BRIDGING THE GAP
Horsemen’s liaison uses background knowledge to work with owners, trainers
EDITOR’S NOTE: It takes hundreds of workers each live race meet to ensure race days run smoothly. This is the next in a series of articles highlighting occupations surrounding the sport of thoroughbred racing, and how they work together to make each meet a success.
Deborah Lokanc, horsemen’s liaison for Oaklawn Park, has been on both sides of the track.
A native of Louisville, Ky., Lokanc galloped horses for more than 30 years and trained a few thoroughbreds for her mother. Her experience as a horseman makes her the right liaison for the job when working with owners and trainers that come to Oaklawn.
“I’m here to facilitate any of the horsemen’s needs,” she said. “When owners or trainers are coming in, if they need hotel reservations or dining reservations, or if they just need seats to watch the horses, or boxes, they call me. For the stake races, we have a room we call Lagniappe that we open up for the horsemen that are in the stakes that day.
“I take care of them when they’re
here. I get them out to the winners circle. I get them out to the infield when the horses are saddled up outside. Anything that an owner or trainer, rider or jock needs, they usually call me first.”
Lokanc said she also mails winning owners a DVD of the races and post-parades they win, congratulating them for their success and letting them know who to call next time they are in town.
“My slower Sundays, I get the addresses of all the owners and I mail the DVDs to them with a letter telling them ‘Thank you for running, congratulations, if you need anything further call me’ with my name and number and address and all that,” she said. “So I’m like a hotel concierge.”
A few of the trainers she galloped for are at Oaklawn, as well as California and Florida, she said.
“I’ve kind of galloped my whole life and been around horses,” she said. “I trained some for my mom… we had one mare. Beatle was her name. She was out of a horse called Ferrara — like Ferrari — and we knew we didn’t have a Ferrari so we figured we had a Volkswagen. Of course, we didn’t spell it the same way.”
Before becoming the horsemen’s liaison for Oaklawn, Lokanc said she worked 10 years at Churchill Downs in a similar capacity.
“The first year I had this job, the gentleman from Chicago came down from Arlington and offered me the job at Arlington,” she said. “I took that job there for three years… and that’s where I met my husband (Dr. Joe Lokanc) who’s the state vet here.”
Growing up, Lokanc said she showed quarter horses, and her grandmother had a thoroughbred at Churchill Downs. Her love of horses started when her uncle bought her a pony when she was 8 years old, adding “what little girl wouldn’t want to be involved with horses?”
However, a seemingly unfortunate turn in her career prior to the racing industry is what got her started in thoroughbred racing.
“I got laid off from the government — I worked for the census bureau in Jeffersonville, Ind. — and it was one of those where you got laid off, but they gave you a call back day for two weeks after,” she said. “I went to Churchill and started walking hots and fell in love with it. When they were going to pay me to be around horses, I said ‘OK.’ So when I went back to the government, I gave them my two weeks notice and went to New Orleans for the first time. I was 19, went to New Orleans to walk hots for a trainer out of New York, and I’ve never looked back.”
When asked if she thinks her experience as a horseman makes her a better liaison, Lokanc said, “100 percent.”
“When these trainers call and they need a set of foal papers, or they need this and that, I can associate with what they need,” she said. “I know what they need and I know what they’re looking for. It used to be that management was one thing and horse racing was another, and the two never knew what went on on the back. Back side people don’t know what it takes management to produce the show and I always said that we need to bridge that gap.
“There have been a lot of people who have transitioned over from the back side and brought their knowledge to management. I’ve always said the back side and the front side should come together, and I think Oaklawn is an excellent example of that, there’s a lot of people here who have come from horse backgrounds.”
Lokanc gives tours of the back side for Dawn at Oaklawn on Saturday mornings before the races — an aspect of the job she uses to explain to patrons what takes place in the barn area of the track.
“I tell people ‘Working on the back side is not a job for the faint of heart,’” she said. “It’s seven days a week. We don’t get Christmas off. We don’t get Easter off. These animals still have to have our care and our hands-on skill. We do it for the passion; it’s in our souls.
“I think the kids back there are passionate about their horses, the ones that they groom and the ones that they take care of. They come in in the morning at 4:30 or 5 o’clock and pull feed tubs, and pull blankets off, and check them and spoil them. There’s not a horse back there that doesn’t know what the sound of a peppermint wrapper is. It’s a passion to work with these animals, and for them to place all of their trust into us when they run good and they win, it’s so rewarding. All your hard work didn’t fall on deaf ears.”
Being around the top horses, and having a passion for them is what Lokanc said she loves most about the sport of horse racing.
“I got to throw the garland of flowers over Zenyatta when she won,” she said. “I got to throw flowers over Afleet Alex, American Pharoah who went on to win the Triple Crown.
“As a little girl I remember sitting at my grandparents’ house watching Secretariat win the Belmont (Stakes), vividly. I still get goosebumps. To be able to be involved with that caliber of a horse to me is the pinnacle of what I’ve ever tried to do. It’s just fun to be around the horses with that much class, and that caliber. It’s really been appealing and fulfilling.”
Lokanc and her husband used to travel to other race tracks when the live meet ends at Oaklawn; however, this year they are staying in Hot Springs.
“We used to go back to Arlington, and last year we went to Prairie Meadows,” she said. “This year we sold our place in Chicago and bought a place here, and we’re not going anywhere this summer. I’m going to paint my house and my second love is design. I’ve got a degree from Chicago in interior design, so I’m hoping to stage homes and get into that home design business.”