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Everybody in the game wants to be there
It will now be at least 22 years between Triple Crown winners, and judging by what happened to Charismatic on Saturday, it could be longer than that.
Had Lukas' game colt won that race, he would have beaten more rivals than any of the horses who succeeded in sweeping the series -- 41 in all; 18 in the Derby, 12 in the Preakness and 11 in the Belmont. That would have been nine more opponents than War Admiral conquered when he set the mark by winning all three classics in 1937.
More and more, crowded fields are becoming a fact of life. More thoroughbreds are being foaled each year, more are being pointed toward the Triple Crown races, and more making it into the starting gates for the biggest races, starting with the first Saturday in May.
"It's not the money that's drawing the horses," Lukas said. "It's the desire of the owners to be in the main arena. The purses are secondary. The Triple Crown and the Breeders' Cup are the high-profile days for our sports, and everybody in the game would like to be there."
In order to get there, they have to have horses. And not just any horses, but 3-year-olds thoroughbreds who will test the limits of their endurance at a stage in their development when they are as high-strung as teen-agers and just as unfinished.
And then there have to be enough to fill out the programs at the Breeders' Cup races in the fall, in the Derby prep races throughout the winter and spring, the Triple Crown races in May and June, and the Haskell or Jim Dandy or Travers as the summer lengthens into another fall.
When Charismatic was pulled up a few yards down the track from the finish line with what X-rays would later reveal were two broken bones, the natural suspicion was that the horse was overworked.
After all, the Belmont was the colt's fifth race in the last 64 days, beginning with a fourth-place finish in the Santa Anita Derby on April 3 before successive wins in a Derby prep race, then the Derby itself and then the Preakness. On top of which, Lukas had a history of horses breaking down just past the wire in the biggest races.
Six years ago, he lost a horse named Union City in the Preakness, setting off whispers that the horse was not sound going in. The next year, Tabasco Cat, the Preakness winner, was retired with a leg injury. Then Flanders, his champion juvenile filly, broke a bone and had to be retired as well. Three more of his best colts, 1995 Preakness winner Timber Country, 1995 Derby winner Thunder Gulch and 1996 Derby champion Grindstone, ran into trouble and had to quit prematurely.
Lukas' horsemanship and his judgment both were called into question in the past, and the criticism stung. Which may explain why Dr. Stephen Selway, the veterinarian who performed the surgery Sunday to repair Charismatic's fractured canon bone, went out of his way to make clear the horse was sound heading into the Belmont.
"There was, " Selway said, "no evidence of any preexisting condition."
As grim as Saturday afternoon was, Lukas was so pleased with the way Sunday unfolded that even the prospect of critics feasting on his decision did not worry him. Charismatic's owners, Bob and Beverly Lewis, had stood behind Lukas at every step of the process and the colt's future as a stallion was at least as bright as the past he left out on the racetrack.
"As many horses as I train and at the level we compete, I'm going to get criticized," Lukas said. "The only critics I have to worry about are my owners -- the Lewises. I can't worry about what people say."
The racing game isn't about to change, and apparently neither will Lukas. He trains horses hard for campaigns that are only going to get tougher with each successive year. The one-time basketball coach is already the most successful trainer of his time, and likely to stay that way.
On the eve of the Belmont, Lukas explained how his philosophy of training varied with each individual horse, even though the guiding principle always remained the same.
"I think they reflect your personality, and mine's aggressive. You can probably guess that when I was coaching (basketball), my teams pressed and ran. Even," he said, "when the kids I had couldn't press or run."
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Jim Litke is a sports columnist for The Associated Press. Write to him at: jlitke
ap.org.