“How much did we win?” screamed Ava while proudly holding her winning ticket in the air.
“Uh. You won $960. Dino and I…we…we lost again….”
“Why didn’t you bet on Quacky Ducky?”
“It’s all good,” Dino told Ava.
“I’m going to go cash my ticket…just point the way to the cashier’s window…do you guys remember where it is?” She smiled as she left the table.
“She is a great girl, Miami, and I just don’t believe in the women are bad luck at the track thing. In any given race, sure luck matters.” Dino believed in his statistics, research, and hard work. Winning at the track was a formula to be deciphered, and, over a long period of time, he believed he would prevail. “And apparently she is a much better handicapper than you are. Picking Quacky Ducky at 48-1 was a mean piece of work.”
“I told you she is special. Let’s see who she likes in the ninth, after the Winning Colors race next up.”
When Ava came back, Dino explained, “The race we came here for is coming next in 30 minutes. The absolute best stakes class fillies in the entire country are entered today against our girl Winning Colors. Goodbye Halo is the top East Coast champion, going against our West Coast champion filly Winning Colors. If she wins…when she wins…it will be a great day. No worries.”
The Lukas stable was revolutionizing thoroughbred racing. Its horses were winning so many races that everyone they entered would be bet down to low odds. With so many high-class horses stabled in each Lukas barn across the nation, they often would have multiple horses running in the same race. The toughest race day competition for a Lukas horse was often another Lukas trained horse. The Lukas barn had become the leading stable in money won each year by running an elite string of horses simultaneously in Southern California, Kentucky, New York, and Florida. This was unheard of in the old school racing industry.
Lukas had now purchased his own private jet to scour the horse auctions and meet with affluent owners from Malibu to Manhattan. The other trainers resented this handsome Hollywood trainer, his jet, his Rolls Royce, and his attire. They disparaged him behind his back about his training techniques, the ones he’d learned in his quarter horse track early days. Lukas would listen to his assistants, but he always made the final decisions, while talking on a huge Motorola cell phone with extended antennae attached to his ear, allowing him to coordinate the training plans of over 350 horses at different barns across the country.
The 2-year-old and 3-year-old horses from the Lukas stable were dominating stakes races from coast to coast. Racing young 2-year-old horses remained controversial, and many industry officials didn’t believe that 2-year-old thoroughbreds should be raced at all because their bones are not fully developed. But there was big money offered in these races for young stars and Lukas was always to be found where the money showed up. The winning horse owners typically earn 60 percent of the race’s purse money, 20 percent for second place, 10 percent for third, five percent for fourth, and three percent for fifth place. Trainers and jockeys usually earn 10 percent each of the winning purse money, and with top races offering a young horse $500,000 or more for under two minutes of racing, the incentives were powerful to get them training and running as early as possible.
Lukas was not in the training game to just win any races. He wanted the big stakes races, the big money offered, and the championship trophies. He was changing the game by flying his horses into any track in the country to take the money and run. A frequent joke on the backstretch was that Lukas horses earned frequent flyer miles. He shipped and won so many stakes races, the gamblers developed a saying: “Bet D. Wayne…off the plane.”
Every Lukas barn in every city was laid out in identical ways, allowing horses to be comfortable no matter what track they were flown into; no matter where they bedded down. The barns all featured the same deep hay, same brand of oats, and the hayrack and water buckets were always in the exact same place, allowing a traveling horse to feel at home. Lukas, a former basketball coach, ran his operation like a military unit, with nothing left to chance. Lukas was the first trainer to run his barn like a CEO runs a corporation.
The Lukas barn method dominated the sport, but Lukas was earning a reputation of being out of control with the demands he made of his staff. He insisted on perfection in every detail, including penmanship. He required assistant trainers to improve their handwriting, as reading their notes was a problem for him. He demanded 18-hour workdays of assistant trainers and had them call him at four a.m. and one p.m. daily with updates. There were 87 employees in his employ, and he wanted them to call him immediately, even at midnight, if a horse had an injury or illness.
He said, “I think that the discipline you develop outside the barn and the discipline you develop in your life will carry over into the discipline I need from you in handling the horses and in the stalls. We keep our barns spotless, not because a horse will run any faster if the barn is absolutely spotless, but because that discipline will carry over to what does make a difference. The only thing I really cannot tolerate is a lack of effort. And I don’t tolerate that very well with a horse, either. When it gets to that point, I have to say, ‘Look, this horse is wasting my time. Let’s run him for a claiming tag.’”
Today, Lukas’s Winning Colors was going to not waste his time.
Thirty minutes passed quickly, and the horses were being readied for the race. Only five fillies entered the gate for
