D. Wayne Lukas
Glendora, California
1998 Galbreath Award
(Transcript of Lecture)
The
John W. Galbreath Award for Outstanding Entrepreneurship in the Equine Industry
has been presented each year since 1990 to one individual whose success within
the industry has been due to the utilization of uncommon abilities or innovative
approaches to business management. Each recipient has had a positive impact on
the equine industry because of his entrepreneurship, and has gained widespread
respect for it.
John W. Galbreath, in whose name the award is presented,
distinguished himself internationally as both a horseman and a businessman. No
one else has ever bred and raced winners of the Kentucky Derby (Chateugay and
Proud Clarion) and also the Epsom Derby (Roberto). He was the owner of Darby Dan
Farm (producer of over 90 stakes winners) and the Pittsburgh Pirates baseball
team, as well as chairman of the board of Churchill Downs. His business
interests included large-scale development projects around the world.
Winners
of the Galbreath Award have been: John A. Bell, 1990; James E. Bassett, 1991;
Cothran Campbell, 1992; John R. Gaines, 1993; Ami Shinitzki, 1994; Robert Clay,
1995; B. Thomas Joy, 1996; John Lyons, 1997; and D. Wayne Lukas, 1998. Recipients are invited to the
UofL campus in the fall of their award year to deliver the annual Galbreath
Lecture to students, faculty, and guests, usually dealing with their own
experiences and their personal philosophies.
D.
Wayne Lukas is the most recognized Thoroughbred trainer in North America. Not
only has he been Thoroughbred racing’s top money-earning trainer in 14 of the
last 15 years, but he has participated in almost all the important stakes events
during that period. Lukas reached this pinnacle by doing things differently. He
built one of the most professional training operations in Thoroughbred racing.
Lukas has raised the bar for those who condition horses, and he has raised the
expectations of owners, with respect to the standard of care and performance
delivered by their trainers.
The John W. Galbreath Award is a project of the Equine Industry
Program (EIP), an academic unit of the University of Louisville’s AACSB-accredited
College of Business and Public Administration. Created by an act of the Kentucky
State Legislature, the EIP is the only equine program in North America that
offers a BS degree in business administration. Through 1998, more than 350
undergraduate students have taken EIP courses. Other EIP functions, in addition
to teaching, are industry research and professional service.
Copyright 1998, Equine Industry Program
Equine
Industry Program
College of Business and Public Administration
University of Louisville
Louisville, KY 40292
Dr. Robert G. Lawrence, Director
Office: 502.852.7617
Fax: 502.852.7672
ROBERT G. LAWRENCE:
Welcome
to the 1998 Galbreath Lecture.
This is actually the second part of this process. The Galbreath Award is a
bronze trophy that is presented formally at the convention of the American Horse
Council in Washington. We give it there because that organization represents all
breeds and all interests, which makes it the most ecumenical group in the equine
industry. And, indeed, if you look down our list of Galbreath Award winners over
the past decade, I think it’s obvious that this is an ecumenical award.
We’ve honored a variety of entrepreneurs – a pioneering stallion syndicator,
a magazine publisher, an innovative bloodstock agent, a breeding farm innovator,
a leader in racing partnerships, the head of the world’s largest sales
company, an entrepreneurial harness track operator, and, of course, last year
John Lyons, an outstanding trainer of horses and
people, but honored mainly for being what I would call a “symposium guru,“ a
true marketing genius.
Today, we are pleased to bring you the
trainer of racehorses. To say that Wayne Lukas raised the standard for
Thoroughbred trainers is an understatement. Wayne not only raised the bar, he
exploded it. I won’t recount all his achievements – the Eclipse awards, the
many champions he’s trained, the Breeders’ Cup winners, the Triple Crown
records. I won’t list them because they are not
the reason he is here. The standard we
are interested in is the one he set as an entrepreneur. You don’t have to be
an economist to see where the big purse money is in this sport, but you can’t
get there without a program. Everyone familiar with Wayne’s operations will
tell you that he has always had a program, a vision, from the first day in the
business. As a result, today, whenever there’s a big day or a big race, he’s
there or he’s knocking at the door.
He set the standard in operating stables in multiple
states, taking that to the nth degree. From an operational standpoint, there are
a number of things you can say about him. His work habits are legendary. If you
want to catch him at the track, call about 4:30 in the morning and he’ll be
there. And people say, “God help
you if you ever go to a horse sale with Wayne because you’ll never get to
bed.” Of the 19 champions he’s trained, he selected seven at auction. And,
finally, he is probably the best-known, most eloquent, and most positive
spokesman for this sport. The bottom line is that is it great to have Wayne
Lukas here today as our 1998 Galbreath winner.
D. WAYNE
LUKAS:
Thank you, Bob.
This is a treat. I graduated from the University of Wisconsin in 1957, then got
a master’s degree there in 1960. I taught briefly at the university, then went
on to one of the top high schools in the state of Wisconsin. Then, in 1967, I
walked away from education, went into training horses, and never looked back. I
was actually training horses even while I was teaching, which I loved dearly,
but the desire to do that which I most
wanted to do, for which I really had a deep passion, kept pulling and pulling at
me all the time that I was teaching.
So, it’s a real treat for me today to be here, back
on a university campus. There is a nostalgic feeling being back in a
classroom-type situation and being able to share with you today some things that
I have experienced since 1967. I’m hoping that I can touch on some things that
will stimulate your thinking a little.
I’m going to take a little different approach,
perhaps, than some of the previous lecturers in this series. I feel this way
about it – there are countless tapes, books, classes, and other resources that
you can go to for secrets of success. There are guys on television daily who
have made a living out of nothing but success; that is, being a success at
telling others how to be a success. I’ve researched some of these guys, and I
haven’t found anything that they were a success at.
But they have a formula that they present as the keys to your success.
Instead of taking that approach, and telling you how I
got from A to Z, telling you where I got into this business, and what has
happened since I resigned as a teacher in 1967, I’d rather stimulate your
thoughts a little, and talk about a few things you might not find in that “Ten
Easy Steps to Success” course (or whatever’s out there). Maybe you’ll be
able to take something away from here that truly works. I know it has worked for
me and for many of my assistants. I actually have six former assistants who are
in the business right now and all of them are successful. If fact, they are so
successful that now they’re starting to whip up on me, and I’m a little bit
concerned about what I’ve done there.
Let me first make this point. The day is gone when your
education, your ethnic background, your religion, your inheritance, or anything
else will guarantee success. You can go to school here for 20 years, and get all
kinds of degrees, but it won’t guarantee success. You can inherit a fortune
from your father or mother, but that won’t guarantee that you’ll be
successful. You can be in a situation in which someone else is making all the
phone calls or pushing the buttons for you and you may not be a success. Every
day television, newspapers, and magazines tell of guys with a IQs of 180, graduates of leading universities, who are sleeping under
viaducts in L.A. And you can find kids who have inherited $20 or $30 million dollars from a company that their
father built, and they’ll go through it in a few years. These things do not
guarantee success.
If I could give you only one piece of advice, meaning
the young people in here, it’s this. If I were going to go out and start over,
I would make one goal stand above everything else – to try to own my own
business. There is tremendous personal satisfaction – in the sense of being
able to do what you can do with your life and to go as far as you can – in
owning your own business. Now, there are pitfalls. You might have to work for somebody else for a while. You
might have to take a job that you don’t like. But if I were you, I would scrap
and scrape and save and push and work night after night after night until I
could get to the point where I could own my own business and put my own ideas
into effect.
The greatest satisfaction in the world today comes from
being able to be your own boss and to own your business. I would strive for that
all the time. Now, people say, “Well, there aren’t as many opportunities
anymore.” That’s baloney.
It’s a total copout to say that you can’t succeed because there are no more
frontiers, or no more avenues. You just use your imagination, your intelligence,
your ambition, and you will come up with something. Just get that goal, start
thinking about it, and if you have to work for somebody along the way, so be it.
When I left teaching, I walked away from the security
of retirement, health insurance and a steady salary, although the salary
wasn’t very good in 1967. But you know what bothered me most about teaching?
And I say this with all due respect to the other teachers here. It didn’t
matter how many games I won as a basketball coach, or how many students I sent
off to the university with a good understanding of the subjects I taught. The
guy down the hall was 58- years old and slept through his classes, yet he was
getting paid almost double what I was getting. That kind of system bothered me,
and I think that kind of system should bother you.
I hope education has advanced since I was there and
that is no longer the case. I hope teachers are rewarded for what they do. But that situation bothered me and is, more than any other single thing,
what drove me out of the teaching profession. It was “master’s degree and
four years experience – $8,400," and “master’s degree and six years
experience – $9,400.” It didn’t matter whether you did a good job or a bad
job. I don’t ever want to be in that kind of situation.
All you have to do, in my opinion, is discover some
need and then fill it. Throughout history, the greatest advances have come as a
result of “need crises.” Think about that a minute. All the great
advancements, those from which we have had our most important leaps forward as a
society, have come from need. Every time we’ve had a major crisis, when
society needed something desperately, we have had advancement. Well, there are
many needs out there today. You just have to find one and start developing your
own business.
I came into this profession – training racehorses –
when it was already three- or four-hundred years old. It is rich in tradition
and it’s a stereotyped business. Nobody teaches anything. There are no
“how-to” books in the library with chapters on “How to Win the Kentucky
Derby.” You can’t punch it up on the computer and print out the formula. It
is a hand-me-down business and nobody really wants to share anything. Those of
you who are students in the Equine Industry Program have no shot at learning how
to train a racehorse unless you can get next to somebody who will level with
you, confide in you, and teach you.
I believe one reason for our success is that we teach
our assistants every day. We encourage them to ask why, and to take nothing for
granted. When I ask them to do something, I want
them to ask me why, and then I’ll tell them at least why I do it. Those
former assistants, who are now on their own, are doing the same thing. But there
was never a “how-to” book. The business of training horses was an
established, stereotyped business without much innovation.
I started out very small, sleeping in stalls in Park
Jefferson, South Dakota. If you’ve never heard of that track, Park Jefferson,
it’s because it’s no longer there. The purses there were about three and
four hundred dollars a race. I don’t say this to impress you. I just thought I
would give you a little background into where I started.
As I looked around, one thing that struck me was that
people were allowing the track they were at to dictate their business. They
would sit at Belmont Park, Santa Anita, or Churchill Downs, with their stables
– whether they had 5 runners or 25 – and they would try to adapt to whatever
the program in front of them offered. The problem is that horses are athletes,
and, obviously, not all athletes (human or horses) have the same ability. Yet,
they should all be able to play at some level. If we bought ten yearlings for a
client, I always felt a responsibility to try to make every one profitable if at
all possible. Well, just as not all football players can play in the NFL, not
all horses can run at Santa Anita or Belmont Park. So, what do you do?
Those of you who know the horse industry understand
that of 20 horses, two really good ones is a high percentage…a very
high percentage. Do you flush the
other 18? No.
I said, “Here’s what we’ll do. We’ll set up
divisions, almost like a class system. We’ll take these horses that are above
average and send them to Monmouth Park. We’ll take others to Omaha, Nebraska
(which was running at the time), and we’ll take the lesser ones to a place
like Beulah Park.” If you came to
me as a client and said you’d invest a certain amount, I could promise you
that we would try our very best to make that horse profitable.
Now, some nice things happened when we did that. First
of all, we had to set up a whole network of stables across the country under one
banner. We used the McDonald’s principle. We set them up, we told them what to
do, we gave them the principles, and we said, “If you follow this, you’ll be
successful,” and, of course, they were answerable to me alone, and I mean really
answerable to me. And we started getting the lesser horses into lesser races at lesser tracks, while we took the
champions to Santa Anita and to Belmont and to the major races like the Breeders'
Cup and the Derby. We started to make every horse work.
That single innovation is what enabled us to develop 15
national champions in the last 16 years. I
don’t know more than those other guys. Hell, probably a lot less! I can name
you lots of trainers in Kentucky who knew more about horses than I did. But
I’ll tell you what I knew – I knew
that the idea was to keep clients happy. Clients like Gene Klein, who owned the
San Diego Chargers, and Bill Young, who owns Overbrook Farm, were happy when we
got all their horses to show a profit.
They loved it when we didn’t have to write off 85 percent of them as failures, or
carry their high training bills for two or three years to the point where they
could not be productive. I’ve always said that the happiest clients I have are
those that smile on television Saturday afternoon and at the bank Monday
morning. They’re easy to get along with. So, that’s exactly what we did.
Another thing is, if you’re going to be successful,
you have to take what I call a “rifle” approach. Too many people take a “shotgun” approach. Now, if you’re familiar
with rifles and shotguns, you know that a shotgun will throw a pattern out there
and while you’re more liable to hit something, you are going to scatter. A
rifle, if it’s aimed right, will hit right on the bull’s eye. I don’t
think you can be successful – whether it’s in horse training or in anything
else that you choose to do in your life – by taking a “shotgun” approach.
I think you have to decide what it is you want to do, you have to get focused
right on that target, and then you have to go for it directly. When you spread
yourself by taking a shotgun approach, you’re going to water down the process,
your effort won’t be as concentrated, and you’re just not going to be very
successful.
In 1993, my number-one assistant and only son, Jeff,
was run over by Tabasco Cat, and was in a coma for 32 days. When he come out of
that coma – and I’m happy to able to say that he is now healthy – but when
he came out of that coma, he had to go through extensive therapy…physical and
mental, and through a lot of evaluations, and so forth. I went to a lot of his
sessions because I felt I could provide some moral support.
Early on, they were trying to jar him back to what he
did for a living. And the therapist was sitting in front of him and she was
saying “Jeff, what do you do? What
do you do?” Of course, she wanted
him to say that he was a Thoroughbred horse trainer. But he didn’t respond and
didn’t respond. Finally, he looked at her and said, “We keep it simple.” And, when she asked what that meant, he replied, “We keep it simple and
we stay on target.”
Well, that is something that we have always said and
done. We try hard not to complicate things. And I think business should be
simple. You fill some need or you provide some service, and you are rewarded for
it. Don’t complicate it. And, especially, don’t create situations to make
yourself the manager for an entrepreneur.
I train horses for one of the biggest computer geniuses
in the country right now – a guy named Satish Sanan, who has made quite a
splash as a yearling buyer and will be heard from in years to come. I have sat
in on some of his board meetings, and it looks to me as if they have guys on top
of guys on top of guys, all of whom are creating situations for the guy below to
solve, who then creates a situation for the next guy to solve, and so on down
the line. Don’t create a situation just to make yourself a manager, or that
allows you make decisions that are unnecessary. Spend your energy and time doing
only those things that relate directly
to getting to the winner’s circle, or to getting the sale, or to getting your
product out, or to satisfying your customer.
Most people are dreamers. You can’t believe the
letters and resumes that come across my desk from people who want to get
involved in our program. God bless them. I know their hearts are in the right
place, but it is amazing that they all have the same theme.
“I’ll do anything. I’m dedicated. I’ll work
seven days a week. I want to be a part of it. It’s a lifelong dream. I’ll
sleep on the floor, if you ask me. I’ll run through walls. Whatever you ask me
to do, I’ll do it.” And so
I’ll often say, “Well, fine. That’s wonderful. I like all these things
you’re telling me. We are going to test you on that.” But then, usually in about two weeks, they’re saying, “My God, I
don’t know if I can handle this anymore. I am totally worn out.” So, many of them fail our test. But
it’s because they, like most people, are only dreamers.
If you can decide what you’re going to do, if you can
define your goal clearly and realistically, and then if you can start making a
definite plan, I think you’ve got a great chance at success. Aristotle said
that man is a “goal-seeking animal” and that our lives have purpose and
meaning only when we have a goal. Now, granted, that’s an age-old adage that
people have said for hundreds of years – “Get a goal.” But the fact that
it’s old doesn’t diminish the truth of it.
Now, you will find that as soon as you get your goal
– no matter how lofty or modest it is – that people are going to start
telling you that you’ll never make it, that it’s just a pipe-dream. We have
a plaque on the wall of all of our stables – just a small plaque – and it
expresses this matter of luck. “Success is a matter of luck. Ask any loser.”
And we believe that. But you’ll
have people that will discourage you on a daily basis and tell you that you
can’t do that.
I still remember the day back in 1978 when I was
sitting on a bed with three or four of my buddies watching the Kentucky Derby on
television. We were at Bay Meadows in San Francisco. We were in the Quarter
Horse business at the time, but I’d been thinking that year of maybe getting
into Thoroughbreds. As we were watching the Derby, I said, just thinking out
loud, “I’m going to win one of these classics race within the next three
years.” And those guys laughed so hard that they literally rolled off the bed,
and they began kidding me about it. Well, that was 1978. In 1980, Codex won the
Preakness. It was the first classic
we ever ran in and we won it.
If you’re willing to face the odds and take the
risks, you have a shot of winning. You might have to put everything you have on
the line, but what have you got to lose? What have
you got to lose? How old are you? At your age you could start over five, six,
eight times. I wouldn’t worry. Hell, I switched gears at 35 and I’d switch
them again tomorrow if I thought I could better myself. Don’t ever consider
the idea that you can’t or else you won’t take the chance. Jump right in
with both feet. Scrape and save and do everything short of stealing to get the
money to start. You got something you want to do? Go for it. If you fail,
that’s all right. Just buckle up and go again.
What do you think the odds are of a guy graduating from
a high school of 350 students in a town of 8,000 people in northern Wisconsin
where there’s nothing but dairy and potato farmers? There wasn’t a racetrack
within 300 miles. You can’t even get the race results in my hometown today,
let alone in the 1950s. Forgive this personal reference, but I went to a
one-room school from the first to the eighth grades. One teacher taught all
eight grades. One group would come up and she would work with them a little
while, and then they’d go back and the next grade would come up and she‘d
give them something to do. It may sound crazy, like an Abe Lincoln story, but
it’s true. I graduated second in my class. A girl named Charlene was first and
I was second; there were two of us in the class all the way through from the
fourth to the eighth grades.
Well, what are the odds of a kid from that background,
from a non-racing part of the country, getting to be the national champion
Thoroughbred trainer? Or getting to the Kentucky Derby viewing stand at
Churchill Downs three times? Or getting a Breeders’ Cup trophy on thirteen
occasions? Yes, it is possible but you have to aim high. I never lacked
confidence or ambition, and I always had a goal along these lines. I say that
only because I hope it’ll mean something.
Einstein said we work at only ten-percent of our
capacity. Just think of that! This means that you think you’re getting
something done but you’re only doing a tenth of what you could. It’s amazing
what you can do if you work at it. When I first got into the Thoroughbred
business, I used a legal pad to budget myself 20 hours a day. Now, when you put
20 hours a day on a yellow pad, you’ll overmatch yourself. Fifteen minutes for
breakfast, 20 minutes for lunch, 20 minutes for dinner, to sleep at midnight, up
at three. I mean you write it all
down. Well, everyday you might have to roll over some things you didn’t get
done, but I guarantee it will expand your output.
When I first started training horses – and forgive me
for using another personal reference – all I wanted to do was train a horse at
some pari-mutuel racetrack. I had been running at county fairs where they
didn’t bet and all I wanted – my goal – was to run a horse where they
could actually bet on it. I wanted
to have that experience.
When we won the Kentucky Derby in 1988 with Winning
Colors – only the third filly ever to win it in the history of that race – I
went home and thought about that original goal. I counted up and, as near as I
could calculate it, I had put in 180,000 hours of work to get there. Now, I’ll
tell you what. You want to be a better student? You want to be a better parent?
You want to have a business of your own? Whatever you want, put 180,000 hours
working toward it and see what happens. If you make a commitment of that kind,
it will change your life.
Vince Lombardi, the legendary coach of the Green Bay
Packers, once said, “The quality of a
person’s life is in direct proportion to his commitment to excellence –
regardless of his chosen field of endeavor.” You may not be the smartest.
You may not have the financial base to do what you want. But don’t ever let
them outwork you. Do not let them outwork you. If you have to crawl, if you’re
tired, you get back in there. If they beat you down, come back at them. Never
let them outwork you. There is no excuse for getting outworked. They might be
smarter, they might have better resources, more assets – but don’t ever let
them outwork you.
We have something in our organization we call EE&I
– Energy, Enthusiasm, and Intensity. When things aren’t going right, I say,
“Turn up the EE&I.” In fact, this morning I said, “We’re going to be
up against it a little bit in this Breeders’ Cup – let’s turn up the
EE&I. Let’s get it going, and let’s beat these guys.” And I think that that’s the thing you’ve got to do. Think of it like
a breakfast of eggs and bacon. The chicken has involvement, but the pig makes a
real commitment. I tell my people we need pigs. We need that all-out commitment.
Another thing, you
have to be there. If you own your own business, you have to set a standard for
your people. Actually, I try to intimidate my help. I don’t want any of those
guys to get there before me or leave before me. When they’re tired, I want
them to look over at me and they say, “How in the hell does he keep going?”
We have a statement that the speed of the leader determines the rate of the
pack. As a matter of fact, I was on an airplane the other day and happened to
see it in “Reader’s Digest” attributed to me, and I was quite proud of
that. Again, the statement is, “the speed of the leader determines the rate of
the pack.”
You’re the leader, and if you’re there making the
effort, your presence will increase the efficiency of whatever you’re trying
to do. It’ll affect your co-workers, your help, your whole operation.
Once, when I was a boy living in Wisconsin, I wanted
extra money to buy a horse. There was a processor in our town that canned string
beans. They furnished the seed, which you would plant, and then at harvest time,
the cannery would buy the beans. There was money to be made, and I did very
well. I was about 11 or 12 at the time and I rented a few acres from my uncle
and planted beans. We didn’t have a lot of machinery to work with so we had to
hoe our weeds by hand. I had a brother, two years younger than me, and I
enlisted him to help.
One night at dinner, my dad asked “How many rows did
you guys get done today?” I said, “I don’t know – 40 or 50.” He looked at us, and he said, “That’s not enough.”
And I said “Well, that’s all we could do.” He said “Tomorrow,
I’ll come out and help you – and we’ll do better.” I said “Wow,
that’s great.” The next day my brother and I got out there first and started
hoeing. My dad pulled his old pickup truck under an oak tree at the end of the
field, and then a neighbor farmer pulled up. They sat there together all
afternoon visiting and drinking a big jar of iced tea that my mother had fixed
while my brother and I did all the hoeing.
When we got to dinner that night, my dad said, “Well,
boys, how’d you do today?” And I said, “We did a lot better. We got 80 or
90 rows.” He said, “That’s more like it.” I said, “Dad, let me ask you
something. You told us you were come out there and help us. All you did was sit
there and drink iced tea.” He said, “Son, when you counted your rows today,
mine were in there.”
He was on the
job, and you need to be on your job. They say the greatest fertilizer in the
world is under the shadow of the foreman. And I believe that.
You have to have confidence in what you’re doing. I
think you have to believe that you're going in the right direction. Of course,
sometimes you will have to back up. You will find failure and you’ll have to
head in another direction. It’s kind of like being a runner in a football game
– you run off tackle, it doesn’t work; you run to the left, it doesn’t
work; you try the middle, it doesn’t work; you keep trying till you break
through and score.
It is not going to be easy. You will face adversity.
You will have some setbacks. I had some that I thought were going to wipe me
out, devastate me – and yet I think that they made me stronger.
Bill Young, the owner of Overbrook, and one of the
leading citizens in the Commonwealth of Kentucky, told me one time, “Trouble
gives you a chance to show your true character.”
In 1990, I had a filly that every trainer would love to
have. Her name was Landaluce and she ran so fast that people checked their
videos to see if they were correct. In just five outs, she got so famous that
she had 2 or 3 minutes on ABC Nightly News. That’s how good she was. And, by
gosh, she died unexpectedly. We thought we would never recover from that. It was
a devastating blow. Here I’d worked all my life to get one like that – I had
wanted a Secretariat or one of those great ones – and I thought it had finally
happened to me and then we lost it, just like that. But it caused us to restock,
to take inventory of what we were doing, and to go on.
I’ll tell you how you get by those feelings. If you
get into a situation that knocks you on your back – hopefully, it knocks you
on your back because if you’re looking up, you can get up – if you get into
that kind of situation, I’ll tell you what the support system is. I found it
out through a tragedy with my son and some very tough setbacks in this business.
It is your attitude. It’s just that simple. Your attitude and what you think
and perceive will get you over almost any adversity and hurdle. The most
important decision you make every single day is your attitude adjustment in the
morning. Make that adjustment, make that choice – and it is a choice, you know
– and stick with it all day. It is the support system; it is the one thing
that gets you over the hurdle.
If you don’t think attitude is important - when we lost Landaluce, we were ahead 17 to 8 in the
standings at Santa Anita. We had 17 wins, the next guy had 8. We were on a
record run. Then, with the same veterinarian, the same feed man, the same
blacksmith, the same jockeys, the same horses, the same help – we went for 2
months and didn’t win another race. We moped around and hung our heads. The
groom that rubbed the filly had a nervous breakdown. Two and a half months; you
think attitude is not important? And
then we had an attitude adjustment and we pulled everybody together and we got
it going again and we finished up number one in the country that year.
You have to accept the responsibility of leadership. Be
responsible for your actions. If you are going to be the head guy, if you’re
going to run things, then you have to take the responsibility – good and bad.
And I’ll say this, in the horse business, those of you who might think
you’ll head that direction, the good is never as good as the bad is bad. I
found that out. The highs are great – they’re wonderful, but the lows are
really low too.
The greatest waste of energy in this country is not gas
and oil, not natural resources – lumber, trees – not water resources. The
greatest waste of energy in this country, in my opinion, is trying to change
things you have no control over. Spending your time and wasting your effort
trying to change things that you can’t change. If you’ve had a setback, move
on. If you have an employee who doesn’t want to work, or doesn’t want to do
it your way, get rid of him. Just like there’s toxic waste, there are toxic
relationships. Get rid of him. Get rid of him right now because he’ll ruin
you. If you’re into a bad relationship with your girlfriend or your boyfriend
– just break it off and move on. Don’t spend your energy on things you
can’t change.
I hope you young people in this room will have
an opportunity to do something that you love. I have had that opportunity. Early
in my career, I did two things that I really loved, I coached and I taught. Then
I consciously made a complete switchover and became a horse trainer, and I have
been very happy with that choice. It has been a wonderful ride for me, even with
some of the lows. It has been tremendous. Hopefully, you will make the choice to
try something that you care about or love as your lifetime work. If you’re
into something you don’t like, stop and go in another direction. There is
happiness out there somewhere in your work. Just because I can train a damn
racehorse, I have had the opportunity to sit down to dinner with the last four
presidents, and even the Queen of England, and that’s a real experience, I can
tell you.
I‘ve been fortunate to be able to do something that I
really care about and love. I hope that you have that opportunity, and I hope
that I’ve stimulated your thoughts a little bit.
I want to leave you with one thing in closing here, and
then I’ll answer questions and hope to get to meet everyone of you personally
in the reception. I’m a country music buff, and when you drive a horse trailer
from coast to coast, you really get to know the hit tunes. Willie Nelson carried
me for a lot of years. A couple of
years ago, I had a tape on, and I can’t remember the artist now, but there was
a brief lyric that I thought sums up everything that I feel about my business
and my life and I’d like to share it with you.
“Sing like you
don’t need the money, dance as if nobody is watching, and love like you’ll
never get hurt, and it’ll work.”
Thank
you.
QUESTIONS:
Question:
If the economics of the business did not demand it, would you be in favor of not
racing two-year-olds?
Lukas:
We sell horses at all the major sales in the United States as yearlings because
nobody knows anything about them at that age. It is a real art to find talent in
untried yearlings; it’s like trying to spot Liz Taylor as a baby. So, that’s
why we buy them as yearlings. Now, is it too stressful or hard on them to race
the next year as two-year-olds? I think it’s a judgment call. Believe it or
not, some racehorses are at their best as two-year-olds. It’s their most
productive period. What’s wrong – and I’ve probably been guilty of it, as
have all of my colleagues – is that in that judgment call, we sometimes may
step over the bounds a little. I think it is unrealistic to think we can
eliminate two-year-old racing, but there have been some helpful changes. In
California, for example, you can’t start a two-year-old until it is actually
24 months old – and that does help a little bit. But, basically, I think
it’s a judgment call, and you need to talk to your trainer because he’s the
one who has to say, “This one’s okay but that one’s not.” They are like
young college athletes. Sometimes college athletes will have their best years as
freshmen, but then, as they get older, others may catch up until they’re
whipping up on them.
Question:
What do you think that the most important thing the industry can do to
attract more owners? Is there a need to teach trainers recruitment and customer
service?
Lukas:
First of all, this is an expensive sport. It can be played at all
levels, the top or the bottom, but, all in all, it costs about $32 or $35
thousand a year to keep a horse at a major racetrack. So, you can’t play if
you’re not in that league. My experience has been that the owners that get in
at that top level are usually people who have a love for the sport, but who made
their money in some other venture. They are people who have sold their
companies, say, at 55 or 60, have retired, and have decided they want to get
into something else. You can only play so much golf, and sitting around on a
boat can get boring. Besides, people who have succeeded in business are usually
competitive and like recognition, and racing serves those needs very nicely.
Gene Klein, who I trained for, owned the San Diego
Chargers. He bought the Chargers because he had that competitive spirit and
because he wanted recognition. He ended up getting fulfillment from the racing
business. Recruiting those guys can be tough. Most of them have probably had a
longtime interest in racing. There have been new owner clinics all over the
United States trying to recruit people. I spoke at one in Santa Anita, and, if
could have taken all 20 people that showed up that day and turned them upside
down, we couldn’t have got $20 thousand bucks out of them all together. Bless
their hearts, they loved the game, and they had the passion, but they didn’t
have the means. But that’s the nature of the game; let’s not fool ourselves.
Was that all of the question or was there something
else?
Question:
Do you think trainers need to be taught
about customer service?
Lukas: Absolutely. Where do trainers get off thinking that a guy that comes in, buys a yearling for fifty thousand dollars, or a quarter of a million, or whatever his level is, should have to ask the trainer’s permission to see it? That’s how this game has been for a hundred years. The owners have to call up just to hear their trainers say, “No, you can’t come to the barn today. You’re not allowed.” Can you imagine putting a hundred thousand into a gas station, and then telling the guy who’s running the place, “I’m going down to check the machines,” and he says “No, no. You’ll have to come on Thursday.” And yet trainers try to do that. I think it’s crazy. All the people I’ve had the most success with are people that I pulled in and got involved. This computer guy, who’s spent $40 million in the business this year, I talk to him an hour every night. A lot of trainers won’t do that, I agree. But I tell him everything. I get his ideas. Today, I even let him pick a jockey.
Question:
When judging yearlings, do you tend to put more emphasis on conformation
or pedigree. Do you think your
emphasis is different than that of other buyers?
Lukas:
You aren’t paying me enough to answer that. I look at about 5,000
yearlings a year, and I am just cocky enough to think that I know what I’m
doing. Let me just say this, if you’re trying to buy a racehorse, put the
emphasis on conformation. If you’re going to the breeding shed, put emphasis
on the pedigree. But never excuse the individual standing in front of you
because he has a great pedigree. Those ‘marriages in heaven,’ as we call
them, are great, but keep the emphasis on the athlete in front of you. We buy
all of our yearlings without opening the catalog page. Once we find an
absolutely dead center athletic racehorse, then
we look at his pedigree.
I could lecture here for two or three days about
conformation. In my opinion, it is real complicated and a tough thing to
describe to somebody else. It’s like art. An artist will look at a picture and
see things that I just can’t see. I will tell you this much. I will give you
one tip. The key to conformation in racehorses is the neck. The neck is the
balance for all athletic performance – both human and equine. There has never
been a great racehorse without a great neck. By that I mean, the length of it,
the way it sets on his shoulder, and so forth. Enough of that; you have already got me going way too far.
Question:
What things do you expect to be dramatically different in Thoroughbred
racing, especially in the business of training, 10 or 15 years from now?
Lukas:
I think it’s going to narrow down, and I think it’s going to
become very competitive. I think small tracks are going to have trouble. I think
we’re going to see mostly satellite wagering in the smaller tracks. Tracks
like Beulah Park, the Woodlands, and Emerald Downs are going to struggle. This
may not be a great thing for breeders, and it’s probably not a good thing for
the industry, but it’s going to happen anyway. I think we’re going to get a
higher-class horse running at major tracks, while the lesser tracks will become
primarily satellite wagering areas, where they will bet on those better races.
Racing has not been a top spectator sport and the small communities are
struggling, let’s face it. Maybe we can bring it back – but it won’t be
easy.
As far as trainers are concerned, I also think it’s
going to narrow down as to how many can train horses. I think purses will get
bigger and racing will get better, but I think the industry will be more
competitive. I don’t say it’s healthy, but I think that’s the way it’s
going to be.
Question:
Is the idea of a horse running especially fast on one track, or
preferring one track, as real as it seems, or are such comments mere excuses for
performance?
Lukas:
It is paramount. What you’re saying is that some horses adapt to
certain tracks better than to others, and let’s throw grass or turf racing in
there also. I think it is absolutely real, even crucial. For some reason, horses
seem to adjust well to Churchill Downs, but there some tracks where that’s not
the case. We’ve raced at 28 different tracks around the country so I have a
pretty good feel for this, and I can tell you that horses do not adapt to every
surface. It’s just like if you’re a jogger or a runner. Some people prefer
to run on the grass, some prefer to run on the blacktop, and some prefer to run
on the beach. Well, racehorses also have an affinity for a certain surface and
it can really make a difference.
It’s because they use different muscles. You see,
when you take a horse to a different racetrack, you are going to create certain
problems because he may have to use muscle groups he hasn’t been using. If
you’re a jogger or a runner yourself, you know what I’m talking about. If
you run on a football field all year for two or three months, and then go to
Malibu and run on the beach, you will get up the next day and hurt all over,
even though you were fit. The reason is that you were using muscles you hadn’t
been using. It’s the same with a racehorse.
Question:
Is there any particular horse among
all those you’ve had success with that stands out in your mind as a special
favorite from standpoint?
Lukas:
Well, that’s a tough question but people ask it all the time.
Certainly Landaluce, the filly we talked about earlier, was a favorite. And
Winning Colors was pretty special – my first Kentucky Derby winner. Lady’s
Secret, who was Horse of the Year for us, was a total overachiever.
I have to tell you, Gene Klein called me one day. He
lived in a house on a hill in Rancho Santa Fe, and, just like all of them they
build out there, it was just rocks and crap all the way down the hillside. Gene
said, “I want to get up every morning and see some babies outside my breakfast
window.” And I said, “Why
don’t we get you some goats? You don’t want to put racehorses out there.”
“Yes,” he said, “I want some babies.” So, I said, “Well, I have some
but I don’t want to sell to my own client. If you want to appraise them,
we’ll put a couple of weanlings out there.” “Naw,” he said, “just
price them.” I said “OK, I got a little gray filly and two others in the
pasture, and I want $200,000 a piece for them.” He said, “Done. I’ll take
them.”
So, we took these three weanlings and, believe it or
not, we put them out on that hillside. Sure as hell, they overcome almost
everything. The first one was a nice filly that died in New York, but the next
one, which he named Gene’s Lady after his wife, went on to make just $2,000
less than one million dollars. And the third, the little gray filly, was
Lady’s Secret, who was named Horse of the Year, and, until Serena’s Song
came along, was the all-time money-earning female.
Time’s up? Okay, well thanks again, and I look forward to meeting
you all.
Copyright 1998, Department of Equine Business, CBPA, University of Louisville, Louisville, Kentucky.
Equine
Industry Program
College of Business and Public Administration
University of Louisville
Louisville, KY 40292
Phone: 502.852.4859
Fax: 502.852.7672
