There was a run there when Lukas got a lot of good horses. Its all over now, but he had another edge besides good horseflesh. Whatever he used is passe compared to today\'s \"tactics\".
I think everyone knows Lukas ran his stock hard and didn\'t worry about the future. The future always involved the next crop. What follows is the text of what Shane Sellers had to say:
“ … At that point, I was hardly concerned about not winning the race. All I knew was that Cape Town was done running. I knew it, he knew it and I’m certain that Wayne knew it. But when the race was over, Wayne had the gall to dog me out in front of all the fans and the jockeys. He blamed the loss on me and started telling everyone – including the press – that I rode his horse badly and cost Cape Town the race. The press butchered me for that. I looked like the asshole because the words came out of the mighty Mr. Lukas’ mouth
“Feeling absolutely furious, the next morning I walked into Wayne’s tack room and confronted him about what had happened. I said, ‘Why can’t you come back to me and take me into this office and tell me what you gotta say? Why do you gotta go and hurt me in the press when you know it’s the total opposite, Wayne? You knew that that horse was lame before the Florida Derby and you run him in the Bluegrass. Then he runs bad and you blame me.’
“Getting angrier by the second, I continued, ‘What a scapegoat. You just bounced it off on me and it’s wrong. Take your horses. I don’t need to ride for you, man. You understand? I don’t. I’m gonna win races without you cause you haven’t put me on too many winners, man. How many winners have you put me on?’
“In a final fit of anger, I said, ‘I’ve made it this far to be without you and to be honest with you, I don’t respect you as a person or a horseman. The way you treated this horse, they should take away your license. He didn’t belong in the Bluegrass, much less the Derby. You knew it before the Florida Derby and that’s why you told me he was gonna get out and not to tell the vet.’ Then I walked out of his office and never walked back.”
More on Lukas:
“And that’s the problem with men like Wayne Lukas. The public views him as a hero, but we jockeys know better. Sure, we wanted to get on his horses because he bought the best bred horses in the country. Since the best-bred horses usually make the best racehorses, it’s obvious that he should have won as many races as he did. But instead of treating his horses right and letting them have lengthy careers, history shows that Wayne’s horses were lucky if they made it past three-year-olds. He pushed them until they broke down.
“Everyone in the jocks’ room knew that, but they sure wouldn’t say it – not to Wayne’s face anyway. In jockey politics, everyone treated Wayne like he was god and then walked back into the jocks’ room talking about what a jerk he was. We knew how his horses felt because that was our job. We could feel the struggle in their knees and the jolts in their backs. We could see their eyes widen when we got on them, as if they were saying, ‘Why are you doing this to me?’ We could see all of it, but there was nobody there to listen to our side of the story.
“So we sat around and watched as the best bred horses in the country broke down, one after another. Wayne kept winning races, but what happened to the horses after the race? That man became an all-time legend, but he lacked the compassion to be great in the long term.”
I tend to agree with Shane\'s conclusion
