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Pickens pursues health with the same single-mindedness that he brings to chasing wealth. The $2 million T. Boone Pickens Fitness Center at Mesa headquarters is an exercise buff's delight. In addition to four glass-walled racquetball courts, it offers a gym, indoor running track, a weight room and marbled showers and whirlpool. Pickens works out daily when he is in Amarillo, and his name is usually at the top of the center's racquetball tournament ladder. His prowess is on sculptured display outside the courts in the form of a life-size bronze statue that portrays a crouching Pickens about to smash an unreturnable backhand.
Pickens is as much at ease in the executive suite as he is in the locker room. He likes to dangle one leg over the arm of a chair while presiding over weekly executive sessions. In his office, which is outfitted with English antiques and Western art, he is fond of propping his feet on his desk while he contentedly pores over sheafs of documents.
But he retains his immense appetite for work. He usually sleeps no more than five hours a night, averages twelve-hour workdays and hums along like a dynamo. Says he: "I can just keep going at the same speed." He says he gets his best ideas during 20-minute showers. Intolerant of those who cannot keep up, he has fired employees for arriving late or leaving early for the weekend.
While in takeover fights, Pickens often talks over strategy with his wife, who also accompanies him on most business trips. "She's become a real sounding board for him," says Sunshine Mining Chairman Michael Boswell, a partner in some deals. In the midst of the Gulf takeover attempt, Boswell heard Pickens talk for half an hour by phone to someone who seemed to be a lawyer or an investment banker, judging from the conversation. Boswell was surprised when it turned out to be Beatrice.
Pickens constantly portrays himself as the friend of the little guy. Crisscrossing the country in his jet, he addressed 87 audiences and 45,000 people last year. He now averages two speeches a week on the evils of Big Oil and the need for a shareholder uprising against bad management. He frequently tells audiences: "Blacks have learned to use their right to vote, and so will shareholders." Pickens is putting his ideas into a book that he is writing with San Francisco Journalist Moira Johnston.
Pickens has never lost his love of gambling. During the 1982 battle for Cities Service, he took time out to put $100 on a horse named Estoril, a three-year-old, 9-to-1 shot that he had been told was a sure thing in that year's Belmont Stakes. Estoril finished seventh in a field of eleven. Pickens had better luck last January, when he won $5,000 on the Super Bowl.