The Career of D. Wayne Lukas

[Rupert Pupkin]

Originally Posted by King Glorious

I think of Lukas in the same way I think of a coach like John Calipari at Kentucky. Cal is not going to apologize for his way of doing things and neither will Lukas. Both have questionable methods and are criticized for their sort of assembly line approach but they get results. If you are an investor and you're looking for a guy to develop a horse for you that can be successful at four or five, Lukas isn't your guy. But if you're looking at a quick return and someone that can get you some success on the biggest stage you'd be a fool not to call him. He knows what it takes to get there.

He obviously did great back in the 1980s. There is no debate about that. We can debate as to why he did so well, but there is no debating the fact that he did incredibly well.

But when you look at the past 15 years, I think his numbers are horrible. And it's not as if he is not getting good horses. He still gets great horses. Just look at the Preakness. They paid $425,000 for Will Take Charge. They paid $250,000 for Oxbow and they paid $250,000 for Titletown Five. When you're getting tons of $250,000 and up yearlings and 2 year olds, you're going to win some stakes races.

If you give any trainer 20-30 two year olds and yearlings that went for $250,000 and up, they are going to win plenty of stakes races.

For him, Lukas has been on fire the last year or so. For him being on fire means he was at a 7% win clip in graded stakes races going into today. He was 6 for 88. Let's compare that to a a couple of other trainers. Doug O'Neil (who I am no fan of) is winning graded stakes races at a 13% clip (11 for 82 going into today). Shug McGaughey was winning graded stakes races at a 29% clip going into today (20 for 68).

When a guy is getting practically nothing but $250,000 horses and he's winning graded stakes races at a 7% clip, I don't think that's too good. And if you look at the past 7-8 years or so, I think the number is more like 5% at the most. That's not too good.