by Mark Paul
Every year there are dozens of horses that get Derby hype because they win short sprint races, in fast times, and by large margins. As these horses mature, the stakes races are run at longer and more demanding distances, and their breeding comes into play. Most cheaply bred horses cannot stretch their speed to win at even a one-mile distance, yet alone the demanding one-and-one-quarter-mile classic distance of the Kentucky Derby.
As Kentucky Derby race contenders attempt to advance toward the world’s most famous race each May, they are challenged to race longer distances, against tougher stakes, and quality competition. Most will fall short, and be dropped down into lower class races, offering smaller purse money, while racing against horses of similar speed, not of Triple Crown stature. It is a process of elimination done every spring, starting with over 40,000 thoroughbred horses foaled. Only the best 20 or less horses qualify to make it into the Kentucky Derby starting gate for just one to emerge victorious.
The racing season is always changing because of the beautiful and constant unveiling of new equine talent. At the start of each year, the newly turned 3-year-olds strive to qualify for the Triple Crown races. Handicappers look to catch lightning in a bottle by ferreting out the possible Derby entrants, at long odds, before the horses become well-known stars, and then they are bet down to low odds in the many Derby prep races.
“Who is your Derby horse?” is a constant question on the backstretch, months before the race is run. After the Triple Crown races, consisting of the Kentucky Derby, Preakness, and Belmont are completed, the summer action shifts to the baby races, consisting of the new 2-year-olds that are just making their initial career starts. As the late spring days lengthen into summer, the big handicap stakes races are run for older horses, for massive purses.
In the fall, the action shifts to the Breeders’ Cup championship races with total purses exceeding $10,000,000. These races determine the Eclipse Awards for the best horses in each division, 2-year-old, sprinters, 3-year-old, turf (grass) racing, and older champions. The races and awards are broken down between the sexes, with females seldom asked to run against the males. Now, the now maturing 3-year-olds must step up and face the older horses to win the stakes money offered. The horses change track circuits for variety. It is a yearly cycle of life that horse players enjoy, and they watch it play out in the magnificent racing venues.
Winning Colors was no longer a racetrack secret, and the fans bet on her so heavily she was the 3-5 odds on favorite in the one-mile La Centinela Stakes for newly turned 3-year-olds. The race came up with less competition than she had previously faced, as it was run as the Wednesday feature race against seven other fillies. As Gary Stevens loaded her into the gate, he knew his job was to win the race, and to school the young filly. He had to teach her to rate and ration her brilliant speed to hold some in reserve for the late challenges that would be coming from horses that had conserved their energy for decisive late bids, in the longer races to come. Klein and Lukas now had over 100 horses in training together, and only a few would likely become champions. These horses first must be tested and culled out to see which had the heart, talent, and ability to run fast over the longer distances required of the top-stakes caliber horses.
Winning Colors was deemed one of the brightest prospects in the barn, and Lukas had his son Jeff take over the day-to-day training plans of the rising star. Jeff personally checked on her throughout the day, and made sure Luis had everything she could possibly need. Jeff told Luis, “We both know she’s special. Just focus on the gray, Luis. Full time...all the time. If anyone complains, tell them to see me.”
“Si, señor. I will…like she is mine!”
Luis had his work cut out for him. Winning Colors was becoming feistier all the time. It was around this time that Gary Stevens told a reporter, “The safest place to be around Winning Colors was on her back.”
She was like a young male stud—so powerful that she required a high level of training and racing to deploy her energy, or she was dangerous to be around.
January 20, 1988, Santa Anita Racetrack, California
At Santa Anita on January 20, 1988, the fillies loaded into their gates for the stakes event, and Winning Colors broke in scintillating style at the bell, quickly establishing a one-and-a-half length lead, blasting into the first left-hand turn. She started the long run down the backstretch, and Stevens tried to rate her energy, but she continued to pour on her early speed, again running sprinter-like quarter-mile and half-mile fractions of 22 seconds flat, and 45-and-four-fifths seconds.
Lukas was staring with concern at the track’s tote board to see these early fraction times posted. He was not happy with what they saw for her first half-mile pace. What he saw was that she was not rating for her jockey!
Stevens was trying to get her to relax, trying to teach her through his hands on the reins, to reserve her extraordinary energy and speed. He was amazed the moment she seemed to understand what he was trying to teach her; the change was fast as she suddenly showed a new sensibility, and relaxed. For the first time in her racing career, she was obeying him, and not running off.
Winning Colors entered the second turn two lengths in front. Still she was cruising at such a high rate of speed that the other fillies were overmatched early. As she exited the final turn, she was four lengths in front! Stevens noted that she always seemed to run faster in the turns. For the first time that day, her jockey asked her to run by letting his reins out a notch and chirping to her, “Let’s go girl…let’s go girl…now…. Hah…. Hah…. Hah.” She was happy to be set free and use her bundled power and energy as she jetted away from the field, winning easily, without ever being asked for her best, winning by six-and-a-half lengths over the other 3-year-old fillies.
Under his helmet, Stevens was smiling because she had just shown him the one thing he was hoping to see—that she was intelligent and was learning to be rated. She was not just a one-dimensional, speed crazy horse. The morning training sessions designed by Jeff Lukas, with Stevens riding her at dawn, were paying off. Champion racehorses are not just born, they are taught, coached, and developed. The Lukas team had patiently waited for this moment, and they now understood she was maturing into a potential champion racehorse. Winning Colors was showing the sense and intelligence to go with her natural brilliant athletic ability.
Chapter 2
Would You Bet Your Life on a 50-1 Shot?
January 23, 1988, Agua Caliente Racetrack,
Tijuana, Mexico
It was dark in Mark “Miami” Paul’s bedroom when the sound of the telephone jarred him awake.
“Miami, wake up! Today’s the day. You need to take me to Mexico.”
“It’s Saturday. Dino, go back to sleep.”
“No. Wake the hell up. I’ve been pouring over the numbers all the damn night long. She’s going to win the Kentucky Derby…and we are going to cash a bet for a quarter million. For sure.”
“I was at the Lakers game and I got into the Forum Club…until one a.m.”
“Miami…man…wake up. If you don’t take me…I’ll go myself. I know her odds are going to drop if we don’t bet her soon, and it will cost us tens of thousands of dollars when she wins the race.”
“Dino, don’t go alone to Tijuana. You know how oblivious you are when you’re gambling. You’ll get killed, man. Give me a second….”
Miami got up and stumbled into the bathroom, threw some water on his face, toweled off, and went back to the telephone. “OK… Let me get some coffee and wake up. I’ll pick you up in an hour. Dino, you really think this filly can win the Derby?”
Miami took his time through a coffee and toast breakfast, showered, and went to his closet. He picked out a teal colored cotton t-shirt, and white linen slacks. He reviewed all 11 of his Miami Vice styled jackets, each with three-quarter length sleeves, in silk pastel colors. He grabbed a white one, and donned (without socks) one pair of his six sets of white tennis shoes. Now he could go pick up Dino Mateo in Santa Monica.
At 9:00 a.m., Dino got into Miami’s red turbo 300Z sports car with the hardtop roof down, blaring Phil Collins on the stereo. The two men hit the 405 and headed south towards Mexico. Getting over the first 135 miles from Los Angeles to the Mexican border was the easy part and the two best friends were mostly quiet for over an hour.
As the bright Southern California sun rose and warmed the car through the open roof, they grew more awake and talkative. A gambler’s blood pressure always soars on the way to an event. The prospect of winning or losing hundreds, or in the case of Miami and Dino, thousands of dollars that day was adrenalizing, at least for Miami. Going to a different country to get the action down heightened Miami’s anticipation, but Dino appeared unfazed.
“Dino, do you know what the last three miles from border to the track have been called for over 70 years? The Road to Hell. Man, this is Tijuana. TJ! Be careful of these guys down here, Dino.”
“It’s the road to a huge score for us Miami…as long as they are still offering Winning Colors at odds of 50-1. I’m scared all right…scared they’ll lower her odds, or they won’t even take our bet on her to win the Derby.”
“I tapped out on the Lakers last night.”
“I watched. Great game! Kareem had 24…right? And they came from behind to win by one.”
“Yeah…but they were favored by eight. They are the world champions, for God’s sake. Against the Knicks…who suck…but last night they looked good. I hate Ewing.”
“I told you, I bet the Lakers’ futures again…to win back-to-back titles. I think they will. Do you have your money for the bet? I told you to save your money for this.”
“Kind of,” said Miami as his hands gripped the steering wheel. “I swear I am never making a bet that you don’t make with me again. I suck at picking winners.”
Four hours later, Miami parked on the US side of the border. The two friends walked across the International Bridge catwalk to enter Mexico. The crossing was swarming with both Americans and Mexicans, and as they always did in close quarter gambling environments, Dino and Miami put their wallets into the front pockets of their pants and kept their hands in front of their bodies to fend off pickpockets. Moments after they crossed into Mexico, taxi drivers besieged them and tried to herd them toward waiting cars. They chose a dark green taxi and told the driver, “Agua Caliente Racetrack.”
Miami was sweating in the hot cab, even on a January day, but he was afraid to open his window, as he’d seen people in the middle of the street holding chickens and all kinds of crazy goods, with hundreds of vendor carts lining the roads, hoping to attract the tourists walking and driving by.
“Why in the hell are they selling us live chickens in the road?” Miami asked Dino. “Like what the hell would we do? Take a few live chickens home to our houses for dinner tonight? ‘Hey honey, here’s a few live chickens for you. Fry ‘em up.’”
The vendors were selling everything from live iguanas to leather underwear. When the taxi stopped at a red light, vendors surrounded the car, swarming them while motioning them to roll down the windows and buy their wares. A young teenager climbed onto the hood of the taxi and started washing the front window before the taxi driver yelled an obscenity in Spanish at him, and he bolted away.
Miami looked at Dino who seemed at peace. Dino appeared blissful. Miami had seen this with Dino many times before, at California tracks like Santa Anita, Del Mar, and Hollywood Park, and in the Las Vegas mega hotels. Dino was in a hyper-focused gambling trance.
Both men were 30 years of age, but Dino was much shorter and heavier than Miami. He was wearing blue jeans, a blue golf shirt, and expensive New Balance running shoes. Miami doubted Dino had ever run a mile in his life. Dino always looked like he got dressed in a hurry. He could make an expensive suit look disheveled. Dino was a real estate appraiser for a commercial firm based in Los Angeles. He spent his mornings analyzing spread sheets and valuations, and afternoons pouring over horseracing data to uncover betting opportunities for his own bankroll.
As a commercial real estate broker, Miami worked early in the morning on the telephone with wealthy East Coast clients buying California income properties. This left him with free time in the California afternoons and on weekends. In early 1988, the average interest rate on a mortgage was 10.5 percent. The prime rate was 10 percent. Real estate deals were all dropping out because of the high interest rates. Miami was learning a new reality; gambling was fun when you didn’t feel the sting of the losses or need the wins. He had always made money in real estate before, but he had zero deals in escrow now.
The smell of burning trash filled their nostrils as the cab got closer to Agua Caliente. Tijuana, on a Sunday morning, was brimming with business and Miami noticed that the children working alongside their parents wore mostly clean clothes despite the squalor alongside the road. When the cab hit a pothole, Miami’s head bounced into the cab’s low roof. He turned to Dino and said, “Man, you are incredible. You take me to a third world country to bet on a race still five months away. Where the hell did I find you?”
At the Tijuana racetrack the two friends could gamble on future sporting events like the Kentucky Derby, other big national thoroughbred races, and major sporting events, up to 11 months before the events were decided. Dino had done research and was excited to find that the Agua Caliente racetrack’s future book gave much bigger odds than what could be gotten (legal or illegal) the day of the race or game from a Las Vegas bookmaker. The odds were much, much bigger. Often a horse that would wind up at 5-1 the day of race could be bet big at 50-1, 100-1, or even 300-1, many months before the actual race would be run. The Las Vegas casinos offered these same types of futures bets, at much more attractive betting venues, surrounded by swimming pools, sexy cocktail waitresses, craps and blackjack tables, but the Vegas odds were much less generous, and the Vegas casinos limited the amount of money they would accept in futures bets. It amazed the two gamblers that a multi-million-dollar Vegas casino would sometimes refuse a $1,000 future bet on a long shot Derby horse, but the casinos were shockingly conservative with their horse betting limits. Las Vegas was once the wild gambling frontier, but to Miami and Dino, Agua Caliente now offered far more opportunity for bold wagers from adventurous gamblers.
The owners of this Mexican racetrack were not being generous or stupid with the odds they offered. Just like the Las Vegas casinos, in futures betting, the house kept one huge advantage. If the horse did not run in the race, they kept all the money bet on that horse, with no refunds.
For the Kentucky Derby, the biggest race of the year, the bookmakers would post advance odds on over 300 horses to win the race. Horses would be listed that would have no chance to be in the race, yet alone win. Even to be invited into a race like the Kentucky Derby, the horse has to keep winning stakes races to be entered in the big race.
Miami and Dino had seen horses listed on the Mexican futures betting odds list that were already dead from illness or injury. Literally dead. In fairness to the Mexican track, extremely generous odds were offered.
The taxi dropped them off at the racetrack entrance at 1:30 p.m., but it was more like they had gone 60 years back in time. This racetrack had once been one of the grandest in the world but wasn’t looking so impressive anymore. It had opened in 1929 at a staggering cost of $2,500,000 ($36,000,000 in 1988 valuation), just in time for the end of the Roaring Twenties and the Wall Street crash of 1929. The once elegant racetrack had gone bust many times since it opened, like in 1935, when the Mexican government declared all gambling illegal for a short time. The track always managed to recover. For decades, the track had been an opulent place for a mostly American clientele to drink, party, and gamble, with an excellent hotel, spa, and a casino.
The Agua Caliente track was Las Vegas before Las Vegas legalized casino gambling in 1931.
Now in 1988, it was out of place again with its huge fountains, soaring staircases, and grand archways, leading to cigar and cigarette smoke filled rooms, lined wi
th gamblers who were watching dozens of television monitors beaming in races from US racetracks.
The local Agua Caliente Sunday live races were about to start. Miami located a table near the betting windows after he’d purchased a Mexican version of the Daily Racing Form and a cold beer. He could smell tacos and homemade tortillas at a vendor’s stand. Young Mexican guards with old carbine rifles hanging from their necks from thick, brown leather straps were in each room. Guns and guards were everywhere.
Miami looked at Dino who was sitting across the table and said, “I don’t know if we should be more afraid of the guards or the customers robbing us.”
Over the last 15 years, Dino and Miami had spent most of their days off at racetracks from California to Florida. The private turf clubs at Hollywood Park and Santa Anita, which required a coat and tie for admittance, were their usual hangouts. Those posh, high society Los Angeles clubs with a maître ‘d and reservations required to get a table were nothing like this betting joint.
Miami looked to his left to see a table of horse gamblers dressed in cheap, colorful shirts that might have fit their fat bodies 30 years earlier, but now made them look like ugly American tourists. Two of them had colorful red and yellow shorts on, with black dress socks and black scuffed up dress shoes. The horse gamblers at the tables surrounding him were getting louder as the cocktail waitress brought them more and more trays of huge green margaritas covered with salt around the glass edges. They seemed more interested in getting drunk and partying than seriously betting the horses.
Four women were sitting at two tables in the back of the race book; all were flirting with the margarita-drinking men who surrounded them. The women were aged 35 to 45 and were not unattractive from a distance, but seen from up close, they had on way too much heavy make-up for a Sunday. They didn’t look like they’d just come from church in their low cut, colorful, short dresses, and three-inch high heels.