"If their runner couldn't win, they wanted Christine to win."
And, as with tennis, the runner who makes the smallest number of errors often wins the contest.
The first runner to cross the finish line wins the gold, roughly 12 hours after the competition began.
Between them the eight runners had won three races; they were racing's cannon fodder.
Grand Champions received $15,000 more, while the runners up won $10,000 more.
Lukas's runners have won 9 of the 35 cup races ever run; no other trainer has won more than two.
The runners usually win as it only takes one runner to constitute a victory for the runners.
A maiden race is one in which the runners have never won a race.
A runner from the Northeast has never won the boys event at the Kinney finals, first held in 1979.
"Do you think if a white American runner had won the last few years, they'd be cutting prize money?"