Wayne, Jeff Lukas Will Be a Breeders’ Cup Bloodline

OZONE PARK, N.Y. —  When Life’s Magic won the Eclipse Award last year as the country’s best 3-year-old filly, her co-owners, Melvin Hatley and Gene Klein, accepted the trophy at a dinner at the Century Plaza Hotel in Los Angeles.

“As everybody knows, Jeff Lukas is the brains behind this horse,” Hatley told the audience.

Everybody laughed, because Hatley had his tongue pushing against his cheek, facetiously referring to the son of Wayne Lukas. The senior Lukas, the trainer of record for Life’s Magic, has been the leading trainer in the United States for the last two years and, with a record $8.5 million in purses, is on the way to a third national title this year.

Wayne Lukas picked Life’s Magic out of a Keeneland yearling sale for $310,000 and developed her into a filly with championship potential, but it was Jeff, responsible for the New York division of his father’s stable, who supervised the horse’s day-to-day progress when she arrived at Belmont Park in May of 1984. What followed was four stakes wins, something she had been unable to achieve in California.

Wayne keeps close tabs on all of his blue-ribbon horses by telephone from his California headquarters, then usually flies in for saddling duties on the day of an important stakes race.

But this year, with so many horses running at tracks in Southern and Northern California, New York, Nebraska and Arkansas, just to name a few areas--it is impossible for even workaholic Wayne to be in more than one place at the same time.

As a result, the 27-year-old Jeff has become increasingly more visible in the barn’s operation, particularly in New York, where 30 of the Lukas stable’s record-setting 61 stakes victories have been registered.

Of the 10 horses Wayne Lukas will send out Saturday in four of the seven Breeders’ Cup races worth $10 million at Aqueduct, eight established their reputations this year in New York. The only horses that have done their winning exclusively in California are Arewehavingfunyet, who is running against stablemates Family Style and Twilight Ridge in the Juvenile Fillies Stakes, and Louisiana Slew, who is coupled with another Lukas starter, Ketoh, in the Juvenile for colts.

The others--Lady’s Secret, Alabama Nana and Life’s Magic in the Distaff Stakes, and Mt. Livermore and Pancho Villa in the Sprint--are now considered “New York horses” more than “California horses” because of their accomplishments under Jeff.

Other horsemen running in those four races consider it their horses against Lukas’, but in another sense it’s Jeff Lukas vs. Wayne Lukas in two of the stakes.

In reality, there is no rivalry between father and son, because Wayne, a former basketball coach who believes a successful racing stable is contingent on teamwork similar to that needed in a gymnasium, is usually the first to acknowledge his support group, whether it’s Jeff or another assistant trainer.

Early this year, when the Lukas stable was struggling to win races at Hollywood Park, Wayne admitted that he had sent Jeff an exceptional number of horses capable of winning in New York.

Some of those horses, such as Alabama Nana, went East through necessity. “Before she won a stake, I entered her a couple of times at Hollywood, but the races didn’t get enough other horses to fill,” Wayne Lukas said. “So instead of waiting around any longer to get her a race, I sent her to New York. Otherwise, she might have been winning stakes in California.”

Jeff Lukas does not appreciate any fanfare attendant to his success in New York. The way racing records are kept, the trainer listed in the track program gets credit for the horse’s performance, no matter who actually saddles him for the race, and that’s just fine with the younger Lukas, who prefers the shadows as much as his voluble father revels in the spotlight.

Late last year, an official from the New York tracks approached Jeff Lukas to ask him if his biographical sketch could be listed with his father’s in the media guide.

“I don’t think so,” Jeff Lukas said. “I’m just the assistant trainer.”

Since reporters covering New York races find themselves talking to Jeff more than Wayne, however, next year’s guide may include both biographies.

It’s a wonder that reporters get the chance to talk to either Lukas, since they spend considerable time on the telephone with each other. Three long calls a day are not uncommon. “I’ve never seen the phone bills, but they must be something,” Jeff Lukas said the other morning at Belmont Park, waiting along with a number of journalists for his father to arrive from the West Coast.

“I’ve said that we ought to have some kind of a hot line, a direct phone from my phone to his,” Jeff added. “With the three-hour time difference, sometimes it gets difficult. But it still beats having to get on an airplane and flying 3,000 miles.”

Wayne’s only child, the result of the first of Wayne’s three marriages, was born in Wisconsin and played football, basketball and baseball in high school. Football was Jeff’s best game and he played two seasons as an offensive lineman and linebacker at the University of Wisconsin River Falls, where he was a business major.

In his junior year, Jeff quit football. “I was 6-1 and weighed about 185 pounds, which is just about the same as I am now,” he said. “The trouble was, the guys I was playing against kept getting bigger and I stayed the same.”

At the same time, Wayne, having become a successful trainer of quarter horses, was making a transition to thoroughbreds in California.

At the end of that junior year, Jeff Lukas quit school as well.

“I was looking at some of the guys that graduated, and saw how tough it was for them to find jobs, and how some of them couldn’t find anything with a decent wage,” Jeff said.

“The time was right for me to join my dad. I had already gotten some experience working for him during the summers. The decision was easy--he was going into a new area, needed help and it was a great chance to grow with the business.”

Jeff said that he and his father think alike when it comes to training horses, but when asked for specifics he does what his father would never do, he evades the question. When asked, “In what ways are you alike and in what ways are you not?” Jeff just smiles and says, “That’s a loaded question.”

The father-son horse discussions, he says, are very open. “So often we agree completely on what’s best for a horse.”

Jeff Lukas also believes he knows what’s best for his father. A few years ago, a reporter, feuding with Wayne, called his Santa Anita barn to find that he was in Kentucky.

“Where can he be reached?” Jeff Lukas was asked.

“Oh, no,” he said. “My dad would kill me if I gave you the number.”