Quote:
Originally Posted by JerseyJ
While I am a big fan of Lukas and much of that comes from the fact that when I first got into racing through books and articles many of them extensively chronicled Lukas including the book Three Strides Before the Wire about his quest for the Derby with Chris Antley and Charismatic. While he is not the trainer he once was, he is an all-time great who ran into the problem of losing his best clientele and probably his most crushing loss, his son Jeff from his stable which clearly affected Lukas and his stable.
Losing clients like Eugene Klein, The Lewis's, Overbrook downsizing, and The Thoroughbred Corporation hurts. On the other hand some of his clients now are willing to spend and getting him better horses (Westrock and Baker and Mack).
He'll never get back to where he was but to heap praise on a cheat like Pletcher and knock Lukas is wrong. And while certain trainers may not like guy or the way he trained his horses plenty of trainers I have spoken with respect Lukas and his impact on the game.
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Lukas certainly did a lot of things right. If you were a young trainer back in the 1980s and you wanted to go to work for someone with the hopes of making it big one day, Lukas was definitely the best person to work for.
He might not have been a great trainer but he had all the other skills it takes to be successful. The guy was simply a winner. He had all the key ingredients. He was bright, charismatic, articulate, etc. He was a great salesman and he knew how to promote himself. He had great communication skills. He knew how to deal with owners and he knew how to get owners. He was really well organized and he ran a great operation. He did everything first-class.
I have to give the guy a lot of credit for getting to where he got himself. He did a great job of building that operation and he ran it like a successful CEO. I give him credit for that.