D. WAYNE LUKAS, the highest profile trainer in the history of the American turf, stole into New York for the Belmont Stakes like a burglar in the night.
He sent his modestly performed horse, Commendable, into his Belmont backstretch emporium with so little fanfare you could have heard a pin drop.
When Wayne himself arrived, he might have been Mr. Anonymous. The most articulate man in the business with more ideas and insights than most, hardly anybody bothered to seek him out for his counsel.
“Only two (media) guys came by my barn all week,” Wayne said. I was not one of them.
Then came the ultimate no show. Wayne Lukas, who likes to straddle racing’s biggest events like Atlas, did not even appear at the Belmont Breakfast, draw and interview.
He was so invisible, not even the Canadian Mounties could have found him.
But soon after 5:30 p.m. yesterday, the whole world saw the burglar Lukas strike, saw him heist the Belmont Stakes with a horse so despised by insiders and public alike that despite Lukas’ record, despite the incomparable Pat Day in the saddle, he went off at better than 18-1. He should have been 118-1.
On form, Commendable had no business being in the Belmont, much less winning it. Look at the abysmal record – he won his first race, a maiden at Del Mar by four lengths, then lost his next six straight.
No, it’s worse. He did not even finish in the money in any of those six races. Not once. In his last race, the Kentucky Derby, he didn’t pick up a hoof, finishing 26 lengths behind the winner.
A costly $575,000 purchase for his owners Robert and Beverly Lewis, Commendable came to the Belmont with the most miserable of earnings, just $88,470 – so poor that only Curule, the Arab shipper, had banked fewer dollars with $59,000.
Nobody summed up this Belmont better or more concisely than the jockey who rode him with such sweet patience near the lead. Said Pat Day, “I’d like to commend Wayne Lukas for having the courage to run him.”
Bull’s-eye. Write it in neon. Even the jockey thought it took guts to show up in the Belmont with a horse like Commendable.
Wayne himself was suitably modest. Said he, “We did not come here thinking we could overwhelm this field.” Write that up as the understatement of the Triple Crown season.
But the owner offered an observation that all horseplayers ignore at their peril. Said Bob Lewis, “Wayne is an unbelievable man. When you least expect it, he nails you.”
Yesterday, he bombed us. In Australia, there is a betting maxim that often pays big dividends. It goes like this: Big race, big trainer, big odds – big bet.
Lukas personifies this strategy. In last year’s Breeders’ Cup, he demolished bettors with huge longshots Cash Run and Cat Thief after stunning them with another longshot, Charismatic, in the Kentucky Derby.
It is just amazing how this trainer, with a winning record unmatched in modern times, can saddle so many winners at such big prices.
And yesterday, he did it again with Commendable in the Belmont Stakes. But not even I, an incorrigible longshot player and frequent beneficiary of Lukas’ longshots, could find the courage to bet $2 on the horse.
Why should I? Even Bob Lewis thought the horse did not belong. He told yesterday how he called Lukas early last week questioning the wisdom of running Commendable in the Belmont.
He said, “I called and I said, ‘Are you sure we’re doing the right thing here?’ I was getting a little weezy. But in his own inimitable way, Wayne reassured me we were absolutely doing the right thing.” For two weeks, Lukas himself was on the fence. He refused to commit. But the more he studied the Belmont field (particularly, I suspect, without Fusaichi Pegasus and Red Bullet in the lineup) the more he saw an opportunity.
“The more I looked at the field, the more I looked at the abilities of the other horses, the more confident I grew that we could have something to say about the outcome,” he said.
He had to be the only seer in the universe to see it.
Day does a lot of big event jockeying for Lukas, but riding this humble palooka looked like an act of charity for an old friend. Pat offered this excuse, “I relied on Mr. Lukas’ decision to come to the Belmont. One thing I’ve learned over the years is not to count Mr. Lukas out in any of these major fixtures.”
After yesterday, horseplayers should do the same.