Silver you\'re buddy cost me the Sham in every manner. I had the maiden on the rail. Great Ride by Valenzuela. The Lukas horse fought back at the end.
Been moving and have been away from all the fun. Interesting the things you find when you move, a Belmont Stakes Day program from 1985 when the Wood Man ran 1-2. My first visit to the Big Top Belmont Park.
A Garden State Park program from the same year that stated: The Racetrack of the 21st Century. OOOOOOOPS
Will Wayne be a player this year, it is hard to tell, still very early. The horse was very game, when he turned for home, switched and kicked a little I knew he had a shot. One thing is for sure if it comes down to who works the hardest between now and then Wayne wins it hands down.
As I overheard him one year tell the Chief Outrider when the horses left the paddock for the Derby, \"Lead him back\". Maybe this is the year.
I was impressed with Going Wild....I\'m not certain how fast they ran early yet, but I always take note when a lead horse is collared and then draws out again. At 9 marks theres danger a \"Comeonmom\" and a \"Holybull\" were at their distance limitation, but to my eye this is another good Golden Missile and I like that Strawberry Road on the back side. He looks tough. Tgraph prolly has a better feel for the race than I do. I don\'t even know the final time yet.
Typical Lukas MO...go, go, go........His \"Distinctive Speaker?\" in the Strub tried to run the same race. Burned himself to a crisp, but did in Love of Money with the lead at all costs Lukas strategy.
I miss the Wood Man. I had a few drinks with him in Miami. Not a real acquaintance, just had the chance to buy him a drink. 1985, that would be the year Spend a Buck skipped the Preakness for a Garden State Bonus correct? I think he missed the Belmont too. Creme Fraiche and Stephans Odyssey?
Post Edited (02-07-05 10:30)
>I miss the Wood Man.
You and me both. If there was ever a guy who could talk the talk, it was Woody.
\"If I aint thinkin of a Derby horse I aint thinkin of nothin.\"
\"The buildings get a lot taller on this side of the Hudson.\"
\"Lukas will never beat my five straight Belmonts.\"
The image of Woody, when the TV camera flashed on to him after the last of his five straight Belmonts, a 145 pound soaking wet noodle, giving the Michael Jordan style clinched fist thru gritted teeth, will last with me until I go to my grave.
He and Lukas had some kind of competitive rivalry, but thats the way it is at the top. There is usually only room for one.
Back to the anecdotal about Waynes comment to the Outrider as he filled in behind the last horse exiting the paddock to Go-To-The-Post for the Ky Derby. You could almost sense the kind of eagerness, excitement, and hopefullness in his voice as you would from anyone who was watching or attending. Regardless of how many times you have been there before or won the damn thing, it is still the most Exciting Two Minutes in Sport. And the blood starts pumping no matter who you are.
I have nothing against Lukas, but I seem to recall that taller buildings barb originally being pointed at one former marine named Charlie Wittingham (I don\'t recall which race the barb was delivered for though). Woody\'s streak started before Lukas had really hit it big -- in the early 1980s, to guys like Wittingham and Stephens, Lukas was really just a johnny come lately. Where was Lukas when Conquistador Cielo was winning the Metropolitan Mile? I do admit that by the end of the streak, Woody was focusing his competitive venom on Lukas.
As I said that\'s the way it is at the top. Even guys like Marino and Elway were big rivals because of the space they both wanted to occupy. Now they are respectful friends.
Yes Lukas was probably looked down upon by most of the traditionalists when be first burst upon the scene. However consider this, besides the Triple Crown when the Breeders Cup came on the scene he threw his entire operation at that event. Making it a solitary focus. People like Woody (Mac Miller)were a little reluctant to run horses that late in the year. Wayne did the same thing with the Ky Cup (on a much smaller scale) and all this leads to credibility of events trying to gain status.
Some of those Breeders who turned their backs on him after Althea and a few others may want to look him up and give a little bit of gratitude.
Woody\'s venom towards D. Wayne was typical at that time; the traditionalist hated the new-kid-on-the-block who wasn\'t a blueblood!
When Winning Colors wired the Derby (1988??) with no pressure, costing Woody\'s horse the win, he gave Preakness instructions to \"run her into the ground\" As much as I loved the Woodman, and hated Lukas, anytime you run a horse just to deny another is classless.
I disagree.
Love of Mom, probably needed that last race, but you can\'t be a great horse if you\'re one dimensional and Winning Colors was one dimensional. Lukas for that matter is one dimensional. Woody took it to Winning Colors because his horse was capable of doing it and he had to. He wasn\'t ready for a big effort and he caved and Colors did too. The horse that won was probably the best horse of that crop.
What would you have him do. Allow her another uncontested lead in a shorter race? Come on don\'t be silly. But Woody was trying to win with that horse. What about the rabbits Damascus\'s connections used against Dr. Fager?
CtC
Post Edited (02-08-05 11:09)
My favorite Woody story involves the 85
Belmont -- he had Stephans Odyssey for
Henryk deKwiatkowski and Creme Fraiche
for Elizabeth Moran (Brushwood) and both
owners are in the box with the Wood man.
At the quarter pole, Stephans Odyssey has
the lead and Henryk begins to jump up and
down and throws his arms around Woody in a big bear hug. Woody looks at him and says
\"Go hug Mrs Moran, her horse just went by
yours.\"
lmao Richie. I think i\'d heard that one years ago. Woody had a turn of phrase at times didn\'t he?.....lol
richiebee wrote:
> My favorite Woody story involves the 85
> Belmont -- he had Stephans Odyssey for
> Henryk deKwiatkowski and Creme Fraiche
> for Elizabeth Moran (Brushwood) and both
> owners are in the box with the Wood man.
>
> At the quarter pole, Stephans Odyssey has
> the lead and Henryk begins to jump up and
> down and throws his arms around Woody in a big bear hug. Woody
> looks at him and says
> \"Go hug Mrs Moran, her horse just went by
> yours.\"
>Lukas for that matter is one dimensional
Saying that Lukas is one dimensional is like saying that Michael Jordan was strictly a leaper.
Chuckles:
I beg to differ...Woody took a lot of heat in the media for his DIRECT ORDER to Eddie Maple
(I think he was the jock that day) to run her into the ground; yes, he had every right to take it to her, but he KNEW he couldn\'t win either!
As for Damascus...let me tell you something!
Where is it written that the closer has more of a right to win a race than the horse with speed? Damascus, never, and I mean never, beat the Doctor on a level field.
Dr. Fager is (IMHO) the best horse in my lifetime (I\'m 51) and nobody ever ran as fast and carried as much weight, and talk about records that will never be broken? 1968-best sprinter, handicap horse, grass champion, and horse of the year!
>Dr. Fager is (IMHO) the best horse in my lifetime (I\'m 51) and nobody ever ran as fast and carried as much weight, and talk about records that will never be broken? 1968-best sprinter, handicap horse, grass champion, and horse of the year!<
Did he ever run a -6? ;-)
Heck, there are sharp 20K claimers that probably put up faster TGs these days. :-)
Forty Niners jock that day was Pat Day and there was some bad blood between he Lukas and Klein for sometime after that incident. The only thing is Day didn\'t anything different than what Cordero did about every race. But Day and Lukas fought like Father and Son on several occasions.
Garden State Park came up in this string and that in some ways was the beginning of an era: The Drug Era.
When Spend a Buc shipped out of the Bay Shore and went to Garden State and received lasix he become a verifiable freak. Quickly lots of horses started to leave New York which didn\'t allow lasix to receive the miracle drug. Its wasn\'t that much longer about 8 years in the early 90\'s that New York dropped their anti-lasix stance and things have been somewhat for the worse for ever since.
If Brennan did do something positive it was he forced the Triple Crown to raise purses and create the large bonus they now offer because Spend A Buc skipped the rest of the series and went for the bonus Brennan was offering
fasteddie wrote:
> Chuckles:
>
> I beg to differ...Woody took a lot of heat in the media for his
> DIRECT ORDER to Eddie Maple
> (I think he was the jock that day) to run her into the ground;
If you ask me FastEddie, all Stephans was doing was making it clear to Day, there would be no \"Patient Pat Ride\" for the Preakness. He didn\'t sacrifice his own horse. He intended to put heat on Winning Colors and make her wilt. It just didn\'t work out as he planned. Where did she finish in the Belmont without \"Woody Ride Instructions\"? I think 49er was over the top for the Preakness. He was clearly a better horse.
> As for Damascus...let me tell you something!
>
> Where is it written that the closer has more of a right to win
> a race than the horse with speed?
I agree with the above. Theres plenty of fast pace horses that can\'t take a pace challenge and win at 10 marks because they won\'t concede the lead, but if they are left alone they\'ll cruise. Love of Mom may be in that category. You can\'t let those types have it all own their own way and Lukas didn\'t let Mom do it all alone in the Strub. Woody did the same in the 1988 Preakness.
>Damascus, never, and I mean
> never, beat the Doctor on a level field.
Damascus was a very good horse, but Dr. Fager was one of those loose on the lead speed freaks that has to be challenged or they keep going. Which was better? I\'ll give the nod to Fager, but Damascus was a heckuva horse. Did they met at 12 marks? I don\'t recall.
>did they met at 12 marks? I don\'t recall.<
No. I love Fager, but 10F was a tough task for him.
A lot has been written & said about D. Wayne, but there\'s no denying that from a business standpoint, he revolutionized the training game. This will sound odd but he, & to a lesser degree Tom Amoss, have had a significant impact on how I look at & handicap races. After a beat by a horse which I can\'t fathom on any level, I\'m interested in learning what made the connections think they had a chance, which is why I knew the Musique story. Commendable\'s Bel had me thinking the same thing, & after the race I read, & then had to reread, a piece D.Wayne did in the B-H explaining why he entered the horse & how he handicapped the race. Very different than the way I was looking at things, to put it mildly.
Fast fwd 3 or 4 yrs & I\'m in the paddock at Sar wishing a trainer luck in a bottom level $35k claimer, & along comes D. Wayne, who I exchange opinions with regarding the upcoming contest. The reason he was there, it turned out, was because at one time or another he had trained 5 of the horses, some a number of yrs ago. His dope in a nutshell was that he hadn\'t had any contact with the horses for a long time, but if the 5 he had trained at one time or another ran to their ability, they would finish in, you guessed it because otherwise why would I be typing this, the exact order in which they did finish. As far as I know, no track offers a quadrafecta, but the incident reminded me of the Commendable article, & is why I was not surprised to read, here I think, that he has been known to sit down & in a matter of minutes fill out a pk6 tix if he thinks the pool is large enough.
In contrast, I never learned anything about handicapping from Woody, which isn\'t to say he wasn\'t a great dopester. It was often very difficult for me to understand what Woody was saying in that voice of his during the decades he held court at the Campbell House bar, but looking back it seems entirely possible that the problem was on my end alone.
Mall, I\'m not sure I found the story, but I think the below link may be it. Commendable was the WORST horse in my HISTORY of handicapping the Triple Crown to win such a race. Bar NONE. I seem to recall he won once before and NEVER won again. He didn\'t run a 1:38 mile. He ran a 1:40 mile is my recollection. He finished in 2:31. The only slower time was Thunder Gulch\'s 2:32 in a year where all he had to beat was \"Star Standard\". You have to go back to 1944 to find slower races.
Commendable\'s track was a big, big sandy and the competition was essentially Aptitude, a Nafzger horse I can\'t remember and Impeachment. Did Red Bullet make that field? I can\'t recall. Commendable got the lead again, (Surprise, surprise another Lukas shocker), and the closers could not pick him up on that surface and those soft fractions. You can call Lukas a genius on that if you wish. I\'m just gonna call him Lukas. He ran Charismatic the same way in the \'99 Belmont. Come to think of it, he ran Golden Missile and Distinctive Speech that same way Saturday. I guess he couldn\'t read \"Love of mom\'s\" past performances...brilliant. He always enters regardless. After that race I flatly stated Commendable would never win again. He didn\'t show ANYTHING but an ability to go a little bit more than a two minute lick on the beach above the watermark without company.
Now your telling us that Lukas exhibited acumen by analyzing the race from the perspective of what the other horses would do? I could be missing something, but isn't\' that what trainers should always do? Isn\'t that why Tgraph gives advice upon placement? If you\'re saying Lukas was using a self-aggrandizing way of saying, \"we stole that one\", I wholeheartedly concur. But he is a shameless self-promoter. It's why he\'s not a horseman. Still he deserves credit for winning a tomato can Belmont with a tomato can horse at 16-1 before Aptitude found the elixir. Ask Mr. genius how much he had riding on the horse.
Lukas said:
\"I never bought into that hype,\" (Re: FuPig) \"I saw a talented horse who won the Derby by a length and a quarter with a perfect trip and a great ride, but I didn\'t see an invincible horse like a Spectacular Bid or a Secretariat. As this crop of 3-year-olds go at one another we\'re going to swap wins. (Wanna Bet Wayne?)
(I could be wrong, but isn\'t this just more Lukas B.S.? FuPeg wasn\'t even in that Belmont, how could he be \"scared away\".)
Sure, I\'m admittedly and unabashedly anti-Lukas. I despise him for a number of reasons. Foremost among them that he is the most over rated \"conditioner\" in the history of the game. That doesn\'t mean I haven\'t respected his ability to get a good horse out of the hordes made available to him. I will grant if he\'s found the new potion to mix with his old formula he could be a factor this year. Even so I predict his horses won\'t last but the season.
By the way, Commendable is in South Korea now. Why not?...he was never a horse here either.
http://www.pedigreequery.com/index.php?query_type=horse&search_bar=horse&h=COMMENDABLE&g=5&inbred=Standard&x2=n&pedloggedin=0
http://www.bloodhorse.com/tcm/features/belmont_trainer0612.html
p.s. you didn\'t talk to woody enough
CtC
Post Edited (02-08-05 19:32)
Unfortunately, that\'s not the article. Pretty sure but not positive it was a Q&A format. It would be great if you were able to locate it, but if not thks for trying.
Not looking to pick a fight, but D. Wayne is closing in on 600 career Graded Stakes wins. Many conditioners will never reach that mark in \"career\" wins. He\'s done something right.
He was the first to have a national stable, strings at various venues doing things the same way. Shipping was rarely a problem.
You\'ll rarely see one of his charges waste a big effort in an allowance race [see Hennig & Eddington last year]. He always said \"You can\'t win them unless you run in them\"
Chuckles:
We\'ll have to agree to disagree; beating a horse tag-team style is not the same as beating
him straight-up. I don\'t believe Fager & Damascus ever met at 1-1/2. As for Woody, he DID sacrifice Forty Niner because he let his emotions get the best of him; he couldn\'t stand Lukas!
FYI: One of the amazing things about Fager was is ability to run his 2nd quarter faster than his first, and did so several times.
I go back to the \'67 Woodward when Buckpasser and Damascus ran THREE rabbits against him,(Hedevar, Great Power, and Handsome Boy) and he still finished 3d. His only off-the-board finish was in the Jersey Derby, a race he won by 10, but was DQ\'d for \"crowding the field\" on the first turn...total BS!
fasteddie wrote:
> Chuckles:
>
> We\'ll have to agree to disagree; beating a horse tag-team style
> is not the same as beating
> him straight-up. I don\'t believe Fager & Damascus ever met at
> 1-1/2
Giving Fager the nod on \"brilliance\", I\'d have to come down on Damascus at 10 marks and beyond.
As for Woody, he DID sacrifice Forty Niner because he
> let his emotions get the best of him; he couldn\'t stand Lukas!
>
Regarding the \"he couldn\'t stand Lukas\" part, you certainly can\'t hold that against Woody. The Wood Man believed you do your best to do right by your horse and you only bring a horse to Churchill Downs that is a legitimate horse. Thats the way horsemen are.
When Easy Goer was life and death to nose Awe Inspiring in the 1989 Derby, the reporters asked Shug if he had misjudged the ability of his \"star\". Shug told them, that he worked with the horses everyday and was able to evaluate them in a myriad number of ways. Finally he said that Easy Goer was many lengths faster than Awe Inspiring and Shug knew Goer had not run his race at Churchill Downs. He said Goer\'s dam was Relaxing and he said that \"she wouldn\'t pick up a foot in the goo\". Now, why do I digress about Easy Goer again?....Well, he\'s the best or second best horse I\'ve ever seen and what would you think of Shug if he couldn\'t determine who was best in his barn and ran him for a tag?....Not once, but twice?
If a man really can\'t say which horse he\'s high on in his barn, what do you think that says about his big race training technique? Does it make you contemplate he\'s got something else he\'s relying upon other than his ability to evaluate his horses?
Woody didn\'t run his Triple Crown horses for a Tag either. Horsemen know their horses.
CtC
If Sunday Silence beat him 3 out of 4, with the lone victory being at a freak track (Belmont), why would he be better??
>If Sunday Silence beat him 3 out of 4, with the lone victory being at a freak track (Belmont), why would he be better??<
Yea, I don\'t understand that one either.
1 win out of 4 races and the win came on his home track, on a day with an outside closer bias, at 12 furlongs.
Woody didn\'t run his Triple Crown horses for a Tag either. Horsemen know their horses.
almost like a biblical quote...so simple it\'s not even arguable.