This Kind of Tabasco Has Left Few Eyes Dry

One of these days, I am going to write a children’s book or a G-rated movie for the whole family because I already have most of the story and all I need now is an ending. I am going to write it about Tabasco Cat.

Somebody else can do Tonya Harding or Joey Buttafuoco. I like this one better. It has plenty of action and an innocent victim of sudden violence. But it’s a much nicer story with much nicer people.

Tabasco Cat is not a cat. He is a horse, a 3-year-old chestnut. A few weeks from now, the adventure of Tabasco Cat is going to come to a dramatic climax when he runs in the Kentucky Derby, the most thrilling 2 minutes in sports. Before that happens, he can be seen Saturday in the $500,000 Santa Anita Derby, at the track where this horse’s compelling tale began.

I swear, “The Black Stallion” has nothing on this.

It was only 10 days before last Christmas when the colt got loose in the stable area of Santa Anita and began to run wild. One of his trainers, Jeff Lukas, planted himself in Tabasco Cat’s path, hoping to slow the horse down. At full gallop, Tabasco Cat ran him down.

Jeff ended up in a coma. He lingered for more than two months at Huntington Memorial Hospital in Pasadena, eventually regaining his consciousness, his strength and some of his memory. He is now undergoing therapy at a rehabilitation center in Pomona and is making a splendid recovery.

In all my years of writing, I have never gotten a more touching response to a story than to the one I did about Jeff’s accident. The image of Jeff’s adolescent son, Brady, speaking into a tape recorder at Christmas and then having the tapes played beside his dad’s ear, while Jeff remained in his coma, seemed to catch hundreds of people right in the heart. His father’s recovery turned out to be the very best Christmas present a boy could get, just as it was for Jeff’s own dad, Wayne Lukas, one of racing’s top trainers.

As for Tabasco Cat, well, who cared if he ever ran again?

Ah, but this was not the end of the story. People did care. The Lukas family still cared. So did William T. Young, 75, the Kentucky peanut-butter baron (his company produced Jif) who serves on the board of directors at Churchill Downs and also happens to be the co-owner of Tabasco Cat, along with David P. Reynolds, 78, chairman emeritus of a company that deals in aluminum.

On Jan. 22, five weeks after the accident, Tabasco Cat was entered in a stakes race at Bay Meadows. He won. Then he ran at Santa Anita in the March 6 San Rafael Stakes. He won again, leading virtually from start to finish. It was the colt’s fifth victory in his last six races, the only disappointment being a third-place finish at the Breeders’ Cup last November.

Wayne Lukas had known all along he had a pretty good horse. But he never guessed it would be this good.

Now, he says, if you take the starting field for Saturday’s race and add maybe a couple of other horses to it--say, Holy Bull and Valiant Nature--you could throw a rope over them as the favorites for the May 7 Kentucky Derby.

“And I hesitate to say it, but this horse might be our best chance ever,” Lukas says, looking forward to another shot at a horseshoe of roses at Churchill Downs. “He’s got the style, he’s got the speed and he’s probably the most tactical horse out there running today. What can I say? He’s a pretty damn versatile horse.

“He’s got all this energy. I keep having him doing more and more and more, but I still can’t find his bottom. His energy just seems endless. I had him gallop two miles, and he bucked the exercise rider. Not out of meanness, just feeling good. He comes to play, this horse.”

This horse who nearly killed his son.

That, to me, is what makes this story all the more remarkable. The Lukas family cares for and cares about the horse that ran Jeff down. Jeff himself is taking calls at his rehab center, giving advice to Tabasco Cat’s handlers.

Wayne Lukas says: “This thing with Jeff and the horse’s success, we’re trying to keep the two things separate. And yet there obviously is a story here.

“What makes it doubly difficult now is not having Jeff here with me. Every spring, when the big races come around, your world suddenly becomes one big glass house. I’m used to that. Like when we had Winning Colors, there was so much extra attention down in Kentucky because of her being a filly. Jeff would always say something like, ‘You go take care of all the other stuff and don’t worry, I’ll take care of the filly.’ Only now, Jeff’s not here. There’s so much to do and so much emotional interest in this horse now, I’m worried about being a little overwhelmed.”

Jeff Lukas has regained most of his long-term memory, but still has blockage of more recent events. He does not remember being struck by Tabasco Cat, and doctors doubt he ever will.

Whenever anyone mentions that this was the horse that ran him down, Jeff’s response is, “That’s what they tell me.”

No hard feelings, then.

Should this turn out to be the horse of his that wins a Kentucky Derby, the way Wayne Lukas looks at it, it will serve to prove only one thing.

“Truth really is stranger than fiction,” he says.

Santa Anita Derby

A look at the post positions for Saturday’s $500,000 Santa Anita Derby:

PP Horse Jockey Odds 1. Pollock’s Luck Delhssaye 30 2. Tabasco Cat Day 5-2 3. Brocco Stevens 7-5 4. Soul Of The Matter Desormeaux 3 5. Strodes Creek* Black 5 6. Numerous* McCarron 5 7. Wild Invader Pincay 30 8. Fly’n J. Bryan Valenzuela 15 9. Robannier Antley 30

* C. Whittingham entry

* Distance: 1 1/8 miles on main track

* Weights: 122 pounds