A Tale Of Two Horse

On a blazing august after-noon in 1987, three horse owners strolled down to the front paddock on trainer D. Wayne Lukas's farm in Norman, Okla., to inspect a recent and costly acquisition. That yearling, a colt by Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew out of the good mare Smart Angle, stood, head bent, neatly cropping grass with his baby teeth. As the men reached the white board fence, Seattle Angle, as he was then called, raised his head high and stared at them, nostrils quivering, ears pricked, alert to the smell and sounds of the strangers.

Lloyd R. (Bob) French, Barry Beal and Lukas rested their elbows on the top rail and gazed at the colt with open admiration. "Look at how well-balanced and attractive he is," said Lukas. "Seattle Slews are usually a little bit coarse, a little rawboned. They don't have that little sharp Arab ear and that intelligent, sharp head, like he does." Suddenly, as if understanding every word of praise being lavished on him, the colt reared, raced to the far end of the paddock, propped, wheeled and came racing back, his dark bay coat gleaming like well-polished mahogany. Lukas laughed with delight. "Look at him!" he cried. "He's putting on a show for us. He knows he's something special."

What was special about this colt, besides his looks and breeding, was the price Lukas had paid for him three weeks earlier at the Keeneland summer sales in Lexington, Ky. Lukas is used to spending millions on horses, but always in partnership, never alone. "Once in a while," says Lukas, "I'll see a horse that makes my heart beat a little faster, and he was one of them. The first time I saw him, I looked at him and, jeez, he was a knockout. I made up my mind right then that if my partners and I were going to buy horses, and we only got one, this was the one. Why leave the best horse there?"

Lukas, who almost always buys his racing stock out of sales rings, had figured that the Maryland-bred colt would bring between $1.8 and $2 million but was unable to convince any of his partners—Gene Klein, French, Beal and others—to spend that much money on one horse. "O.K.," thought Lukas, "I'm going to go for it." Because Lukas, the top trainer in the country, knew that this yearling would be a hot item, he chose to conceal his interest in the horse and bid anonymously, standing against the wall at the back of the cool green arena and giving his signals to a friend, who relayed the bids to Tom Caldwell, the auctioneer. As expected, the bidding was brisk and rose rapidly to $2.4 million, at which point Lukas approached French and knelt beside his aisle seat.

"Bob," said Lukas, "do you still feel the same way about this horse?"

"Yes, I do," replied French. "He's bringing an awful lot of money."

By this time the bidding was at $2.5 million. Lukas said, "O.K.." then looked up and openly bid $2.6. "I knew I was going out on a limb," he said later, "but I felt that if 35 or 40 years of studying these damn things meant anything, then I should be able to raise my hand. I never said to myself. How high is up? Where do I stop? Besides, the numbers really aren't so bad if you say them fast." The number he ended up saying was, "Twopointninemilliondollars."

Immediately afterward, French, who has known Lukas for 20 years, said to the trainer, "Wayne, I've never known you to have such strong feelings about a horse."

"I'm thrilled to death I've got him," said Lukas. "I just know in my heart this will be the right one." A few days later, French called Lukas and said maybe they could work something out financially. In the end, Lukas kept a big piece of the horse, French took a big piece and Beal a smaller piece. The partnership has yet to reveal who owns how much, but it was French who gave the colt a new name. He's from Texas, and in the past has named his horses for towns in that state—Marfa and Terlingua and Guadalupe Peak. But he was saving the big town for a big horse. And that is how Seattle Angle came to be called Houston.

At 3:05 on the afternoon of March 21, 1986, at Claiborne Farm in Paris, Ky., the champion race mare Relaxing lay down in her stall and gave birth to a son of Alydar, a beautiful little chestnut colt with a white star on his forehead and a white sock on his left hind leg. Ogden Phipps, 80, the patriarch of the Phipps Stable, who breeds horses to race and who almost never sends them through a sales ring, kept an eye on this foal as he flourished and grew and gamboled across the rich green grass of Claiborne. He named him Easy Goer and dared to hope that the precocious colt might become a champion racehorse and maybe, just maybe, bring home to Phipps his first Kentucky Derby trophy.