Lukas

>did they met at 12 marks? I don\'t recall.<

No. I love Fager, but 10F was a tough task for him.

[Mall]

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.

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

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)

[Mall]

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.

[gvido]

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\"

[fasteddie]

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!

[Chuckles_the_Clown2]

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

[P-Dub]

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.

[shanahan]

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.