Stevens and Day cherish Lukas’ Whitneys
As a California-based jockey riding for D. Wayne Lukas, Gary Stevens knew he always needed to have his suitcase packed.
“He was relying on me [to travel] on a weekly basis,” Stevens said. “I think there was a period of 16 straight weekends that I was on red-eye flights.”
One of those cross-country journeys brought him to Saratoga Race Course to ride Criminal Type in the 1990 Whitney. Stevens was filling in for Jose Santos, who had piloted Criminal Type to three straight Grade 1 wins but was serving a suspension that kept him out of the Whitney.
“I got a phone call from my agent. He said, ‘You picked up a horse in the Whitney and Wayne needs you out there,’” Stevens said. “We got used to jumping on airplanes and being ready and available when you got the phone call.”
After riding six races at Del Mar on Friday, August 3, Stevens took an overnight flight and made it to Saratoga to ride only one horse on Whitney Day. If you’re going to travel 3,000 miles for a single mount, it’s nice for it to be a 2-5 shot in a Grade 1. Criminal Type, a son of 1978 Whitney winner and 1990 leading U.S. stallion Alydar, had transformed from a consistent allowance horse to a graded stakes winner as a 5-year-old.
He won two Grade 2s at Santa Anita Park and, after a second and a fourth in a pair of graded tilts, took the top-level Pimlico Special, Met Mile and Hollywood Gold Cup, beating Easy Goer and Sunday Silence, respectively, in the last two.
Meeting a solid if not spectacular field in the Whitney, Criminal Type was sent off as the 2-5 favorite by the crowd of 29,875. Breaking from the rail, the Calumet Farm-bred and owned colt got away slowly but still made it to the lead as Stevens took him to the middle of the track on the first turn. He maintained the advantage through a quarter-mile in 24.53 seconds and a half-mile in 48.81 on the way to a 1 1/2-length victory over Dancing Spree, the 1989 Breeders’ Cup Sprint winner who was ridden by Angel Cordero, Jr. The final time for the 1 1/8 miles was 1:48.65 as Criminal Type won for the ninth time in 18 starts, making Stevens a happy traveler.
“It was as good a pickup mount as I've ever had,” said Stevens, who won 5,187 races in his Hall of Fame career. “Jose [Santos] and I, we drove each other pretty hard. He was riding the East Coast horses [for Lukas] and I was riding the West Coast horses. But, as Wayne liked to say, these aren’t marriages, they’re dates. I got a date with Criminal Type that day. It was one of the easiest pickup mounts for a lot of money that I've ever ridden. You got repaid greatly by just being part of the team.”
By that point, Stevens played an integral role on Team Lukas, having won the 1988 Kentucky Derby on the filly Winning Colors. He would later win the 1995 Derby and Belmont on Thunder Gulch and the 2013 Preakness on Oxbow for the man known as “Coach.”
“Wayne had a way of motivating you,” Stevens said. “When you got pulled into that pressure cooker, it made me a better rider because you better not screw up. I had my share of screw-ups with Wayne Lukas. When Jeff [Wayne’s son and assistant] was still alive, he let me know when it was a screw-up. Wayne would let you know, too. You might receive a six-month ‘suspension’ for something he didn't think was such a great ride, and you had to wait till you served your days, and then he'd come back to you. But he was a loyal customer and a great friend of mine and I’m heartbroken over the loss of Wayne.”
Stevens learned to trust Lukas when he said a horse was ready.
“I rode a lot of horses for Wayne,” he said. “Sometimes I would work a horse in the morning and I didn’t exactly like the way they worked. I'm on them in the afternoon, and they’re a heavy favorite. You may think that you didn't have a big chance in a race, and by the time I left the paddock, in my mind, I thought the only way I could get beat is if I screwed it up. He was one of the best motivators, and taught me a lot about motivation and believing, right until his dying days.”
Stevens’ win on Criminal Type gave the legendary Lukas the second of his two Whitney victories, four years after he won it with the fabulous filly, Lady’s Secret, who was ridden by Hall of Famer Pat Day.
An Oklahoma-bred daughter of Secretariat, Lady’s Secret finished second to Mom’s Command in the Eclipse Award voting for Champion 3-Year-Old Filly in 1985, a year in which she had 17 starts, with 10 wins and five seconds and won the Test at Saratoga.
She did not slow down in 1986, running eight times heading into the Whitney, with five wins, three of them Grade 1s. Day took over the mount on Lady’s Secret in the Grade 1 Shuvee at Belmont Park on May 17, when Jorge Velasquez rode Badger Land for Lukas in the Preakness, finishing fourth.
After winning the Shuvee as the odds-on favorite and finishing second in the Hempstead Handicap, Lady’s Secret, who at that point had 18 wins in 33 career starts, was a slight $1.30-1 favorite over Skip Trial in the Whitney.
“It was obvious we got along well, so Wayne opted to leave me on her,” Day said. “And then fast forward another couple of months and we were in Saratoga for the Whitney.”
Breaking from the post 2 on a sloppy track, Lady’s Secret led at every pole, cutting fractions of 23 1/5, 46 3/5 and 1:10 4/5 on the way to an easy 4 1/2-length win before an announced crowd of 43,520.
“She trained well up to the race. I felt like I was going to win,” Day said. “That afternoon, she broke as she always did, very well, took me into the race, made the lead going to the first turn, and then just cantered on around there. It was racehorse time, but she was under no pressure at all in the drive. She galloped to the wire with no pressure from me whatsoever and won very handily.”
Lady’s Secret is one of only six fillies to win the Whitney.
“You have to give credit to Wayne and Jeff that they would step up to the plate and run her against the boys,” Day said. “But they did that on several occasions, and she beat them several times. So it wasn't totally out of the realm of possibility that they would do that. They had great confidence in her. They knew what they had. And I was just happy to be along for the ride.”
Lady’s Secret would win four more Grade 1s in 1986, capped by the Breeders’ Cup Distaff. She finished the year with 10 wins and was named Champion Older Mare and Horse of the Year.
“I was very fortunate to get on her when I did,” said Day, who won seven times in 11 starts aboard Lady’s Secret. “I think it was at the apex of her career.”
As a 5-year-old in 1987, Lady’s Secret ran five times and won two allowance races before ending her career by bolting in a Saratoga allowance in August, with Chris McCarron riding. Day, who had 8,803 wins in his career, echoed Stevens in talking about Lukas’ ability to get the best of out his jockeys – and willingness to take them off if he didn’t like a particular ride.
“We got along well,” Day said. “He was a tremendous motivator. He was a salesman, and you might not think you had a chance, but by the time you got on the horse and headed out of the paddock, you were certain that there was no way you could get beat. I think he transferred that to the rider, to the horse, to the people around him. I had great success with Wayne. We traveled together all over the country, and I enjoyed being around him. There were a couple of times we didn't see eye to eye, but ultimately, we'd get back on the same page. We had great respect, I believe, for one another.”
Nine months after winning the Whitney, Day was on North Sider in the 1987 Shuvee and delivered what Jeff Lukas felt was a bad ride, waiting too long to accelerate on the lead and allowing Ms. Eloise to get by her in the stretch.
“She gave me every impression that she would have some acceleration, that when I knuckled down on her, I would get a good response,” Day said. “I didn't want to use up more of my horse than what was necessary at any time, but specifically in a handicap. When that horse got up to my peripheral vision, I knuckled down and the filly responded, but it was a slow response. She tried, but I knew right then I'd made a mistake. Subsequently, the wire didn't come fast enough and we got beat a neck.”
Jeff Lukas, who was seriously injured in 1993 when he was run over by loose horse Tabasco Cat on the Santa Anita backstretch and died in 2016, was not happy and he let Day know it.
“Jeff was visibly upset afterwards,” Day said. “I said, ‘I made a mistake.’ Had I been on her before, had I realized that she didn't respond, that she didn't have any acceleration, or minimal acceleration, I would have ridden her differently. But like he said, Grade 1s don’t come along every day. He was quite upset with me, and Jeff fired me. I don't think I rode for him or Wayne for probably a year.”
That is the reality of the life of a jockey, but, as Stevens mentioned, it is not uncommon to get another chance with the barn. Day made the most of his, winning two Preaknesses, a Belmont and three Breeders’ Cup races for Lukas after the benching.
“At the end of the day, certainly after I committed my life to Christ in 1984, I didn't get upset when they took me off,” Day said. “I was elated when they put me on and minimally upset when they would take me off … I doubt seriously that there's any rider that's ridden for any period of time at that level or at any level that didn't get replaced for whatever reason. You gotta bite your tongue. I appreciated every opportunity that Wayne and Jeff and the Lukas team gave me over the years. We lost a dear friend and a great ambassador for our sport. I was pleased and honored to call him my friend and to have had the success that we did together.”
*
Paul Halloran writes for the Saratoga Special and Mid-Atlantic Thoroughbred Magazine. His book – “Cody’s Wish: A Boy, a Horse and a Fight for Life”— is scheduled to be published by Lyons Press next spring.