The way that money is transferred in horse racings is one of the weirdest in all of sports. But like Oracle said---$16mm makes for a good story. I think it would be safe to assume that you can cut that $16mm in half--lol.

Alright Monipenny I will e-mail you. This is the last e-mail I am doing on the subject. My hotmail acoount does not save my sent messages so I have to keep re-typing this e-mail.

Rupert, isn't there is a little box under the message that you check if you want to save the message? "Copy Message to Sent Folder"

That's the way mine has always shown up.

--Dunbar

It doesn't, but repeating "rumors" about zillionaires on a website is a very good way to get yourself in hot water. I'm like Col. Klink, I know nothing.

That was funny. Cracking the Da Vinci code is easier to crack than the trail of some of these deals--lol. But like Oracle--I know nothing.

Lukas on a roll?
 

You think Lucas' horses are reading Derby Trail?
Two winners the last two days. Yes, favorites but winners nontheless.

Whittingham said never knock a horse until he is dead
Maybe the same should apply to trainers....

Just a thought...

By the way, i am not a Wayne fan

LOL!! I was thinking the same thing when he won the race just now. he must have read Derbytrail and decided to show Playa a thing or two. lol

Whittingham said never knock a horse until he is dead... I don't know if he really said it...but god I like it.. Good one!!

Ez

DWL was due to start winning a couple of races. He was 0 for 34 at Churchill going into this week. I wouldn't hold a short-term slump against someone. Anyone can have a short-term slump. I would be more concerned with his record for the year. For the year, he has over 200 starts and his winning percentage is 7%. That's really bad. I'm not expecting him to have a good year but I would expect him to do better than he's doing. By the end of the year, I think he'll have his winning percentage up to 10% or so. I think he was at 12% last year.
Just to be clear about my position on DWL, I do think he was the MVP of trainers in the 1980s. It doesn't really matter how he did it. The bottom line is that he did do it. To be a really successful trainer, it takes a lot more than just being a good trainer. Here are some of the important components to being really successful as a trainer: 1. Having good assisstants. 2. Having good vets. 3. Knowing how to use the vets properly. 4. Having good people skills. This would include keeping your owners happy, being a good public relations guy, being a good self-promoter, etc. 5. Being able to raise money. 6. Being well organized and knowing how to delegate. 7. Being good at picking out young horses, etc.
There are so many components. I'm sure you guys could come with 20 more of them. Anyway, the bottom line is that DWL did these things better than any other trainer in the 1980s. I have to give him credit for that.
On the other hand, there are many ways of judging success. Here is a hypothetical. Tell me who was more successful between Trainer A and Trainer B. Let's suppose that Trainer A gets his owners to spend $20 million. They end up winning some really big races and they get a few million dollars in purses. Overall though, they end up losing $5 million. Trainer B gets his owners to spend $2 million. They win a few big races but not nearly as many as Trainer A's owners. However, Trainer B's owners end up with a small profit. Who was more successful between Trainer A and Trainer B? It depends how you measure success. You could say that Trainer A was more successful because he won more big races and his horses earned more in purses. On the other hand, you could say that Trainer B was more successful becasue his owners made a profit.

Going back to my previous post, I would have to say that the great majority of trainers out there don't really care how their owners do. Most trainers just want to make as much money as they can and they could care less how their owners do.
There are a few trainers out there that are really conscientious and really ethical and they treat the owner's money like it is their own money. I have this one trainer who is like that. He will see a horse that he loves at a sale and yet he won't let the owner buy it becasue he thinks the price is too high. The owner will want to bid $400,00 for the horse but the trainer won't let the owner go higher than $300,000 on the horse. There are so few trainers like this. Most trainers would not care how much the owner spends on the horse. Most trainers just want the horse and hope that the owner will pay whatever price it takes to get the horse. My one trainer who is so conscientious is very philosphical about the subject. I asked him why he would stop an owner from bidding on a horse that they both really like. Here is what he said: "If I let my owner overpay for horses, the owner will lose money in the long run. If he loses a lot of money, he will eventually quit the business. I want to keep him as an owner for a long time, so I will do everything I can to make sure that he makes money so he will last in the business." There are very few trainers with this kind of attitude.

Very good stuff, Rupert. A nice example of how doing the right thing can also make good monetary sense (for both trainer and owner) in the long run.

--Dunbar

of course there are also instances where the owner decides to overbid what the trainer feels should be the top price. that gets you stories like cecil peacock and brother derek. there's also the record colt that sold for 16million. one half of the pinhooking partnership said stop when they bid around 350k, the other continued and they got the colt. now, of course those stories don't happen every day, but they do happen. and yeah, there are a lot of shady dealers out there. read a story some months ago about a broker who convinced a guy to spend a lot of money on a lot of crap horses, rather than trying to buy a few nice ones. the owner got out of the business, due to the cost of trying to keep so many horses in training.

it's not a business for the faint of heart. how would anyone like to have been william young, eventual owner of overbrook farm? well, we know the ending....but at the very beginning, a friend talked him into buying a yearling--his first purchase as a t'bred owner. colt died the next day. several hundred grand down the tubes. luckily he stayed in the game.

What you're saying is correct. Some owners will buy horses against a trainer's wishes. In addition, there are some owners that want to win some big races and they don't care how much they spend to make to happen. In my previous post, I was really referring to cases where the trainer makes all the decisions. But evn in those cases, you can't really blame the trainer for spending huge money and overpaying for horses if the owner tells him that money is no object.

if you have the right trainer, you can leave it up to him or her. problem is that there are a lot of naive people who get taken. of course that happens quite often all over, so obviously it will happen in racing as well.

Did you guys catch the interview with Kiaran McLaughlin on TVG. He was talking about the 7 years that he worked for Lukas. He basically said that he learned a lot about how to meet owners and how to be organized. He never said anything about learning training methods. I'm glad he was honest. As I've said before, none of the guys that worked for Lukas train anything like Lukas. Their styles are completely different.
Don't get me wrong. I'm not saying that these guys were not lucky to work for Lukas. Quite to the contrary. They were extremely fortunate to work for Lukas. Lukas teaches you the most important things. He teaches you how to to be successful. He teaches you the business aspect of how to be a succesful trainer which is the most imprtant thing. None of thse guys needed lessons on how to train. Guys like Pletcher, McLaughlin, and Hennig were already excellent horsemen. That is why Lukas hired them. Lukas hires the best. He always hired guys that were capable of running things when he wasn't there. He always hired the best and the brightest. He wouldn't hire some beginner that didn't know their stuff.
When you look at guys like Pletcher, McLAughlin, Hennig, Stewart, etc. I think that all of these guys owe much of their success to Lukas because he taught them all the intangibles of how to be a successful trainer.

R/P,

Pletcher and Hennig owe SOME of their success to DWL... I'd say they owe MUCH more of it to their trainer fathers.

In addition, Kieran and Dale Romans also got their starts at the same time as Hennig in Mark's dad's barn. (Kieran is married to Mark's sister).

Kieran also owes something to Del Carroll, who helped him when he was struggling right at the start of his training career...

But they ALL do look to DWL as the guy that taught them how to run a big time professional operation.

Steve

Yes, I agree with you 100%. There are alot of fans out there that don't know that. Many of the fans think that DWL taught these guys how to train. In reality, when thse guys were working for DWL, he was actually learning from them when it came to the actual horses.