Now the red-haired girl could see the horses charging directly toward her position near the rail at the start of the stretch. “Come on, Althea! You can do it, girl!”
Swale was running easily under his champion jockey Laffit Pincay Jr. while Chris McCarron on Althea was furiously pumping his arms forward, urging the smaller filly to keep the battle going. She fought gamely to hold the second position as Swale rushed past, but the colts were making their ambitious stretch assaults now.
The other filly, Life’s Magic, was caught in a wall of horses and making no impact.
Pincay, one of the most physically powerful riders in history, urged Swale forward with his piston-like arms, matching in exact rhythm the colt’s giant strides as they surged away from the field.
Althea was spent from her early race speed. McCarron, feeling her fatigue beneath him, did not draw his whip. She lapsed to fifth, then 10th, then 15th, exhausted. At the wire, Althea beat only one horse that had been pulled up earlier in the race. She finished over 30 lengths behind the winning Swale and his celebrating trainer, Woody Stephens.
Lukas watched as Althea finish 19th after Life’s Magic came in eighth. Despite winning 131 races, and smashing the all-time money won record for a single racing season, Lukas had failed for the sixth consecutive time in the world’s most well-known horse race.
July 17, 1986, Keeneland Racetrack, Lexington, Kentucky
Two years after that race, the San Diego Chargers helmet logo stood tall on the tail of a gleaming private jet as it banked hard over Keeneland racetrack in Lexington, Kentucky. Trainer D. Wayne Lukas loved this part of horse racing—the private jets and traveling with billionaires who were committed to buying the best horseflesh in the world. Tall, lean, and fit, with gray hair and designer sunglasses, he looked every bit the Hollywood movie star. Many movie stars aren’t tough, but Lukas was a former bareback bronco rodeo rider, and raced quarter horses as a jockey when young. He had been a rock-hard cowboy who came up through the ranks, training first on the rodeo circuit, and then the cheap track quarter horse circuit from the Midwest, to Texas, and then on to Southern California. He had spent years sleeping in the beds of pick-up trucks and shaving with cold water in front of side view mirrors. He had come from nowhere and now was the dominant thoroughbred racehorse trainer in the world.
Billionaire Eugene Klein was a man used to winning by playing aggressively and now competed with the best racehorse owners in the game, in the richest possible stakes races. In recent years, Klein had sold his Seattle SuperSonics NBA team, his San Diego Chargers NFL team, and his other considerable business interests to focus on a new passion—thoroughbred horseracing.
The private plane’s flight attendants were former Chargers’ cheerleaders who were stunning in their short skirts and white blouses. Both blonde and nearly as tall in heels as Lukas himself, they were used to being chatted up by passengers, but Lukas seemed not to notice them. Lukas was as handsome a guest as they had ever served, other than a few of the Chargers’ players, and they tried to catch Lukas’s attention. He was oblivious to their flirtations.
Lukas was looking to see what other private planes were already on the ground. As the plane taxied on the tarmac, Lukas pointed out to Klein some of the private jets owned by bidding competitors already on site. The largest of the jets dwarfed all the other planes. It belonged to sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the defense minister of Dubai. Oil money was a different kind of money; it escalated competition at the horse auctions. The sheiks of Dubai who were also there were led by another horseman with the status of Lukas: the handsome and always impeccably dressed European, Robert Sangster. The sheiks were nicknamed The Doobie Brothers.
Also parked front and center on the tarmac was the jet of Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niachros. Stavros was born in Athens to a wealthy family, and by boldly investing $2,000,000 into a shipping business, he now was the richest magnate in the world. His personal history included four wives, each considerably younger than the first.
Lukas knew that this was going to be an epic Keeneland sales auction of prime horseflesh. He was out of his seat before the plane stopped, standing at the door, waiting for it to be opened. A man of immense energy, he was up at three a.m. every day to train and watch his horses. By five a.m., he was on the phone to his people in Florida, Kentucky, or Southern California, and all the other barns where he kept stables of the fastest racehorses in the world. At the auction today, he wanted to inspect the young horses on the block with his team of assistant trainers, bloodstock agents, and veterinarians who’d already been there for days evaluating the talent.
Only 14 years older than Lukas, Klein looked more like Lukas’s father. Normally, Klein was considered a well-dressed man but next to Lukas he looked somewhat disheveled. Lukas could do that to anyone except Robert Sangster.
A private black Lincoln limousine carried Lukas and Klein down the long drive past the huge trees and white picket fences to the Keeneland Sales Pavilion, next to the historic Keeneland racetrack. The entrance to Keeneland is the most beautiful track entrance in America.
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