Lukenbills Order A Molly To Go At Emerald Spokane Trainers Fare Well At West Side Track

Trainers can read a Daily Racing Form. Sometimes you wonder if the public can.

Rick and Dianne Lukenbill saw nothing in the past performances in the Form that should have reduced their filly, Order Up Molly, to a 47-1 longshot.

Nothing, except the feeding-frenzy mentality of bettors on opening day at Emerald Downs. Typically, as the minutes between races melt away, the horse player watching the tote board sees late money as smart money.

Big mistake, in this instance anyway.

The crowd at Auburn ignored the Spokane filly that day, even though in five starts she’d never run off the board. When Order Up Molly ran away from the field - to return $97 and change on a $2 win ticket - it was the first public oversight at Emerald Downs.

The Lukenbills of Spokane and Order Up Molly’s Spokane owners, Jack and Jeanne Stewart, had their first big day at the nation’s newest race track.

Since that June 20 debut, Lukenbill has quietly built an impressive record with his modest string at Emerald Downs. Through the start of the week he and his wife had sent out 16 starters. Four won, with three places and four shows. The .688 winning percentage is 13th among all trainers at Emerald Downs.

A ‘75 Rogers High School graduate who has a two-acre place in the Spokane Valley, Lukenbill knows how to spot his small but competitive string in events they can win.

He stables 10 horses at Emerald Downs. Two others are working at training centers. One is on the way up from California and the other - Chan’s Pearl - is campaigning in California.

The Lukenbills, who claimed Chan’s Pearl at Yakima Meadows, shipped the mare to Spokane trainer Rhonda Schuessler at Golden Gate near San Francisco.

Chan’s Pearl won for Schuessler at Golden Gate, then at the Solano County Fair at Vallejo. Most recently she ran second in a $16,000 starters allowance.

Chan’s Pearl was an astute claim. She cleared an estimated $5,000 in purses over the past month.

The episode shows the lengths that Spokane horse people will go to to make a living. While many Inland Northwest horsemen remain at home, following the continuing saga of the Muckleshoot Indian Tribe’s bid to rescue Playfair Race Course, others with residences here are running hard elsewhere, the Lukenbills and Schuessler among them.

“I haven’t been that close to the situation at Playfair,” said Lukenbill, who met his wife at the Spokane track. “I haven’t been to the commission meetings and I haven’t run anything at Playfair the last two years. Usually, by the time the track opens, my horses need to be turned out.

“All I can say is I wish everybody could work together. There seems to be eternal controversy which doesn’t help the industry any.”

As for Order Up Molly, Lukenbill was confident enough to lay a little something down on her but “I didn’t bet nearly enough. I didn’t even have the exacta (The $2 exacta paid more than $500).

“Luckily my wife did.”

The busier he gets, he says, the less he seems to bet. He and Dianne own three of the 10 horses at the Auburn track. Six others are the property of Coal Creek Farms, owned by Barbara Ratcliff of Bellevue.

Ratcliff is the kind of client with strong stock who can validate a trainer’s decision to leave a good job.

Lukenbill, 39, quit the postal department three years ago to take a full-time shot at conditioning race horses. Double duty got to be too much (“I worked 9 at night to 5 in the morning,” he said).

He got into his second job at Playfair as quickly as he could change clothes. Trainers typically split work shifts, starting before dawn, knocking off midmorning and returning for late afternoon and evening duty.

The work is competitive, frustrating, rewarding, and a learning process.

“The key is to run the horse where he belongs,” Lukenbill said. “You got to know your horses. Be around them. After they’ve raced a time or two you have have the idea of where they belong. Of course horses get better.”

Like a horse named Phonolite that Lukenbill claimed for $5,000 in Yakima.

“We ran him one more time as a 3-year-old, gave him the winter off and brought him back,” he said. “By then he had matured. He was the claimer of the meeting that year (two years ago, at the Emerald meeting in Yakima). He got a lot stronger. Mentally he just seemed to grow up.”

The horse eventually developed a breathing problem that cut short his career.

Still, the horse has a future in the sport, unlike many of the powerful, high-strung geldings that can no longer run.

“We still have him,” Lukenbill said. “He’s going to be an escort pony here at Emerald.”

It’s a happy ending to one chapter of an ongoing story of a small stable that, despite its success, feels the strain of rising costs.

“Everything is so expensive, it’s tough for owners to make it with what we have to charge,” the trainer said. “Seems like everything went up over here - feed, shoeing, galloping, the vet bill. It’d be nice if they could get the purses up a little bit. I’ve heard rumors of a purse cut here. I hope that’s not true.”

The rumor is well-founded.

As of Friday the horsemen’s purse account was overpaid by $170,000. In other words, the parimutuel wagering handle is not sufficient to support the present purse structure at Emerald Downs.

Although the new track had hoped to generate more enthusiasm at the betting windows, Emerald Downs “is a great facility,” Lukenbill said.

“It’s a great environment for the horses,” he added. “With these new barns they do well here.”

Bus transport available

Transportation to Tuesday’s 1:30 p.m. meeting of the Washington Horse Racing Commission will be provided by New Playfair Park, Inc.

To confirm a seat on the bus call the track at 534-0505. It leaves at 6:30 a.m., with a scheduled 10 p.m. return. There is no cost. For information after business hours call 448-2705.

The commission is to consider the application by New Playfair Park, Inc., a corporation directed by the Muckleshoot Indian Tribal Council, to lease Playfair Race Course.

The meeting is at the Washington State Training Conference Center, 19010 1st Avenue South, Seattle, near Sea-Tac International.

, DataTimes