run since.”

It is not the custom of trainers to brag on their chargers. For one thing, this brings the unwanted attention of racing secretaries glad of the excuse to load another few pounds in the saddle bags. And a horse doesn’t know whether the trainer has confidence in him or not.

But the voters in the Eclipse Awards do.

Insists Lukas: “If you can get an Eclipse Award on the basis of one Breeders’ Cup race, why bother to go through all that hard campaigning in the classics and handicaps from Kentucky to Baltimore to New York? Why not go right to the Breeders’?”

Lukas says that Grand Canyon’s credentials are impeccable-- if he wins at Hollywood Park Sunday. He is three for seven with three seconds and only one out of the money. He ran greenly in his maiden race last June 4. He ran better--second--two weeks later, then broke his maiden at Del Mar in September.

He would have won the Grade I Sunnyslope at Santa Anita’s Oak Tree meeting, Lukas insists, but his rider, Chris McCarron, noticing a broken rein on rival jockey Lafitt Pincay’s mount, stayed alongside him to prevent an accident. Grand Canyon finished a neck behind, then won the Grade I Norfolk a week later.

He might be as good as he looks. Three weeks after the Breeders’, he went to Kentucky for the Grade III Brown and Williamson Cup. It was not what he won, it was how he won--by 10 widening lengths.

He gets a stiffer test at Hollywood Park Sunday, the million-dollar Futurity. The West’s best will be in the starting stalls, including, perhaps, the precocious filly, Dominant Dancer.

“First, she’s got to get on the track,” Lukas said.

Two weeks ago, Dominant Dancer was ordered scratched in the paddock by the stewards, who thought she needed a cane more than a race.

Wayne is so sure his horse is not just another pretty face, he is already counting the money.

“If he wins the Kentucky Derby, he gets a million dollars because the Brown and Williamson win pays that bonus,” Lukas said. “Then, if he wins the Triple Crown, he gets $5 million. He could be the first $7 million horse in history.”

Of course, first there is the formality of winning. Wayne sees no problem with that, a horse as good-looking as this. Wayne deals only in positives anyway. And why not? Wayne looks good in the winners’ circle, too.