When Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas wins a horse race, he does something
with little fanfare that leaves a strong impression, and it was no different
Sunday when his two-year-old filly Broken Spell rallied to break her maiden in
the 5TH race on the turf at Saratoga.
Heading to the winner’s circle, Lukas spotted a young girl with her family
and asked if she would like to join him in the post-race photo.
“I do it every time I win a race,” Lukas said Monday morning. “That’s been
going on for years. What I do is I get a perfect stranger. I just walk up to
somebody standing there with their family, a five, six or seven-year-old, and
say, ‘Let’s get our picture taken with this winning horse.’ And I take them
there, and they get so excited.
“The beautiful thing is that they’re at the races and they see all the
horses, but they don’t get that close to one. I take them back to the parents
and say, ‘If you wait about 20 minutes, you can go by the photographer’s office
and there will be a free copy of that on my account for you.’ It’s great for the
photographer because they get my free one, and they get one for each grandparent
and their Aunt Nelly and everybody else, so the photographers get a hell of a
bonus out of it.”
Lukas said the little girl he brought down to the winner’s circle Sunday
innocently asked him, “‘What do you do here?’ And I said, ‘I work here. I take
care of the horses.’ And she said, ‘Oh, good. Can I touch him?’ And I said,
‘When he gets here, we’ll take the saddle off and you can touch him.’ She has no
idea that I have ever won a race any other place or even knew anything about the
horse.”
Lukas said he got in the habit of taking kids to the winner’s circle at
Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Arkansas, and wishes more trainers would do it.
“It takes no time, it’s pleasant for me, and I think it develops a public
relations thing that you couldn’t duplicate if you spent all night trying to
think of something,” he said.
“I was standing there at the Derby this year, and this kid comes walking up
and says, ‘Do you remember me?’ And his parents were standing back; he came by
himself. We shook hands, and I said, ‘No, I don’t remember you. Should I?’ And
he said, ‘Oh, yeah. We had our picture taken together last year. I have it up on
my bulletin board.’
“You can’t produce that kind of PR,” Lukas said. “We need more of that. It’s
so easy to do.”
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