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TRAVERS THEY SAID IT AUGUST 24, 2013
"You guys were really great about leaving me alone all week." —Lukas on being off the media's radar screen in the build-up to the Travers "Absolutely. I was really worried about them. I thought Orb, I said to Willis, when they were waiting for the ballots to come out, I said, Orb looks better than I've ever seen him. Yeah, I was concerned. Todd Pletcher was with me for years and years and years, and I knew his horse would be ready to run. At this level you're concerned about them all. You wonder about your trip. You wonder if your rider is going to have the depth and experience to maybe make the right judgment when he should. All of those things factor in and it has to come together. —Lukas on the depth of the competition "I felt all along there were five or six horses in here that would be deserving, no matter who won it. You could make a case for them all week long. We felt ours was one of them. We just felt like he was getting better. He's a big, growthy horse. I told (jockey) Luis (Saez) that I thought he grew a half-inch here in the last month even. He tops 17 hands now. When you get those big, long, striding horses that are growing and making that growth sport, just like in May and June, sometimes they maybe take a little time to find themselves. I think this one's finding himself pretty good." —Lukas on Will Take Charge's development "I thought these horses were very close together. Sometimes the condition of the race and the field and everything dictates what you can do with each of them. When we run the Preakness, you know, Oxbow had things, he could do something I couldn't do with this horse. But it is so beautiful to have two like Todd (Pletcher) has three, four, five or six or whatever he's got. You are able to go back and say, okay, we lost Oxbow. He's not in the deal; let's do the best we can with this one. That happened one other time with me. I remember when Timber Country won the Preakness, and Thunder Gulch was third, and Timber Country spiked a temperature on Friday night, was a scratch, and we went down and looked at that little Thunder Gulch and said, ball is in your court, here you go. That's kind of what happened this time. We sent Oxbow home for some freshening and cranked this one out." —Lukas on winning with Will Take Charge after his Preakness star Oxbow was sidelined by injury "I think probably this was our best training job. You know, Thunder Gulch, he had really set himself up for the Travers. He went through the Triple Crown, and then he goes over and wins the Swaps in California, comes back, and he ran in every race. He was a tough, hard-knocking horse. But this particular horse we had to do a little with. We had to change him. We had to get his weight up. We had to get some of the things that we changed things. We took the blinkers off of him; we changed riders. My theory has always been if you're not winning, and Willis put it up very much to me right after the Belmont, he said it isn't working the way we're doing it now, let's change up. So we did. We made some changes." —Lukas compares this Travers win to his 1995 triumph with Thunder Gulch "But don't ever underestimate the experience factor here in these races, the Derby, the Triple Crown, the Breeders' Cup, these races. That experience factor is huge because there is no how-to book, as I've always said. You have to make a judgment every day to get that horse where you want him to go. Bill Young told me one time, he said, when I go to those high-powered board meetings, he said, I don't worry about those young guys with their hair slicked back and three-piece suits. He said, I worry about the real quiet ones with gray hair at the end of the table, and that is the same thing with this game." —Lukas on the value of experience "Hell, even the exercise boy, Rudy, was getting high on him. He said, Boss, I don't know what we're doing different, but it's coming together. He said, I can feel him underneath me. It's a day-to-day evaluation. You tweak it a little bit. You do this, you do that, and you hope you're right." —Lukas on seeing the adjustments pay off "This guy will step up, folks. Trust me. He'll step up. I knew it would be tough, but I was perfectly confident, and I wasn't a bit nervous or worried about it. I felt we've done everything we can. Stick them in the gate and let's see what happens." —Lukas on his faith in Will Take Charge "Any time I'm in a jockey situation led with my heart, I got burned. So I get realistic about that. I try to match them up. I try to get somebody that I think might fit the particular horse I'm running, and Luis has been wonderful to go along with that aspect all the time. I didn't even call Luis and ask him; I just made the change and felt that it was in the best interest of what we're trying to get done. You look terrible if it doesn't work, but it's sweet if it does." —Lukas on making the rider switch to Luis Saez for the Travers "We didn't change any strategy. Willis and I had a meeting this morning with the jockey and talked about what we want to do when the rider came out. We said, look, you understand exactly what I want to do? He said, yes; and that was the end of that conversation. I was concerned -- to answer your question -- at the three-eighths pole, I thought we better get moving now because I had told the rider this morning that you've got to be a little bit careful. These are quality horses, and when they get on the lead and get cruising, it's not the 3RD race on Wednesday where they stop. They keep going. I said, you've got to be concerned about those horses that are running that easy. If they're cruising on the lead, don't wait too long and make your run because these good ones don't stop that much." —Lukas on race strategy "We went by the grandstand and we're in the race and we're outside, which is probably for Luis, a pretty good spot to be. Going down the backside, I glanced at the leaders and the fractions, and I thought they were in cruise control, and that concerned me. I thought, you know, I wish somebody would come up and jump on him and get that down into the :47 range or something like that. I was only concerned on the far turn about closing it up and getting in the race. Luis did exactly what we told him. Give him a chance to win at the top of the stretch. Just give him a chance to win, and I think he'll carry you home, and he did that. He got on that little guy, he got on his belly and gave him a spot to run and rode him and rode him and rode him. At the eighth-pole I thought we were going to run out of time and real estate, but that wire came up just right." —Lukas on how the Travers unfolded "Andy Serling was behind me, and he never said anything to me, and that worried me a little bit. I'm down from the wire, and it's kind of a bad angle. I didn't jump up and hug my girlfriend or anything. I said, you know what? That's going to be a heartbreak if we didn't get this. Then NYRA shows that replay instantly right after it within seconds they come with the stretch run. When they went by that time, we erupted." —Lukas on when he knew that Will Take Charge had gotten up in time "I was thinking about this guy (Horton). I've been blessed so much in my career with so many nice horses, and it's only because I've been blessed with some beautiful clients down through the years and I've lost some of them in the recent years, but I always feel like on these particular days, Belmonts, Preaknesses, whatever, it's the most wonderful feeling to be able to get somebody put up his money, stay by you, believed in you to give them that moment. Three strides from the wire, the only thing I thought of was him and his wife. I really mean that sincerely." —Lukas on what it means to win such a prestigious race for a client "Pedigree, his size, his confirmation is terrific. I've been in this business about 50 years, and not on a big scale. I did it on a small scale. But this was the best looking horse I've ever seen in a sale, and so where I was unlucky, Bryan was bidding against me." —owner Willis Horton on purchasing Will Take Charge for $425,000 as a Keeneland September yearling "I thought he was the best one in the sale too. I looked out and saw Willis bidding and I thought, whoa, I better back off here. We've been friends forever. If they had two trophies, one for the Travers and one for the horse show part, we'd get both." —Lukas on going after Will Take Charge himself at the sale "Well, most of those that you're referring to, Bill Young, Bob Lewis, Gene Klein, Bob French, who recently passed away, Landaluce and Capote and all those, and Willis, they have a way of finding you in a lot of ways or you get lucky. I mean, Gene Klein and I had that athletic background and we met through Dick Butkus. So you get a relationship, but some of these relationships aren't that great. Some of them, you have to get somebody that believes in you, and they have to give you a little bit of leeway, because it's so easy with today's technology and you guys covering it. They call you up and they tell you that he shortened his stride four inches from sixteenth-pole to the wire. I mean, the technology is amazing that they feed into clientele. So you've got to get an old-school guy that just says like Willis, or Bob Lewis or Bill Young, Wayne, you're driving the bus. If you can get that feeling with them and that rapport, this thing becomes so much easier." —Lukas on his great clients over the years "Yeah, people have been saying, boy, you're having a great year. I've had a couple of good days. They've been kicking my ass out here pretty regularly and I'm not getting along too good. But these are the ones that count more than the others, obviously. But I've had some good days. But the horse is the most important ingredient. As long as you get something like Willis provided us with here, the Horton family to train, we've always got a shot maybe to win one of the big ones. We go about it every day, seven days a week, and we're always looking for that next one. But you've got to have something to work with. You can only do so much with them in order to get them to where we got them today." —Lukas on returning to the Grade 1 spotlight after his lean times "These things are bred. When they started breeding them 300 years ago, they wanted them to run. If they're sound and doing well, I think you're really remiss and not fair to your clientele if you get cute and think you've got to manage them. I think more horses are mismanaged than are managed properly. I don't say I manage this one properly. But I believe, like I've always said to you, Jamie, I've won a lot of races running where I don't belong." —Lukas' philosophy of going for the big races "My fiancee -- I don't have a wife. I'm working on that though. It will be a lot easier to do this now. We're trying to gather up enough money for a wedding. As soon as we get that, we'll be all right?" —Lukas on wedding planning "Yeah, this is my first year here in New York. I feel glad because this is my first year here, and a ride (in the Travers) would be great, and a win would be great. So I feel amazing." —jockey Luis Saez on his biggest career win "When my agent told me, I'm going to ride the horse and he told me Lukas and the owner gave me the opportunity. So, I tried to work hard." —Saez's reaction to getting the mount "I didn't know if I had won. When I was coming to the wire, I thought I could win it maybe if I rode a little harder. So I did, and then when I crossed the wire I didn't know. I had to ask the outrider and he told me I won." —Saez on how he learned that he won
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