However, things can get complicated when bidding against the other richest men in the world. Often enough, a horse slips through an auction under the radar like the Triple Crown champion Seattle Slew—a racehorse that was sold for $17,500 as a yearling. No horse was going to be cheap today.
At 11:00 a.m. Lukas, wearing a freshly pressed white linen suit, rich blue tie, and white Stetson hat, opened the bidding on hip number 308 at $1,000,000, the highest opening bid ever recorded.
Robert Sangster smiled at Lukas and went up by an incredible incremental bid jump of $500,000. The bidding for one horse continued faster than Lukas had ever seen, with $500,000 being up bid every ten seconds: $3,000,000, now $5,000,000, now $8,000,000; and then the displayed bidding board stopped at $9,999,999 because it was out of digits and didn’t go any higher.
The bids kept coming.
Klein had expected some competition, but not like this! His eyes were blinking rapidly, and he was afraid to move for fear he would be mistaken as bidding. “Who the hell are these guys?” he whispered to Lukas while remaining ramrod straight in his chair. “These guys have gold balls!”
The bidding was slowing now and only going up $50,000 per bid as Sangster competed against another secretive bidder that Klein could not even see. Finally, at $10,200,000 the gavel fell to Robert Sangster and his European buyers as the crowd cheered for the first time that morning.
Lukas as always looked polished, calm, and cool, but he knew he and Klein had to regroup, and fast. Lukas had a total budget of $8,000,000 from Klein and his other clients for the auction and quickly realized they could not go toe-to-toe with this new kind of insane oil money. Apparently, $8,000,000 was chump change for this group at the auction. Lukas had recognized this possibility long before the sale and told Klein quietly under his breath, “Go to Plan B.”
Lukas knew the Europeans and the sheiks wanted proven classic winning bloodlines with colts they could breed as stallions for decades to come. But Klein and Lukas only cared about winning stakes races and purse money now; they didn’t care if they did it with colts or fillies…or goats. If the horse looked like it could run, they were going to bid, especially if the horse was female and for sale under $300,000.
Lukas and Klein had not been born to money like the sheiks and other heirs to fortunes who were playing here with money from their parents’ estates, and they were steadfastly committed to beating both the Arabs and the swells at their own rich man’s game. The blue-blooded Kentucky owners and wealthy Arabs did not like the brash, tall, Jewish billionaire from Beverly Hills who was trying to invade their private club accompanied by the fast talking, slick suited Lukas. Let the auction competition continue!
Lukas had learned something valuable in his early years as a quarter horse trainer, sleeping in his pick-up truck and training horses on the cheap, rock bottom level racing circuits in Texas, Arizona, and Oklahoma. At these low-class, bottom purse level tracks, the horses ran in a straight line with their ears pinned back and flat out for 350 yards. In the quarter horse stakes races, the fillies regularly competed against and beat the colts head-to-head. Lukas believed strongly he could train thoroughbred fillies to run against the males and beat them in prestigious races, despite his being laughed at by the macho good-old-boys trainers’ network from Los Angeles to New York. Despite failure with his two fillies in the 1984 Kentucky Derby, he believed a female could and would win that race again. Lukas had a proven eye for horseflesh, regardless if he was buying a $600 quarter horse, or a half a million dollar thoroughbred.
Suddenly there was commotion as a wild, tall, leggy, gray filly was led into the ring. She was not happy while being led out for display and wheeled around the auction stage trying to free herself from both her handler and the leather lead attached to her halter. Two additional horse handlers came forward trying to constrain her, and one made the mistake of grabbing hold of her left ear. She reared and kicked, striking a glancing blow to the third handler that sent him careening to the floor. He had seen enough of this damn horse, as earlier that morning he had witnessed her bite two older male stallions while being led to her holding pen.
The 1-year-old filly was not slim and trim like the other yearling females that had daintily pranced in all day like they were stepping in snow. This gray filly was built more like a tall version of Mike Tyson, with dappled hindquarters that showed muscles like an older stallion. Lukas noticed she was pulling her handler around wherever she decided to go, not where he was trying to lead her.
She grunted loudly and violently threw her head to the side, pulling her handler completely off his feet as he was trying to hold on to the bridle of this huge and spirited animal. The bidding on her opened at $100,000 and Klein told Lukas to go to $250,000. When the bid reached $300,000, Klein gave Lukas the signal to keep
