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The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told
A True Tale of Three Gamblers,
the Kentucky Derby, and the
Mexican Cartel
Mark Paul
Copyright © 2020 by Mark Paul
All rights reserved.
Smashwords Edition
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The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told
A True Tale of Three Gamblers, the Kentucky Derby, and the Mexican Cartel
By Mark Paul
1. BIO000000 2. BIO026000 3. GAM004040
Paperback ISBN: 978-1-949642-28-5
Hardcover ISBN: 978-1-949642-29-2
Ebook ISBN: 978-1-949642-30-8
Cover design by Lewis Agrell and JW Robinson
Printed in the United States of America
Authority Publishing
11230 Gold Express Dr. #310-413
Gold River, CA 95670
800-877-1097
www.AuthorityPublishing.com
Dedication
To my wife, partner, and love of my life who always believes in me,
often for no apparent reason.
Author’s Note
The Greatest Gambling Story Ever Told is the colorful story of a spectacular three-year-old female racehorse in the male dominated world of thoroughbred racing. The book is a dramatic narrative of an exciting and frightening time in my life. It’s based on personal experiences leading up to and during the Kentucky Derby. Hundreds of hours of research allowed me to portray and re-create the lives and actual events that occurred around the gamblers and participants in the running of this race. Occasionally places, persons, timelines, and details were changed to re-create events that occurred over three decades ago, and to protect identities and privacy. There are elements of creative nonfiction in this work (conversations were recreated) but it is based on events I witnessed or researched.
Contents
Dedication
Author’s Note
Chapter 1 Long Legged Lady
Chapter 2 Would You Bet Your Life on a 50-1 Shot?
Chapter 3 Cartel Trouble
Chapter 4 Stakes Class
Chapter 5 The Hotel Impala
Chapter 6 Girls Don’t Belong
Chapter 7 Heaven
Chapter 8 Newspaper Execution
Chapter 9 The Greatest Two Minutes
Chapter 10 Drug Dogs
Chapter 11 Mariachi Madness
Acknowledgements
About the Author
Bibliography
Chapter 1
Long Legged Lady
May 5, 1984, Churchill Downs Racetrack, Kentucky
A girl with long red hair, perhaps eight years old, was sitting high atop her father’s shoulders, watching the horses load into the gate for the 110th running of the Kentucky Derby. They were standing in the packed grandstand at the stretch near the starting gate; nearly a quarter mile separated them and the finish line. She was holding a sign that read, “Beat the Boys! Althea!” She wanted to see a female horse win the prestigious race, something that a filly had accomplished only twice since 1875.
This filly, Althea, had drawn the dreaded rail post position. She was calm when she entered the gate. Althea was waiting behind the gate because 19 additional horses were still to be loaded into the starting gates, including another female. The other filly, Life’s Magic, shared the same trainer as Althea: D. Wayne Lukas. The betting public believed the two fillies had a real chance; they were the favorites at odds of only 2.8-1, coupled in the wagering together.
After the outside gate, number 20, was loaded, the starter’s bell rang and the gates sprung open!
The crowd of 126,000 fans roared as Althea broke just a bit slow, but recovered and frantically dug her hooves into the hard brown Kentucky soil, desperate to get in front of the other 19 charging horses. She was sprinting now, taking the lead running while on the inside part of the track near the white rail, past the fans, and into the first of the two long turns.
The red-haired girl’s father yelled, “Althea’s in front!”
She smiled and shouted, “Go girl! Go girl!”
A horse named Swale, a colt, was the one most expected to battle the favored Althea, (at 3-1 odds), and he settled just off the speeding filly on the lead as they charged into the turn at nearly 40 mph. With the sound of 80 hooves pounding into the track, all horses were seeking the immortality of a Derby win for their trainers and owners.
Althea now opened up on Swale by one-and-a-half lengths into the first left-handed turn.
The 71-year-old trainer of Swale was Woody Stephens of Kentucky, and like many successful older men, he had lost his politically correct filter some years before. Just that morning he had yelled to Lukas, “Dammit Wayne, keep your fillies out of my way.”
“Althea won’t be in your way, Woody. You’ll have to catch her if you can.”
“You’re wasting your time. Keep the girls running against girls.”
Lukas had been the first trainer in history to enter two fillies in the same Derby. He had been mocked and criticized by other trainers, the media, and many racing fans, for doing so, despite how Althea had defeated the colts in three other major stakes races already in her short career. To win a Derby requires a different type of horse—a horse that can race the classic distance of one-and-one-quarter miles and survive the long stretch run against the best horseflesh on the planet.
Just before the start of this race, a male fan yelled, “You’re going to lose again Wayne…next year bring a colt!”
So far, in the 1984 Kentucky Derby, Lukas looked like a genius as Althea led the thundering pack into the backstretch. Hooves pounding, Swale and Althea were throwing back chunks of dirt into the faces of their nearest pursuers, nearly two lengths behind them. Swale began his attack on her outside right flank, challenging her for the lead. She felt his energy and dug in again, accelerating into the final turn, flatly refusing to yield to the larger colt on her outside. The huge raucous crowd had wagered $25,000,000 and the anticipated battle between the two betting favorites was on!
Now the red-haired girl could see the horses charging directly toward her position near the rail at the start of the stretch. “Come on, Althea! You can do it, girl!”
Swale was running easily under his champion jockey Laffit Pincay Jr. while Chris McCarron on Althea was furiously pumping his arms forward, urging the smaller filly to keep the battle going. She fought gamely to hold the second position as Swale rushed past, but the colts were ma
king their ambitious stretch assaults now.
The other filly, Life’s Magic, was caught in a wall of horses and making no impact.
Pincay, one of the most physically powerful riders in history, urged Swale forward with his piston-like arms, matching in exact rhythm the colt’s giant strides as they surged away from the field.
Althea was spent from her early race speed. McCarron, feeling her fatigue beneath him, did not draw his whip. She lapsed to fifth, then 10th, then 15th, exhausted. At the wire, Althea beat only one horse that had been pulled up earlier in the race. She finished over 30 lengths behind the winning Swale and his celebrating trainer, Woody Stephens.
Lukas watched as Althea finish 19th after Life’s Magic came in eighth. Despite winning 131 races, and smashing the all-time money won record for a single racing season, Lukas had failed for the sixth consecutive time in the world’s most well-known horse race.
July 17, 1986, Keeneland Racetrack, Lexington, Kentucky
Two years after that race, the San Diego Chargers helmet logo stood tall on the tail of a gleaming private jet as it banked hard over Keeneland racetrack in Lexington, Kentucky. Trainer D. Wayne Lukas loved this part of horse racing—the private jets and traveling with billionaires who were committed to buying the best horseflesh in the world. Tall, lean, and fit, with gray hair and designer sunglasses, he looked every bit the Hollywood movie star. Many movie stars aren’t tough, but Lukas was a former bareback bronco rodeo rider, and raced quarter horses as a jockey when young. He had been a rock-hard cowboy who came up through the ranks, training first on the rodeo circuit, and then the cheap track quarter horse circuit from the Midwest, to Texas, and then on to Southern California. He had spent years sleeping in the beds of pick-up trucks and shaving with cold water in front of side view mirrors. He had come from nowhere and now was the dominant thoroughbred racehorse trainer in the world.
Billionaire Eugene Klein was a man used to winning by playing aggressively and now competed with the best racehorse owners in the game, in the richest possible stakes races. In recent years, Klein had sold his Seattle SuperSonics NBA team, his San Diego Chargers NFL team, and his other considerable business interests to focus on a new passion—thoroughbred horseracing.
The private plane’s flight attendants were former Chargers’ cheerleaders who were stunning in their short skirts and white blouses. Both blonde and nearly as tall in heels as Lukas himself, they were used to being chatted up by passengers, but Lukas seemed not to notice them. Lukas was as handsome a guest as they had ever served, other than a few of the Chargers’ players, and they tried to catch Lukas’s attention. He was oblivious to their flirtations.
Lukas was looking to see what other private planes were already on the ground. As the plane taxied on the tarmac, Lukas pointed out to Klein some of the private jets owned by bidding competitors already on site. The largest of the jets dwarfed all the other planes. It belonged to sheik Mohammed bin Rashid al Maktoum, the defense minister of Dubai. Oil money was a different kind of money; it escalated competition at the horse auctions. The sheiks of Dubai who were also there were led by another horseman with the status of Lukas: the handsome and always impeccably dressed European, Robert Sangster. The sheiks were nicknamed The Doobie Brothers.
Also parked front and center on the tarmac was the jet of Greek shipping magnate Stavros Niachros. Stavros was born in Athens to a wealthy family, and by boldly investing $2,000,000 into a shipping business, he now was the richest magnate in the world. His personal history included four wives, each considerably younger than the first.
Lukas knew that this was going to be an epic Keeneland sales auction of prime horseflesh. He was out of his seat before the plane stopped, standing at the door, waiting for it to be opened. A man of immense energy, he was up at three a.m. every day to train and watch his horses. By five a.m., he was on the phone to his people in Florida, Kentucky, or Southern California, and all the other barns where he kept stables of the fastest racehorses in the world. At the auction today, he wanted to inspect the young horses on the block with his team of assistant trainers, bloodstock agents, and veterinarians who’d already been there for days evaluating the talent.
Only 14 years older than Lukas, Klein looked more like Lukas’s father. Normally, Klein was considered a well-dressed man but next to Lukas he looked somewhat disheveled. Lukas could do that to anyone except Robert Sangster.
A private black Lincoln limousine carried Lukas and Klein down the long drive past the huge trees and white picket fences to the Keeneland Sales Pavilion, next to the historic Keeneland racetrack. The entrance to Keeneland is the most beautiful track entrance in America.
The 1986 Keeneland auction was to open at 10:00 a.m., and the sales ring crowd was charged with excitement in a quiet, subdued way. The bidders were flush with hundreds of millions to bid. It was hard for these competitive rich men not to let themselves get carried away when bidding against other powerful rich men. The bidders were acutely aware that in just over a year some of these men would be standing in winners’ circles accepting the trophies representing the richest, most prestigious stakes races in Kentucky, New York, California, and Florida. These billionaires were men at the top of their professions, and they were used to winning. They could afford to win and never planned on coming home empty handed.
However, things can get complicated when bidding against the other richest men in the world. Often enough, a horse slips through an auction under the radar like the Triple Crown champion Seattle Slew—a racehorse that was sold for $17,500 as a yearling. No horse was going to be cheap today.
At 11:00 a.m. Lukas, wearing a freshly pressed white linen suit, rich blue tie, and white Stetson hat, opened the bidding on hip number 308 at $1,000,000, the highest opening bid ever recorded.
Robert Sangster smiled at Lukas and went up by an incredible incremental bid jump of $500,000. The bidding for one horse continued faster than Lukas had ever seen, with $500,000 being up bid every ten seconds: $3,000,000, now $5,000,000, now $8,000,000; and then the displayed bidding board stopped at $9,999,999 because it was out of digits and didn’t go any higher.
The bids kept coming.
Klein had expected some competition, but not like this! His eyes were blinking rapidly, and he was afraid to move for fear he would be mistaken as bidding. “Who the hell are these guys?” he whispered to Lukas while remaining ramrod straight in his chair. “These guys have gold balls!”
The bidding was slowing now and only going up $50,000 per bid as Sangster competed against another secretive bidder that Klein could not even see. Finally, at $10,200,000 the gavel fell to Robert Sangster and his European buyers as the crowd cheered for the first time that morning.
Lukas as always looked polished, calm, and cool, but he knew he and Klein had to regroup, and fast. Lukas had a total budget of $8,000,000 from Klein and his other clients for the auction and quickly realized they could not go toe-to-toe with this new kind of insane oil money. Apparently, $8,000,000 was chump change for this group at the auction. Lukas had recognized this possibility long before the sale and told Klein quietly under his breath, “Go to Plan B.”
Lukas knew the Europeans and the sheiks wanted proven classic winning bloodlines with colts they could breed as stallions for decades to come. But Klein and Lukas only cared about winning stakes races and purse money now; they didn’t care if they did it with colts or fillies…or goats. If the horse looked like it could run, they were going to bid, especially if the horse was female and for sale under $300,000.
Lukas and Klein had not been born to money like the sheiks and other heirs to fortunes who were playing here with money from their parents’ estates, and they were steadfastly committed to beating both the Arabs and the swells at their own rich man’s game. The blue-blooded Kentucky owners and wealthy Arabs did not like the brash, tall, Jewish billionaire from Beverly Hills who was trying to invade their private club accompanied by the fast talking, slick suited Lukas. Let the auction competition c
ontinue!
Lukas had learned something valuable in his early years as a quarter horse trainer, sleeping in his pick-up truck and training horses on the cheap, rock bottom level racing circuits in Texas, Arizona, and Oklahoma. At these low-class, bottom purse level tracks, the horses ran in a straight line with their ears pinned back and flat out for 350 yards. In the quarter horse stakes races, the fillies regularly competed against and beat the colts head-to-head. Lukas believed strongly he could train thoroughbred fillies to run against the males and beat them in prestigious races, despite his being laughed at by the macho good-old-boys trainers’ network from Los Angeles to New York. Despite failure with his two fillies in the 1984 Kentucky Derby, he believed a female could and would win that race again. Lukas had a proven eye for horseflesh, regardless if he was buying a $600 quarter horse, or a half a million dollar thoroughbred.
Suddenly there was commotion as a wild, tall, leggy, gray filly was led into the ring. She was not happy while being led out for display and wheeled around the auction stage trying to free herself from both her handler and the leather lead attached to her halter. Two additional horse handlers came forward trying to constrain her, and one made the mistake of grabbing hold of her left ear. She reared and kicked, striking a glancing blow to the third handler that sent him careening to the floor. He had seen enough of this damn horse, as earlier that morning he had witnessed her bite two older male stallions while being led to her holding pen.
The 1-year-old filly was not slim and trim like the other yearling females that had daintily pranced in all day like they were stepping in snow. This gray filly was built more like a tall version of Mike Tyson, with dappled hindquarters that showed muscles like an older stallion. Lukas noticed she was pulling her handler around wherever she decided to go, not where he was trying to lead her.