With Entry, Lukas Is Doubly Hopeful of Preakness Win

BALTIMORE —  Unintentionally, Wayne Lukas was sounding a little like Chico Escuela, the character who used to be on “Saturday Night Live.”

“The Preakness,” Lukas said, “has been very good to me.”

He’s right. Although a win in the Kentucky Derby has been elusive for the 50-year-old trainer--nine starters, nothing better than a second place--Pimlico Race Course has been Lukasville.

The Preakness, the middle jewel in racing’s Triple Crown series, has been won twice by Lukas’ horses in the last six years. And on Saturday, the trainer will take double-barreled aim at the 111th running of the race, saddling Badger Land and Clear Choice to run against five rivals.

Badger Land, considered the stronger half of the entry because of an impressive win in the Flamingo Stakes at Hialeah and a troubled fifth-place finish in the Derby two weeks ago, is an enormous son of Codex, who in 1980 gave Lukas his first Preakness win.

Lukas’ Preakness reprise was Tank’s Prospect last year, the colt winning the 1 3/16-mile race in a record 1:53 2/5.

The 1980 victory wasn’t validated for two weeks, however, until the Maryland Racing Commission disallowed a protest by the owners of the filly Genuine Risk, who was brushed by Codex at the top of the stretch and carried out into the middle of the track.

With only seven 3-year-olds running Saturday, Lukas doesn’t anticipate another such brushing incident. Nor does he expect a rerun of this year’s demolition Derby, which proved that 16 horses can make for an unruly crowd at Churchill Downs.

“This should be a more honest race than the Derby,” Lukas said. “But sometimes you never know. I’ve had horses in some four- and five-horse fields that turned out to be hellacious wrecks.”

At least, Badger Land won’t have to worry about being crowded from the outside, a situation that occured at the start of the Derby, where a chain reaction at the gate almost deep-sixed Lukas’ colt. At Thursday’s post-position draw, Badger Land got the outside stall.

The field for the $534,400 Preakness lines up this way:

Miracle Wood, with Donnie Miller riding; Snow Chief, Alex Solis; Clear Choice, Jacinto Vasquez; Groovy, Craig Perret; Ferdinand, Bill Shoemaker; Broad Brush, Chris McCarron, and Badger Land, Jorge Velasquez.

All will carry 126 pounds, with Clear Choice and Badger Land coupled for betting purposes. Ferdinand, the 2-length winner of the Derby, is the 9-5 favorite, followed by the Lukas entry at 2-1, Broad Brush at 3-1, Snow Chief at 4-1, Miracle Wood at 20-1 and Groovy at 30-1.

Badger Land finished 4 3/4 lengths behind Ferdinand in the Derby. Lukas was asked if his colt had 4 3/4 lengths’ worth of trouble at Churchill Downs.

“At least that much,” Lukas said. “Because of this horse’s size, it’s difficult for him to stop and start, and he had to make three different runs, which is tough. With all due respect to Ferdinand and the other horses, I ran the best horse in the Derby. And I seldom say that after I’ve lost a race.”

Charlie Whittingham, the sage of Sierra Madre who trains Ferdinand, believes that it’s possible to steal any race, as long as the other jockeys give a speedball front-runner too much of a lead.

Lukas, however, doesn’t foresee this Preakness being won by an act of larceny. Groovy, who finished last in the Derby, almost needing a respirator after leading the race for six furlongs, worked a blazing :58 2/5 for five-eighths of a mile the other day and is Saturday’s thief apparent.

“There’ll be no stealing done in this race,” Lukas said. “There’s enough class in this field to prevent that. Everybody should be within range of the speed (Groovy). People always say that speed is king at Pimlico, but I don’t know about that. I’ve won this race twice by coming from out of it.”

Even in his two non-winning Preaknesses, Lukas has been respectable, finishing fifth with Partez in 1981 and fourth with Marfa in 1983.

After twice starting multiple entries in the Derby, Lukas is taking a double run at the Preakness for the first time, and Clear Choice is not along merely for the ride. Clear Choice might keep Groovy company during the early stages, although he doesn’t have the raw speed that the expected Preakness pace-setter has.

Owned by Eugene and Joyce Klein, who also campaigned Tank’s Prospect, Clear Choice comes into the race off a 2 3/4-length win in the one-mile Withers Stakes at Aqueduct May 7. The race before that, the colt, who went for $475,000 as a yearling, was fourth in the Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park.

Clear Choice had won the first race of his career only 12 days before the Arkansas race, but Lukas thought he was good enough to win at Oaklawn and takes the blame for the loss.

“If I had stayed out of the paddock before the Arkansas Derby, we would have won,” Lukas said. “I originally told (jockey) Chris (McCarron) to be laying about third or fourth, but when it rained, I changed my mind and told Chris to let him roll coming out of the gate. That’s what he did, and that’s what did the horse in.”

Vasquez, who will be the sixth jockey to ride Clear Choice in the last six races, has never won a Preakness. It was Vasquez who rode Genuine Risk here in 1980 and whose foul claim led to the unsuccessful appeal against Codex before the racing commission.

Badger Land is from Codex’s next-to-last crop of offspring. In January of 1984, Codex inexplicably collapsed at Tartan Farm in Ocala, Fla., and seven months later, the $6.2-million stallion had to be put to death, all four of his hoofs being hopelessly infected.

Codex leaves behind an unusual chapter in Preakness history. If one of his sons runs the race that his trainer says he’s capable of running Saturday, the story will get a suitable epilogue.

Horse Racing Notes Despite her third-place finish in the Kentucky Oaks two weeks ago, Family Style will be favored today in the $100,000 Black-Eyed Susan Stakes at Pimlico. Others in the field include Spring Debut, Firgie’s Jule, She’s a Mystery, Pretty Tricky, Steel Maiden, Timelessleigh and Tulindas. Chris McCarron, who rides Family Style for trainer Wayne Lukas, brought the 3-year-old filly from way back in the Oaks, but she wound up behind Tiffany Lass and Life at the Top in a four-horse photo finish, with Classy Cathy fourth, less than a length behind the first three. . . . Eugene Klein, former owner of the San Diego Chargers, could have a big weekend. Besides Clear Choice and Family Style, Klein is running Lady’s Secret Saturday at Belmont Park in the Shuvee Handicap. Last year, Klein won the Shuvee with Life’s Magic on the same day that Tank’s Prospect took the Preakness.

PREAKNESS FIELD

PP HORSE JOCKEY ODDS 1 Miracle Wood Miller 20-1 2 Snow Chief Solis 4-1 3 a-Clear Choice Vasquez 2-1 4 Groovy Perret 30-1 5 Ferdinand Shoemaker 9-5 6 Broad Brush C. McCarron 3-1 7 a-Badger Land Velasquez 2-1

a--entry

Trainers (by post position): 1. Ferris Allen. 2. Mel Stute. 3. Wayne Lukas. 4. Howard Crowell. 5. Charlie Whittingham. 6. Richard Small. 7. Wayne Lukas.

Owners (by post position): 1. Albert F. Allen, Jr. 2. Carl Grinstead and Ben Rochelle. 3. Mr. and Mrs. Eugene Klein. 4. John Ballis and Ted Kruckle. 5. Elizabeth Keck. 6. Robert Meyerhoff. 7. Mel Hatley, Wayne Lukas and Jeff Lukas.

Weights: 126 pounds. Distance: 1 3/16 miles. Purse: $534,400 if seven start. First place: $411,900. Second place: $70,000. Third place: $35,000. Fourth place: $17,500. Post time: 2:40 p.m. PDT Saturday. Television: Channel 7.