Roanoke Times
Copyright (c) 1995, Landmark Communications, Inc.
DATE: SUNDAY, June 11, 1995 TAG: 9506300013
SECTION: SPORTS PAGE: B1 EDITION: METRO
SOURCE: NEW YORK TIMES|
DATELINE: ELMONT, N. Y. LENGTH: Medium
Lukas became the first trainer ever to win five straight Triple Crown races, a feat he accomplished with three horses, and the first to sweep the Triple Crown with two different horses, the absent Timber Country and Thunder Gulch.
Thunder Gulch bided his time while Star Standard led in an exceedingly slow pace, then made a powerful move as they turned for home. They raced head-to-head for an eighth of a mile, but then the Lukas colt, the winner of the Kentucky Derby five weeks ago, drilled his way to the front while Star Standard finished second and Citadeed third.
Thunder Gulch ran the mile and a half in 2 minutes, 32 seconds, paid $5 and went home with nearly $500,000.
This was the annual day of days for New York racing, the 127th running of the Belmont Stakes, the last and longest race in the Triple Crown series and the opening act in a summer's countdown that this year will reach its peak on Oct. 28 when Belmont Park plays host to the Breeders' Cup series of seven races worth $10 million in purses.
They ran the Belmont on a fast track under sunny skies, but they ran it without the early line favorite. Timber Country, the juvenile champion of 1994 and the winner of the Breeders' Cup Juvenile and the Preakness, was one more victim of the troubled tides of racing fortune, just as Brocco was last year when he was scratched from the Belmont with a heel injury, just as A.P. Indy was three years before when he was scratched from the Kentucky Derby by a cracked hoof on the morning of the race.
In the scramble that followed Timber Country's withdrawal, in the absence of the premier 3-year-old colt in the country, every other horse in the Belmont seemed to have gained another shot at winning. But even then, Lukas was reporting from his barn that Timber Country would return to race again.
``I came out at 10 o'clock last night and gave him a little grain,'' the trainer reported Saturday. ``He started banging around and rattling his feed tub and ate up. I gave him a little more, and he cleaned that up, too. His temperature is normal, and he's doing great.''
He said he would probably leave Timber Country in New York and aim him for the Dwyer Stakes on July 2 before sending him on to Saratoga and the Travers in August. But he also fired a salute of soon-to-be-justified confidence at Thunder Gulch as the colt went out to represent the stable in the Belmont.
``He's great,'' Lukas said. ``Our optimism is back. All great athletic teams have good depth.''
As Team Lukas called on its depth, the field was reduced to 11 starters, and Star Standard was moved one notch to the inside from his No. 12 post on the far outside of the starting gate.
Now, it was Thunder Gulch at 6-5 to repeat his victories in the Florida Derby and the Kentucky Derby. Star Standard was moved up from third place in the line to second place, and his odds improved from 6-1 to 4-1.
But the personal drama remained for Lukas and his entourage of owners. Only one other trainer in racing history, Lucien Laurin, had won four classic races in a row, and he had an extraordinary ally in Secretariat, who swept the Triple Crown in 1973 after his stablemate Riva Ridge had won the Belmont the year before.
For Lukas, the Belmont also meant a peak in a career built on remarkable peaks. For 10 years, he reigned as the leading trainer in races and purses won. Then he endured two years of decline during which he went 18 months without winning a Grade 1 stakes. And his son Jeff, who also worked as his deputy trainer, suffered severe head injuries in December, 1993, when he was trampled while trying to halt runaway colt Tabasco Cat in the stable area at Santa Anita.
In a melodramatic sequence, Jeff Lukas gradually recovered from his injuries, and Tabasco Cat led the stable back to the top.
Keywords:
HORSE RACING
by CNB