Why Lukas went downhill

Originally Posted by Rupert Pupkin

I'm not saying a horse will come back better than ever if they had a serious injury. I'm saying that they will often times come back better than ever if you turn them out before a problem gets serious.

If you look at many of the good trainers, their win percentage is just as high with a horse coming off a 6 month layoff as with a horse that just ran a month ago. I don't have Pletcher's stats in front of me for horses coming back from a 6 months to a 1 year layoff, but I know his win percenatge for horses that haven't run for somewhere between 45 days and 6 months is 26%.

If you think that Lukas taught any of those guys how to trainn, you are crazy. He only hired guys that were great horsemen.

Oh come on now Rup, thats an anti Lukas bias showing.
Those guys sure feel like he taught them something. They all use the white bridle as a tribute to their old boss, and none of them bash him.
I just don't buy that they were already good enough to go on their own and simply became paid slaves because they wanted the challenge.

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by oracle80

Oh come on now Rup, thats an anti Lukas bias showing.
Those guys sure feel like he taught them something. They all use the white bridle as a tribute to their old boss, and none of them bash him.
I just don't buy that they were already good enough to go on their own and simply became paid slaves because they wanted the challenge.

None of those guys train anything like Lukas. If he was so good, you would think they would have a similar style. When they interviewed McLauglin about his days with Lukas, the only thing he said with regards to what he learned from Lukas was that "He teaches you how to get owners and stuff like that."