Wayne’s World

Half an hour before the Belmont Stakes, in hot, steamy New York, some paddock visitors sought relief under a big, shady tree not far from where the horses are saddled.

One group included Lenny Hale, vice president for racing at Pimlico; John Russell, a retired trainer who was in from California; and Lenny Shulman, a magazine editor from Kentucky.

“Can [Wayne] Lukas win this race?” one of them asked, nodding in the direction of the longshot Commendable.

“He just keeps coming at you,” somebody else said. “He keeps showing up. Sometimes he shows up with the damnedest horses, horses that can’t seem to win, but he keeps running them. Then every once in a while, he catches that lightning in the bottle.”

Lukas, the leading trainer on the country’s money list for 14 of the last 17 years, and No. 1 this year, won the Belmont with Commendable at 18-1, the trainer’s 27th victory in races worth

$1 million or more. The next trainer on that list, Shug McGaughey, has won 12.

Lukas will be shopping for his 28th million-dollar victory Sunday, in the Sempra Energy Hollywood Gold Cup, and it’s with another improbable colt, Cat Thief, who has been beaten many more times than he has won.

Cat Thief, who has eight seconds and eight third-place finishes, has earned $3.7 million but won only four of 26 starts. In the nine-horse Gold Cup field, only Early Pioneer, who has also been beaten 22 times, has lost as often as Cat Thief.

But this is the kind of script that Lukas loves to thrust himself into.

“When they say you can’t do something, it drives our organization,” he said. “I feed off that. I motivate my help off that. They said Tabasco Cat [his 1994 Belmont winner] couldn’t get a mile and a half, but he did. They said Commendable couldn’t win the Belmont. But we feed off all that.

“About an hour before [this year’s] Belmont, I said to Bob and Beverly Lewis [Commendable’s owners]: ‘We do our best work when they don’t expect it.’ ”

In some fields, Cat Thief would be a lot higher than his 5-1 listing on the Gold Cup’s morning line. But the 61st Gold Cup is perceived as General Challenge and the eight dwarfs, and Cat Thief, in last year’s Swaps Stakes, beat General Challenge at Hollywood Park.

Since then, Cat Chief has won only one of 11 starts for his owner-breeder, William T. Young of Overbrook Farm, but he’s still riding the ever-vanishing waves from that lone victory, the shocking 19-1 upset in the Breeders’ Cup Classic, which has accounted for $2.08 million of the 4-year-old colt’s earnings.

Since the Classic at Gulfstream Park, Cat Thief has lost seven in a row, most recently a fifth, after he broke through the gate before the start of the Pimlico Special, and a third, on a sloppy track in the Stephen Foster Handicap at Churchill Downs.

Before the Foster, Cat Thief lost Pat Day, the jockey who’d won with him in the Swaps and the Breeders’ Cup. Day, who chose to ride Ecton Park, the second-place finisher behind Golden Missile, will be back with Cat Thief in the Gold Cup, the 46-year-old jockey shooting for his second Gold Cup victory and 22nd in a $1-million race.

“Cat Thief’s consistently on the board, but he doesn’t put forth 110% every time,” Day said.

Cat Thief in the Breeders’ Cup and Commendable in the Belmont have accounted for two of Day’s five $1-million victories with Lukas horses. Commendable, ridden by Edgar Prado, had been 17th in the Kentucky Derby, outrunning only two horses, and Day said he wouldn’t have accepted the Belmont assignment but for Lukas’ optimism.

Commendable gave Lukas his 13th win in a Triple Crown race, tying the record held by the late Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons. Of Lukas’ victories, only two--Timber Country’s in the 1995 Preakness and Thunder Gulch’s in the 1995 Belmont--were with favorites. His 1999 Kentucky Derby winner, Charismatic, paid $64.60, third-biggest payoff in race history.

Only six of Lukas’ 15 Breeders’ Cup winners were favored, and last year, besides Cat Thief, he won the Juvenile Fillies with Cash Run, whose $67 win price was the largest at a Breeders’ Cup in five years.

Unlike some trainers, Lukas spends as much time assessing the opposition as he does his own horse.

“Sometimes that’s more important, what the other guy has,” Lukas said. “I’m a terrible handicapper, but what I still try to do is handicap the ability of the other guy’s horse. What I think he can do and can’t do.

“Such as, can another horse catch my horse two lengths before the quarter pole? Or, in the Belmont, can Aptitude come from seven or eight lengths back if we turn the corner in 1:38 and something for the mile? That kind of thing.”

Aptitude, much too far back early, closed for second, 1 1/2 lengths behind Commendable.

Several days before the Belmont, Aptitude’s trainer, Bobby Frankel, and Lukas were standing together on the backstretch.

“You gonna run?” Frankel asked.

“Yeah, we’re in,” Lukas said. “We’ll make their hearts pound for a little way, and you can take over from there.”

After the Belmont, Frankel, shaking his head over Alex Solis’ ride, was just as dumbfounded by the horse that beat him. When Aptitude ran second to Fusaichi Pegasus in the Derby, he’d finished 24 1/2 lengths ahead of Commendable.

“I give Lukas credit,” said Frankel, who’s running Chester House in the Gold Cup. “But I don’t know how he does it.”

Confidence doesn’t hurt. A race probably hasn’t been written that Lukas didn’t think he could win.

Horse Racing Notes

Commendable, making his first start since the Belmont, will race three horses, one of them Preakness winner Red Bullet, in the $150,000 Dwyer Stakes at Belmont Park on Sunday. Also running are More Than Ready, who was fourth in the Kentucky Derby, and Albert The Great, whose trainer, Nick Zito, is back in the 3-year-old stakes ranks after sitting out this year’s Triple Crown. With Pat Day busy at Hollywood Park, Brice Blanc will fly in from California to ride Commendable for the first time. It took Albert The Great five starts to break his maiden, but he has won three in a row going into the Dwyer, a 1 1/16-mile race.