by Mark Paul
One morning he told his brother Scott, “You can’t imagine what it is like to ride for Mr. Klein. He sends limousines for me to come to his ranch. And, my God, you should see his private jet! He never lets me fly commercial when I ride his horses at other tracks. Brother, we are from Idaho and now it’s the big time!”
Scott as always was happy for his little brother’s success. He knew how hard it had been for Gary to achieve this level of racing achievement. He had watched Gary at age seven be diagnosed with Legg-Calve-Perthes syndrome, a degenerative disease which destroys the hip socket joint, requiring him to wear a metal brace for 19 months. Gary’s first attempt to break into the ultra-competitive Southern California jockey colony had been a disaster; he’d won only four races in 90 attempts. Lukas and Klein had changed his life, yet he remained humble and aware a jockey’s life is a fragile existence. Stevens had only one weakness at the track and that was his penchant for fighting with other jockeys after races. If he could control his temper, and not be suspended, his future was bright. He just needed one special horse to prove his talent.
December 27, 1987, Santa Anita Racetrack, California
Modern thoroughbreds are considered much more fragile now than their predecessors were 50 years ago. For instance, in 1935, the famous Seabiscuit raced 35 times just as a 2-year-old. By comparison, this next race would be Winning Colors’ second and final start as a 2-year-old. Trainers in the 1920s and 1930s believed running 2-year-olds hard and often made them stronger and better able to handle the rigorous demands of racing when they became mature racehorses. Horses of that era were no doubt sounder and sturdier than the ones that run today. If a trainer were to do that in modern racing, they would be chastised and called cruel.
A horse with a five-month layoff between races is usually considered one of the worst wagers at the track, but Winning Colors’ handlers who were with her every day knew she was unusual—so big, fast, and physical for a young horse. She could cruise easily at such a high speed that the daily exercise riders would find their hands worn to the point of bloody and raw by trying to control her in the morning workouts. Now four-and-a-half months since her sparkling race debut she was ready for her second start.
Lukas was becoming known as a “ladies’ man” due to his incredible recent stakes race winning successes with the female horses in his care. Now to close out her 2-year-old season this cool and crisp late December day in California, Winning Colors was racing against five other promising fillies, including several that had shown to be extremely fast in their morning workouts. Winning Colors had drawn the most undesirable post position possible in the number one post, located down next to the inner fence, and this fact worried Lukas. The rail post position can especially bother precocious, young, unseasoned horses that often shy away from being squeezed down inside by horses charging alongside them on their right flank. If the rail horse breaks even a half-step slow, the other horses can come over and squeeze it against the fence, forcing the horse to run around outside the field to have any chance of prevailing.
Lukas told Stevens before the race, “She is like a storm…she can seem peaceful and relaxed…but anything can set her off and she becomes a maniac. Keep her away from noise and commotion or you will be sitting on a tornado. She is big and tough but also very fragile.”
Winning Colors was staying focused as she calmly entered the gate, just as in New York, like a more seasoned veteran racehorse with years of experience. The other horses were jostling and banging against their gates as their Hispanic jockeys yelled to the starter to wait: “Espere! Espere!” as they worked to get their wild fillies settled and straight in the gate for the break.
The track announcer’s voice came over the public address system, “The flag is up!” The horses were fully loaded and ready for the start when the starting bell clanged and the gates popped open.
Winning Colors exploded out of the gate with powerful long strides into the short three-quarter mile, one-turn race. The other fillies could not keep up with the big gray rockets early speed and she was in front by two-and-a-half lengths in under five seconds, increasing her margin every second. Gary Stevens was along for the ride she gave, sitting still on her back, never pushing her for more run. She was setting a fast pace—a pace only before seen in the top older, seasoned male sprinters in the nation. There was a problem with her 21-and-four-fifths-of-a-second as well as her 44-and-four-fifths-of-a-second opening fractions for the first quarter and half-mile. She was running too fast, too soon. A racehorse cannot sustain a flat-out pace like that for an entire race without tiring down the stretch. She was not conserving her energy—something that’s often called “rating.” She was running in a crazy exhibition of speed.
Stevens was trying his best to ration her energy. He explained later, “I didn’t know she was going so insanely fast. She was doing it easily, not running off with me.”
Winning Colors was able to run at a pace not seen by young fillies, and she was doing it effortlessly. She lengthened her body and led the field of six horses down the long Santa Anita backstretch with her long strides and gray mane flying in the wind while the other jockeys were desperate in urging their mounts to make a charge and cut into her lead. Winning Colors must have sensed she had no competition from the other young fillies.
As Stevens was trying to get her to slow her pace down and reserve energy for the stretch challenges, she did relax without pouring on her full energy and slowed to a still quick, but more sensible pace. She cruised into the sweeping left-hand turn leading by three-and-a-half lengths.
When they straightened for home, Stevens let the reins out a notch, chirped to her, and she responded by digging into the ground with her front hooves and pulling forward in long strides. The other fillies were way behind. The finish line approached, and she drifted to her left, nearly touching the inner rail. Stevens looked back and could see no closing threat. As she cruised to the wire, Stevens grabbed the reins 100 yards out to slow her down and save more energy.
Winning Colors won by four lengths. Easy.
Her groom Luis was again standing at the rail, hands held high with a thick stack of winning mutual tickets yelling, “Si!...Si!...Si!...Si! Esa es mi chica!”
Trainers, grooms, and backstretch workers will tell you horses know when they win a race. They carry themselves differently after a win, or a loss. Winning Colors was fully in her element as she cantered down the backstretch while being cooled out. She refused to be pulled up for her jockey. She was in such a state of joy after being allowed to release her stored energy that she did not want to stop running. Stevens later told Lukas, “She could’ve run another race that day. She was not even breathing hard after the race and could not blow out a candle if placed under her nose.”
The Kleins’s preferred turf club table was located above the finish line, and they erupted in screams of joy as their expensive filly charged to victory. All six of them marched triumphantly down the three flights of stairs to the winner’s circle, to get their pictures taken with the happy, shining, tall gray filly.
After dismounting, Stevens told his fellow jockey Jacinto Vasquez, “That horse has attitude. I’m going to win the Kentucky Derby on that filly.”
Vasquez raised an eyebrow. Stevens had never spoken like that about any horse to him. He told Stevens, “You don’t know what it takes to win a Derby.”
Stevens loved her fiery, precocious attitude, and her amazing athleticism, even if she was high-strung and difficult to control. The two were a good match together, fearless, with a will to win and take chances. They didn’t run for second money, but gunned to the front, defying any equine or human athlete to keep pace with them.
Eugene and Joyce Klein and a boisterous group of champagne-drinking friends celebrated Winning Colors’ win at an elegant candlelit French dinner. Joyce smiled, noticing her husband was as happy as she had seen him in years.
He was telling one of his favorite stories: “After the games, Howard Cosell bugged me al
l the damn time to ride in my jet. That’s the last thing I needed is Cosell in my plane for five damn hours. Joyce was always scolding me for the way I talked to the media, telling me, ‘Honey, you need to think more before you talk to the press.’ But one week later he asks me again...and I tell Howard that it’s only a small plane and we’ve got a limited supply of oxygen to get us all the way back to California. It worked…he didn’t ask again!”
His companions asked him why he sold the football team.
Klein’s eyes met his wife’s, and they both looked away. Then Klein explained: “Did I tell you about my Chargers’ players after the ‘82 Miami playoff game? I gave the players my goddamn beautiful airplane to fly home from the game. How did they repay my generosity? One of them brought a kilo of cocaine back on my plane to sell. My plane! After that, the FBI was investigating me for drug trafficking. They could have confiscated and kept my jet! The players didn’t even try to hide the drugs. No, the stupid asses started to cut it up and began putting the coke up their noses on the plane, in front of the stewardesses! I said, ‘To hell with football players! Let’s go buy some horses. Horses don’t deal coke!’”
Joyce Klein knew her 65-year-old husband was not the retiring type, and after selling the San Diego Chargers, she encouraged him to relax at the racetrack. In typical Eugene Klein fashion, he immediately told her to find him the best horse trainer in the world. D. Wayne Lukas had come to Klein’s house the same week Joyce called, and maneuvered his new Rolls Royce up the long impressive estate driveway to the Klein’s Rancho Santa Fe home, located just north of San Diego. Lukas was wearing a $3,000 David Rickey navy blue pinstripe suit and as always looked like he should be playing James Bond in the movies, not training horses in dusty stables. Lukas had over 200 custom sports jackets and suits in his closet and dressed better working in the barn than other trainers did in the turf club dining room.
Upon meeting Lukas, Klein had been at first put off by the slick clothes and fancy car, but quickly found him fascinating because of his fast-talking but brutally honest persona, with enough energy to run the Sun.
Klein said to him, “I didn’t know horse trainers drove such fancy rigs.”
Lukas replied, “I said I wasn’t going to cheat you. I didn’t say I was going to work for nothing.”
“Why should I give you my horses to train?”
Lukas told him a story. “During a race another trainer had a horse get squeezed on the inside rail. The horse got bumped so bad he flipped over the inside rail, landing in a deep puddle of water. The horse drowned. When the horse owner called the trainer to ask how his horse ran that day, he had to say, ‘Not so good, he drowned.’” Lukas laughed and then said, “Mr. Klein I may not be the best trainer in the world…but not one of my horses has ever drowned. I already have more horses in training than any other trainer in the country, and I don’t need more owners. I need the right owners. I mean serious owners that are not afraid to spend real money and try to win the country’s biggest races, like the Derby, and the Breeders’ Cup. I need big boys to think and play big, and I know we can do it, because I’m the leading trainer in the country already. I am a winner, and I will make you money by racing champions, and breeding champions.”
After surviving two coronary bypass operations in his sixties, and after spending millions of dollars on a pro football team with players he couldn’t understand or relate to, Klein was now playing in the thoroughbred fast lane, with the gutsiest trainer in the world. As a former bomber navigator in World War II, he had faced live action from enemy anti-aircraft guns, and fighter pilots. Klein was a gambler at heart. He had gambled his money to buy a pro football team, and he was now investing in the fastest thoroughbreds that could be bought.
He also knew he was running out of time.
That same Sunday, December 27, 1987, during the night, Luis and two of his other backside racetrack buddies from the Lukas barn, Rafael and Ruben, took their two days off and headed their beat up, old, red pick-up truck onto a long road into the desert for their first trip to Las Vegas. They believed in Luis’s undefeated Mamacita after her two stunning victories and were committed to bet on her to win the 1988 Kentucky Derby at the Caesars Palace future book venue.
The race was still five months away, held as always on the first Saturday in May, and Louisville, Kentucky, was 2,000 miles away from Mamacita’s current California stall. But, the odds in future book wagering are affected by how early a wager is made. For instance, you can bet on the possible outcome of a future US Presidential election four years, three years, or even one month before it happens. But if you bet early, when there is more uncertainty as to the eventual result, the odds offered are fixed dramatically higher than they are just before the event. For Luis and friends, Winning Colors still was an unlikely long shot to even run in the Derby against the best males in the country, and if she didn’t run in, and win the Derby, their future bet money would not be refunded. Luis didn’t care, and he told his buddies, “Amigos, I will take care of her like she belongs to me. Do not worry.”
They thought he was perhaps just a little loco, but he was so passionate in his belief in her ability, they couldn’t say no. Luis watched her every day train alongside other top racehorses, and she always passed them when she pleased, even against the older males.
The friends stayed outside of the Las Vegas Strip at an inexpensive, $39-per-night motel room, sharing one room with two queen beds. Their average day’s pay at the barn was less than $50 each, but Klein had handed Luis a $500 tip after her race that day and told him to share it with the other stablehands who’d worked with Winning Colors. That $500 and all the other money they could scrape together was stuck in Luis’s boot. That night they ate at an inexpensive Mexican restaurant and took two six-packs of beer to the small pool outside their room, where they sat up until two a.m. listening to Latin music and getting buzzed. They could see the glimmering lights of the Strip a mile away in the cold, windy, desert winter night but could not afford to get involved with the gambling, girls, and other attractions.
“We are a long way from home, my friends,” Luis said to his work buddies.
Rafael asked, “Where is home? Are you glad you left Mexico, amigo?”
Luis replied, “Home is here…and there too. Of course, I am glad…and thankful. Tonight my children are safe…and fed…and warm, with their mother.”
Rafael said, “You have to get up every day at three a.m. and work. Lukas is a ball buster. He sent me home because I was dressed too dirty. Then I clean up after his horses.”
“Remember when we didn’t have work? I’m happy to work. Lukas is a pain in the ass sometimes…but he works hard, too. Like he never sleeps. Let’s get my filly home in the Derby, amigos…then I will buy a house for my niños and Mariana…with a pool!”
“A groom with a pool…you think you are a rich man?”
“Maybe…maybe.”
The next day they slept until 7:30 a.m., which seemed like a late morning to them after working at the Lukas barn. They pulled themselves together, cleaned up, and put on their best jeans, brass belt buckles, plaid shirts, boots, and large cowboy hats. Then they feasted on platters of the huevos rancheros breakfast special and drank two pitchers of black coffee at a Denny’s restaurant near the Las Vegas Strip.
“Let’s go make some dinero,” Luis said to his track buddies as they packed up their pick-up truck and headed straight to valet parking at the lobby of the Caesars Palace casino. The sign above advertised “Tom Jones Live” and they asked each other, “Quien es Tom Jones?”
The three men were focused on their gambling mission, avoiding the slot machines, craps, and blackjack tables on their way straight to the sprawling Sports and Race Book at the back of the casino’s floor. The walls of the betting mecca were covered with banks of television monitors the size of king beds, but there was not much activity on a Monday morning before noon. Luis asked the bartender how much for a beer. When he heard it was $2.75, he gave up being
thirsty for one. They found the printed sheets for the 1988 Kentucky Derby in a far corner of the race book and located her name and odds toward the end of the sheet: “Winning Colors: 100-1.”
Rafael said, “These gringos are estúpido. Let’s take their money!”
The three found the one open betting window. After working to communicate in English with the bookmaker, Luis handed over the Derby printed odds sheet while pointing to their circled choice. Then he reached down into his cowboy boot for their shared bankroll. “Two-thousand dolares, por favor.”
The ticket writer at the window had to call for a supervisor because although $2,000 wasn’t a huge bet for one of the largest casinos in Nevada, the casino’s exposure was still $200,000 if Winning Colors were to win the Derby; significant to even the Caesars Palace Race and Sports Book. The bookmaker printed the ticket and handed it to the men saying, “Good luck.”
They retrieved their old but clean pick-up truck from the valet parking attendant, tipped the kid one dollar, and headed back to Santa Anita racetrack, five hours away, going right to the barn that evening to see their girl, Luis’s Mamacita, Winning Colors.
Winning Colors’ growing racing fan base didn’t have long to wait to get excited, as Lukas was now ready to ramp up his big plans for her 1988 campaign. All racehorses have the same birthday, turning one year older, every January first. If a horse is born in December, it still turns a year old on January first. Winning Colors, born March 14, 1985, was now a 3-year old and ready to be tested in her first stakes race at Santa Anita. This would be her first longer race, around two turns. Many professional gamblers were still somewhat skeptical that any horse with that much blazing early speed could ration (rate) her energy over a longer distance with two turns, and still hold off the closers in the stretch run. Winning Colors had shown unbelievable sprinting speed but had yet to show she could be controlled by a jockey over a longer race.