Luskin Star’s Legacy Runs Deep For Lees
Kris Lees has hazy memories of when his father Max trained two-year-old Luskin Star to ‘hero’ status in Newcastle. 48 years later, Lees has a rare shot at Golden Slipper glory of his own, writes Adam Pengilly.
THE OLD JOCKEY John Wade had one unwritten rule when it came to Luskin Star: never use the whip. It’s not because he wasn’t allowed to, it was just the “colt from the coalfields” was so good he didn’t really need to.
Yet there’s always an exception to every rule.
Hailing from the working class city of Newcastle, two hours north of Sydney, Luskin Star was big business in Australian horse racing in the 1970s. So much so that, when he made his return to the races in 1977 in the Northern Slipper on his home track, up to 20,000 people turned up just to watch him.
There was only one problem: the weather was so horrendous and the track was quickly turning into a mud pit. Champion trainer Max Lees, who prepared Luskin Star to be the best juvenile of his generation, didn’t want a bar of it, knowing there were big races around the corner for his budding star. He asked the club’s committee and stewards if he could scratch the horse, which would be allowed in the modern era for tracks which are downgraded throughout the day.
“But the stewards and the committee said, ‘you can’t scratch him, there’s too many people here’,” laughs Lees’ son and a top trainer in his own right, Kris Lees. “They let him run, but John Wade was allowed to not carry a whip.
“Can you imagine that these days? He was $1.50.”
And he lost.
Mistress Anne beat Luskin Star by three-quarters-of-a-length. Wade couldn’t even use a whip to try to peg back the margin … because he didn’t even bother carrying one.
Those memories might be a little fuzzy for Kris Lees, who was just six when the horse of a lifetime dazzled Australian racing fans, achieving the holy grail for two-year-olds: winning the Triple Crown, comprising the Golden Slipper, Sires Produce Stakes and Champagne Stakes in one season.
Pull up any of his wins on YouTube and it’s easy to see why.
In the Golden Slipper, he strode up to the leaders, and within a second, he was gone. Bang!
The Golden Slipper has always been the race which can shape generations to come, with a winning colt a licence to print money as a stallion. Luskin Star’s legacy was cemented right there.
Perhaps it was the Champagne Stakes which lingers longest in the memory, the last leg of the juvenile Triple Crown and one which requires the two-year-olds to stretch out to a mile, with most young horses in Australia kept to sprint distances around 1200 metres.
Luskin Star led the field into the straight under Wade, but was quickly tackled by Marceau. As Marceau joined the girth of Luskin Star, caller Ian Craig bellowed: “Marceau is making one heck of a race of it …”
If he could have taken the words back, he would have in an instant.
Wade started riding vigorously with hands and heels (how else?) and Luskin Star bounded away to win by six lengths. Those there still describe it as one of the most breathtaking displays seen on an Australian racetrack.
So impressed were onlookers that, later on, Luskin Star was nominated as a finalist for the Newcastle Sportsperson of the Year. It was controversial, a horse among humans. But it also made sense in so many ways because Newcastle has always been a town which could survive on a diet of racing and rugby league, and here was racing’s poster boy.
“[He] was a pretty big thing back in Newcastle because we didn’t have the Knights back then,” says Lees, whose other great love is the town’s team which plays in Australia’s National Rugby League competition.
“He would go from, ‘is he going to win?’ to putting six on them. He would break track records, not just two-year-old records. He wasn’t anything special to look at and he was a bit of a gangly two-year-old.
“He was one of those you can’t pinpoint … because he was just a freak.”
But how freakish?
Well, not many horses have a song written about them.
Kris Lees reckons veteran Australian racing writers Ken Callander and Max Presnell nominated Luskin Star up there with any two-year-old they’ve seen in the last 50 years.
This weekend, another Lees runner will contest the A$5 million Golden Slipper, a dash for cash which is run and won in about 70 seconds.
While Max prepared arguably the best two-year-old in Australian history, his son is just happy to have a runner at Rosehill Gardens. He’s only ever had one Golden Slipper starter before.
Unbeaten colt Rivellino will line up under Hong Kong-based jockey Hugh Bowman trying to emulate the feats of Luskin Star. By his own admission, Lees rarely pushes his horses to make it to the track so early in their careers. While other big spenders love the pageantry of the major Australian sales and throw wads of cash around for horses with little to no idea if they can actually run, Lees prefers to work quietly in the background.
“(Dad) had a lot more success with two-year-olds than I have,” Kris Lees says. “I’m one not to push them. But I watched him closely with two-year-olds.
“It’s only been the last couple of years we’ve been more in the marketplace purchasing, so I think that contributes. The better two-year-old types often go through the sales rather than the slower maturing ones, which is the style of horse I’ve had over the years.”
It’s worked well for Lees, who has already won 17 Group 1 races in Australia over a decorated training career after his father’s death.
Max died in 2003 after a short battle with cancer. Days later, Kris sat in a Newcastle pub grieving with mates, rather than saddling up runners. They watched the television as, during an otherwise nondescript Warwick Farm meeting, the final horse to run under Max’s name burst to the front in the second last race of the day.
He won.
Kris shed a few tears into his schooner. The horse was called Carry On Mate.
Kris has carried on for more than 20 years, long after when he was a small child he was given the chance to sit on Luskin Star, the best horse his family has ever had. It was a chance to feel what Wade felt, take a photo and have a memory forever more.
And as for the whip? There was never any need for that ∎
