THOROUGHBRED RACING : A Bad Year for Wayne Lukas Looks Good for Anyone Else

For anyone else, the figures would be outstanding: $6.3 million in purses, 161 victories and nearly 30 victories in stakes races.

By trainer Wayne Lukas’ standards, however, those totals are meager. Starting in 1983, five years after he switched from quarter horses to thoroughbreds, Lukas’ coast-to-coast operation has been the national leader in purses every year. The first year of this dynasty, Lukas’ horses earned $4.2 million. In two years, that output had almost tripled, to $11.1 million, and the total has been at least $14.5 million ever since, including a record year of $17.8 million in 1988.

This year, Lukas’ horses will earn less than $10 million for the first time since 1984. He does not have a horse that has won a major race, or a leading candidate for an Eclipse Award. He is scrambling to find some candidates for the Breeders’ Cup, seven races worth $10 million at Gulfstream Park on Oct. 31. This is a series that has given him 10 victories, 11 seconds and $8.7 million in purses for the last eight years.

Fortunately for Lukas, his divisions this summer at Saratoga and Monmouth Park did well, because at Del Mar, where Lukas himself trains the horses, he is suffering through a miserable season. Lukas has won or shared four training titles here, but through the first 34 days of the 43-day meeting, his barn had produced only four winners, tying him for 21st place in the standings.

If there is a race that typifies Lukas’ decline here, it is the Del Mar Debutante. Eight of Lukas’ 42 stakes victories at Del Mar have been in the Debutante, and when the track ran the $250,000 race last Saturday, Lukas didn’t even have a 2-year-old filly entered.

Very gingerly, reporters have approached Lukas’ barn office this summer to inquire about the slump. It is not a subject that Lukas cares to discuss, and in fact he even questions why it must be broached. The Lukas outfit is still No. 1, he reasons; Ron McAnally, the No. 2 trainer nationally in purses, is more than $1 million behind.

“We tied for the title (in victories) at Saratoga,” Lukas said. “Yet I’m the guy who’s being asked to defend himself. I heard a trainer saying the other day, ‘If Lukas is having a bad year, what does that say for the rest of us?’ ”

Lukas walked to a chart above his desk and counted six overall stakes victories in August. In 1987, Lukas’ horses won 92 stakes, setting the record.

“At one point, Shug McGaughey was one for 23 at Saratoga, but hardly anything was being said about it,” Lukas said. “Charlie (Whittingham) is not even on the board (in the top 10 on the national purse list), but I’m the guy who’s being asked to apologize for the year we’re having.”

Using last year’s Breeders’ Cup as a barometer, this year’s decline might have been predictable. This time at Churchill Downs, where Lukas had won three Breeders’ Cup races in 1988, he started eight horses and the best finishes were one second, one third and one fifth.

“I’ll admit that our nucleus going into this year was not as good as it has been,” Lukas said. “But it has nothing to do with not having enough horses. We’ve had just as many horses as we’ve ever had.”

Some of Lukas’ best horses--including Gulch, Steinlen and Farma Way--began their careers with other trainers. This year, there has been no quick-fix infusion of such horses. Lukas picked up Lite Light, runner-up to Dance Smartly in the voting for last year’s best 3-year-old filly, but her return to the races is still being awaited. Instead, the vagaries of racing have sent horses the other way. Navarone, a horse Lukas used to train, has become the turf star of the Del Mar meeting under trainer Rodney Rash.

Lukas still trains for William T. Young, a prosperous Kentucky owner and breeder who made his money in peanut butter, but former clients such as Peter Brant, bankrupt Calumet Farm, and the late Gene Klein have not been replaced. Klein, who owned Winning Colors, Lukas’ only Kentucky Derby winner, was made to order for the flashy trainer. Both of them thrived on headlines, and Klein didn’t seem to care what he spent on horses, as long as he made the front page.

“Everybody’s bottom-line conscious right now,” Lukas said. “Somebody with the attitude of Gene Klein isn’t around anymore. The economy’s got everybody scared. Now would be the perfect time for a Gene Klein. In the ‘80s, he bought horses at retail prices and ran for wholesale purses. Now the horse prices are more reasonable and the purses are bigger.”

Yearling prices have plummeted, but even Lukas, once one of the American cornerstones at the toniest auctions, has retreated. Lukas bought six horses at the Keeneland select sale this summer for $1.7 million, the least he has spent there in 11 years, and he didn’t buy any yearlings at Saratoga.

“If I don’t spend $6 million at Keeneland, it’s something to talk about,” Lukas said. “I left bids (with his son, Jeff) for five horses at Saratoga. The Arabs outbid us on three of the horses and somebody else went higher for the other two.”

Thoroughbred Racing Communications conducts a weekly national poll of the top horses, and of the 29 horses recently listed, none were trained by Lukas. Twilight Agenda, second to horse-of-the-year Black Tie Affair in last year’s Breeders’ Cup Classic and expected to be Lukas’ leading older horse this year, received votes in that poll earlier in the year, but after finishing last in the Hollywood Gold Cup in June, he was sent to the farm, joining Lite Light. Lukas plans to run both of them during the Oak Tree meeting at Santa Anita that opens Oct. 7, then shoot for the Breeders’ Cup.

“Don’t bury us yet,” Lukas said. “We’re going to be No. 1 for 10 years in a row, and as somebody said recently, it’s awful hard to be No. 1 that long at anything. Nobody else knows what it’s like. Because nobody else has had the experience.”

Horse Racing Notes

Like Wayne Lukas, Shug McGaughey also had not won a major stake this year, but he clicked with Easy Now in the Go For Wand and Furiously in the Jerome Handicap over the Labor Day weekend at Belmont Park. . . . Jerry Bailey rode both winners, with Mike Smith opting to ride in the Arlington Million, finishing seventh aboard Chenin Blanc. . . . David Flores, 10th in the Million aboard Marquetry, has given up his appeal of a five-day stewards’ ruling at Del Mar and will begin his suspension Friday.

Navarone, winner of the Del Mar Handicap, will probably use the Oak Tree Invitational on Oct. 10 as his prep for the Breeders’ Cup Turf at Gulfstream Park three weeks later. Both races are 1 1/2 miles. . . . Old Mose, who gave Navarone’s owner, Bob Hibbert, his first Del Mar Handicap winner, in 1966, won the first race ever run on grass at Hollywood Park. . . . The options for Kostroma, winner of the Beverly D Stakes at Arlington International, are the Breeders’ Cup Mile or the Yellow Ribbon at Santa Anita on Nov. 8.

Pirate’s Bounty, the sire of about 65 horses who have won races this year, is a 17-year-old stallion who stands at Marty Wygod’s River Edge Farm in the Santa Ynez Valley. Wygod said that the stud fee for Pirate’s Bounty will increase to $8,000 next year, except for those who bred to him this year. Their fee remains at $6,000. Trained by Lefty Nickerson in New York and Dick Mandella in California, Pirate’s Bounty won only four times--one stake race--in 15 starts. His racing career ended after he caught pneumonia in California.