Landaluce was a dark bay comet, a superstar so fast she set records in three of her five starts. Born at Spendthrift Farm on April 11, 1980, she was D. Wayne Lukas’ number one pick at Keeneland’s select yearling auction in 1981, and was among the first crop of then-freshman sire and Triple Crown winner Seattle Slew. She never raced outside California, and drew record crowds whenever she ran. She was so popular that fans kept her win tickets as souvenirs rather than cashing them, sported “I Love Luce” T-shirts and bumper stickers, deluged the Lukas barn with requests for photos and locks of her mane, and created minus show pools.
She became a national media darling after her second start, when she won the Hollywood Lassie Stakes, a six-furlong sprint, by twenty-one lengths. She won her five races by a combined forty-six lengths---seemingly without effort, and usually under only a hand ride by Hall of Fame jockey Laffit Pincay, who called her “the best two-year-old I’ve ever been on.”
In barely seven minutes on the track, she was compared to Ruffian and Secretariat by veteran horsemen who had seen them both. Poised to achieve greatness as the first juvenile filly millionaire, and regarded as an early favorite for the Kentucky Derby, Landaluce fell victim to a swift and deadly illness, but remains to this day one of the most gifted and appealing American fillies ever to race. She was the first champion sired by Seattle Slew.
