Frankel can add to record-setting year
Despite a disastrous Breeders' Cup Day, Bobby Frankel managed to inch his way last week past Lukas' record for single-season earnings by a trainer, and he has nearly two months to add to the total.
Wayne Lukas' best year as a trainer no longer stands alone. Despite a disastrous Breeders' Cup Day, Bobby Frankel managed to inch his way last week past Lukas' record for single-season earnings by a trainer, and he has nearly two months to add to the total. Frankel may own the record, but he won't necessarily have the better year. In terms of real dollars earned, it's not even close. That's how giant Lukas was back then.
Lukas' stable earned $17,842,358 that year. That was a lot of money then. It's a whole lot more money now. Adjusting for inflation, that same $17.8 million equals $27.1 million in 2003 dollars. NO matter what he does the rest of the year, Frankel won't come even remotely close.
Clearly, it's not that neat and simple. Have racetrack purses risen in perfect accordance with the rate of inflation? Obviously not, but the fact remains that purses were worth a lot less in 1988 than they were in 2003.
Here is a sampling of some of the major races won by Lukas in 1988: the Santa Anita Oaks, the Santa Anita Derby, the Kentucky Derby, the Met Mile, the Carter, the Gazelle, the Alcibiades, the Frizette, the Breeders' Cup Juvenile, Juvenile Fillies and Sprint. In 1988, those races were worth $5,350,000. In 2003, they were worth $8,050,000.
Here is a sampling of some major races won by Frankel in 2003: the Beldame, the Vosburgh, the Ruffian, the Haskell, the Whitney, the Coaching Club American Oaks, the Belmont, the Met Mile, the Wood Memorial, the Wood Memorial, the Blue Grass, the Florida Derby. In 2003, those races were worth $8,050,000. In 1988, they were worth $3,800,000.
What truly separates Frankel 2003 and Lukas 1988 is not how much money they made but how they made the money. Lukas ran a huge operation that operated at virtually every major racetrack in the country. With him, it was about quality and quantity. Lukas made 1,500 starts that year, winning 318 races, for a 21 percent rate. Frankel concentrates on top-class stakes horses and winning the races that matter. Through Nov. 4, he had started just 35 horses and had won 101 races, for a 29 percent rate. Remarkably, 46 of Frankel's wins have come in stakes races, or 45.6 percents of all his winners
The Hay Days
There may be no better way to view racing's popularity than through the pages of Sports Illustrated, particularly its covers. If the sport is important, it will grace the cover. If it's not, it might be lucky to get a page or two somewhere inside. The latest issue of SI lists all 2,548 covers in the magazine's history, which provides a fascinating look at the ebbs and flows of racing's popularity with the mainstream sports fan. Not surprisingly, the days when horse racing could make the cover are long gone.
It wasn't always that way.
When Sports Illustrated was born in 1954, horse racing was still among the most important sports in the county. Ten issues into its long history, Sports Illustrated featured steeplechasing from Belmont on the cover, beginning a trend where racing frequently graced the coveted spot. In 1955, the magazine's first full year, racing made the cover three times, celebrating racing at Hialeah, Santa Anita and Swaps. Little changed through the next several years, with racing adorning the cover two of three times a year through the early sixties. Even harness racing made it a few times. A Kentucky Derby preview issue was a given as were the occasional jockey stories. Bill Hartack made the cover twice (1956 and 1964) and Bill Shoemaker (1958) and Johnny Longden (1959) were also pictured.
The first signs of slippage occurred in the mid-sixties, about the time so many other sports, thanks largely to television exposure, were exploding. The Kentucky Derby was the only cover subject in 1965 and 1966 and, for the first time ever in the magazine's history, racing didn't make the cover once in 1967.
Racing returned in 1968 when the cover was devoted to the Dancer's Image drug uproar in the Derby, the first of three racing scandal stories that SI would deem worthy of cover material. The Kentucky Derby was a cover staple through much of the seventies, but no other racing stories made it until 1977, when the sport enjoyed a brief renaissance thanks to a slew of great horses and Steve Cauthen. The sport made the cover an astounding five times in 1977, two of them devoted to Cauthen, two to Seattle Slew and the last to the Lebon/Cinzano ringer scandal. Affirmed made it twice in 1978, for the Derby and for sweeping the Triple Crown, and so did another scandal. Confessions of a Fixer, the tales of how Tony Ciulla fixed races up and down the East Coast, was featured later that year. The 1979 (Spectacular Bid) and 1980 Kentucky Derbies (Genuine Risk) appeared on the cover, but the sport was about to all but disappear. There was a brief reappearance for the 1983 Kentucky Derby (Sunny's Halo). It took six more years and the emergence of another remarkable figure for racing to make it back. Julie Krone made the cover in 1989. Fourteen years later, the sport is still waiting its next appearance on the cover of Sports Illustrated.
