Lukas Handicapping Angle

AS long as he keeps running in baby races I'm happy. People still bet his horses blind and hard even though he's winning at a 4% clip. Best value around Lukas in a baby race, all other horses have value.

[Rupert Pupkin]

I was the first one to say that horse in Europe should not have run. If Fallon thought the horse didn't feel right, the horse should have been scratched. I don't know all the details, but if Fallon thought the horse was lame and O'Brien insited on running the horse, then O'Brien is totally to blame.
With regards to Lukas, he obviously is going to get more criticism when one of his horses breaks down than other tainers and rightfully so. He is known for running horses that are dead-lame. He runs his horses no matter what. When one of his horses breaks down, it is usually not a fluke. I don't know much about Michael Matz, but I don't think he breaks down a lot of horses. It appears that what happened to Barbaro was a fluke thing. Why would anyone crticize Matz? That's a totally different situation from Lukas, who breaks down so many that some insurance companies will not insure his horses.
An analogy would be to compare a 50 year old man who has had 4 automobile accidents in his life to another 50 year old guy that has had 25 automobile accidents and was drunk for all of them. Danzig would say, "Why are they criticizing this guy with the 25 drunk driving accidents. That other guy has had accidents too. Why don't you criticize him?" The reason is obvious. In the case of the guy with the 4 crashes, there is nothing you can say. People have accidents even if they're really careful. With the other guy who has 25 accidents, these accidents were preventable. When you drive drunk, you greatly increase your chances of getting in an accident.
When you are a trainer, you greatly increase the chances of having your horses break down, if you keep injecting the horses and force them to run when they are hurt. That's why D Wayne's horses keep breaking down. That's why D Wayne gets so much criticism. Why is that so hard for you to understand?

[Danzig]

what is so hard to understand is where you come up with an analogy like that!
i'm not stupid richi (unlike your new moniker, sheesh). i don't belond to a dwl fan club, i was never a fan. by the same token i don't understand why others are so quick to pile on. he's the big guy, an easy target. hell, fire away. i'm sure lukas will dry his tears with $100 bills....

[Rupert Pupkin]

He's not the big guy. He can't win a race. The big guys are Pletcher and Frankel.
My analogy was perfect. Do you understand what an analogy is? I love people who always will say that an analogy is not good but they don't explain why it's not good. The anology was perfect. I explained why the analogy was a good analogy. It was a good analogy because in both cases you had individuals engaging in reckless, high-risk behavior. If you are constantly driving drunk, you are going to get in a lot of accidents. If you are constanly running horses that are hurt, you're going to have a lot of horses break down. It's that simple.
With regard to the poster who said that Lukas' percentage of breakdowns is high because he has a lot of horses, that is totally inaccurate. A trainer that has a lot of horses will have a higher total number of breakdowns, but he will not have a higher percenatge of breakdowns. If one trainer has 1,000 horses over a 20 year period and 50 of those horses break down, that means that 5% of his horses broke down. If another guy had 400 horses and he had 20 horses break down, then that would also be 5%. These guys would have an equal number of breakdowns in terms of percentages.

[Rupert Pupkin]

The notion that Lukas is only criticized because he is a big trainer is absurd. If people just wanted to criticize someone because they were on top, they would be knocking Pletcher and Frankel. Lukas is criticized for legitimate reasons. As I said before, he is the only trainer out there that will just keep running a horse even after the horse has a serious injury. He will not turn a horse out. That is why he is criticized. That is why you never see his horses come back and do well of layoffs.
If a groom or assitant trainer goes up to Todd Plethcer or Bob Baffert and tells them that a horse is starting to get a bad tendon, the horse will get some time off. If one of Lukas' assistants or grooms tells him that the horse is starting to get a tendon, Lukas ignores it. He says, "Oh that's nothing. That's not a big deal. This horse can keep running." I heard one story where an assistant trainer told Lukas that a horse had some swelling in his tendon. Lukas told the assistant that he was wrong and that it was just a cosmetic thing.

Rupert, my point exactly. If you are a great trainer you can win with million dollar yearlings or what you have to work with. I could understand if this guy went from 25% winner on the big circuits to 10% if he wasn't buying every horse he wanted. He went from 25% to 3% after he didn't have every expensive horse in the country.

He did revolutinize the sport, but not as a great trainer. He did it by selling big owners into buying every horse he wanted, and have the best trainers working for him (Pletcher) making sure they won.

[Rupert Pupkin]

Lukas still gets great horses. He used to outspend everyone by 50x. Now he just outspends them by 10x. He was at the 2 year old sales last year spending more than anyone. I was sitting right next to him at Barretts last year. He was buying the best horses at the sale for $500,000 a piece. In addition, he bought some really expensive yearlings. He bought one yearling for the Lewises for around $2 million. If a trainer has a $2 million bankroll for a yearling sale, that is a lot of money. You can get some really nice horses for $200,000 a piece. That would buy you 10 really nice yearlings. There are very few trainers that have a $2 million bankroll for a single sale. I would estimate that less than 1% of trainers have that kind of money to spend. Lukas had way more money than that. He spent $2 million on a single horse.
In addition to all the expensive horses he bought last year, he also got a lot of really nice home-breds. He got a bunch of Storm Cats.
It's absurd to say that he doesn't get good horses any more and that he doesn't spend much money any more. It is simply not true. He doesn't have nearly as much money to spend as he used to, but he still has more than 99% of the other trainers.