For Once, a Real Horse Race Is on Tap

It is a lingering complaint of those who follow horse racing that the best horses don’t get together often enough.

The best teams get together in baseball, football, basketball and hockey. The best golfers get together. And it happens, at various junctures, they round up the best tennis players.

But race horses? It is the exception when the best are entered in the same field, a condition easily explained by the formidable horse coach, Mr. D. Wayne Lukas.

As a preface to the punditry he imparts, Lukas points out that when the best horses don’t get together, it isn’t the fault of the horses.

Horses as a general rule are agreeable fellows. You say to one, “Hey, Bucko, how would you like to get into action at Yakima Meadows?”

And Bucko responds, “Why not? At Yakima, you’ll never hear ‘em talking apples and oranges, just apples.”

But the horse’s handlers will demure, pointing out that if they ship to Beulah Park, in Grove City, Ohio, they can pick up a hundred grand without fear of competition.

On occasion, Lukas engages in such melon cutting, but believes generally the practice isn’t good for racing, which must bring together with greater frequency its marquee performers.

“No track has a lock on money anymore,” says Wayne. “By that I mean, if you’re looking for a fat purse, you can find one almost anywhere. If it isn’t listed at the place you’re looking, they’ll create a race for you.”

The upshot is that six top horses may scatter to six locations, divesting the sport of carbonation good for its health.

For the Gold Cup Sunday at Hollywood Park, Lukas has brought in a racer he thinks can go with 1989 horse of the year Sunday Silence, establishing for the folks an event they will like.

The animal Wayne shepherds is named Criminal Type, winner of major stakes in his last two starts at Pimlico and Belmont and pictured by Lukas as 1990 horse of the year if he is able to dispatch Sunday Silence.

“Naturally, you can’t be sure he is going to do this,” Lukas says. “But if you’re trying to develop a reputation for your horse, you must race him against the best. And the best right now happens to be in California.”

“And you don’t worry about the hazards of shipping horses cross-country?” he is asked.

“The horse that won the Belmont (Go And Go) was shipped across the Atlantic,” he answers. “He lands on a Wednesday, works on Thursday and wins by 8 1/4 (lengths) on Saturday. If you have a good horse, you don’t have to be neurotic about travel, about water, about food, about footing.”

In handicap races, assignment of weights used to pose problems for trainers, never eager to pick up a load.

But competition among tracks for the standout horses has resulted in weight concessions you didn’t see when Exterminator carried 140 pounds, Equipoise 135 and Citation 132.

A trainer walking into a respectable track, trying to negotiate weight, would be thrown out.

“Conditions today are more favorable to good horses,” Lukas admits. “Heavy competition exists among tracks for the superstars. They will compromise on weight in preference to losing the horse.”

For the Gold Cup, whose first prize runs $550,000, Criminal Type has sneaked in with 121 pounds, three fewer than the traveled campaigner, Ruhlmann, and five fewer than Sunday Silence.

Sunday Silence has started 10 races, winning eight and finishing second twice. He has earned upward of $4.7 million.

And he has earned this money making the rounds of California, Kentucky, Maryland, New York, Louisiana and Florida, meaning this is a runner of genuine quality.

And he gets into the Gold Cup with 126?

For this he can thank the competition among tracks that Lukas is talking about.

A bankroll of $4.7 million isn’t bad, but if Sunday Silence were a better talker, he could fatten his income, as Tom Lasorda does, addressing breakfast clubs, luncheon clubs, dinner clubs and corporate groups requiring motivation.

But Sunday Silence doesn’t like banquet food, and when telling stories, he usually botches the punch line.

So when the Sons of Italy are looking for a speaker, they choose Lasorda, not Sunday Silence, who is left to pick up a buck trying to beat Criminal Type in the Gold Cup.