BALTIMORE — D. Wayne Lukas is aware of his fillies. He gained the 1988 Kentucky Derby with Successful Colours and made champions out of Woman’s Secret, Serena’s Music, Althea and Life’s Magic.
Lukas, 86, matches this previous racetrack like a well-worn saddle. His Stetson cocked simply so, his fringed chaps and his pony on the top of a tether are acquainted sights within the stakes barn.
The filly on his arm in his newest Preakness Stakes try, Secret Oath, would be the forty sixth horse saddled by Lukas for the center jewel of the Triple Crown. Nobody has had extra.
Six occasions he has gained the Preakness Stakes. After his first Preakness victory, in 1980, Lukas was launched to American sports activities followers because the villain. His colt Codex beat the Kentucky Derby winner Real Danger — a filly — in a roughly ridden race.
“I turned out to be the dangerous man,” Lukas mentioned. “Earlier than the race, I used to be the unknown man, some cowboy who got here in right here and introduced a horse. That was the story. After the race, half of America thought I used to be a nasty man. All the ladies.”
The dangerous man, nevertheless, become a fairly good horse coach and much more compelling character for a sport whose actual stars can’t communicate for themselves.
Lukas was the Gordon Gekko of the shed row with a whole lot of horses unfold throughout a number of states, his barns manned by younger, educated assistants to make sure he was represented on the richest races on any given day.
He had a Rolls-Royce and personal jet. Appeared GQ-cool in his $3,000 fits and beamed a Hollywood smile from the nation’s winner’s circles alongside an eclectic group of householders — the rapper MC Hammer, the San Diego Chargers proprietor Eugene Klein, W.T. Younger, whose peanut butter model ultimately turned Jif.
All of them had one factor in widespread: deep pockets. Lukas was a grasp at persuading them to make use of what was in these pockets to compete with the sheikhs and Irish sports-betting impresarios for the best horse flesh at public auctions. From 1980 to 2000, his horses gained 13 Triple Crown races, and everybody in horse racing knew Lukas’s nickname: “D. Wayne off the aircraft.”
The aughts have been robust on the Previous Coach, a nickname most well-liked by assistants who knew of Lukas’s onetime profession as a highschool basketball coach. Lots of his homeowners left the game — or the earth altogether. Lukas closed his secure in California and made do from Kentucky with a compact group of fifty horses.
In 2013, nevertheless, a colt named Oxbow landed him within the Preakness winner’s circle as soon as extra, ending a 13-year drought in one of many Triple Crown races for Lukas and shifting him previous Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons as essentially the most profitable coach within the American basic races.
“Now, I’m the previous man off the van,” Lukas mentioned on the time, referring to how he rode shotgun from Louisville, Ky., to Baltimore in Oxbow’s horse transport.
Bob Baffert, one other iconoclastic coach, has since surpassed Lukas in Triple Crown occasion victories with 16. He’s serving a 90-day suspension meted out by Kentucky authorities after the obvious winner of the 2021 Kentucky Derby, Medina Spirit, failed a post-race drug check.
This 12 months’s Derby winner — the 80-1 shot Wealthy Strike — is AWOL as nicely, after his proprietor Rick Dawson and the coach Eric Reed determined the colt can be finest served with an extended relaxation earlier than his subsequent race (most definitely on the Belmont Stakes on June 11).
So, Lukas is as soon as extra a headliner. His co-star, fittingly, is a filly named Secret Oath.
The daughter of Arrogate, Secret Oath gained emphatically sufficient within the Kentucky Oaks that Lukas determined she had earned a chance to attempt to turn out to be simply the seventh filly to win the second leg of the Triple Crown.
“If she would put the Preakness on her résumé, it’s going to take her to a different stage,” Lukas mentioned. “The media members will begin pondering of her as one of many actually good ones. If we are able to pull it off, it is going to be distinctive for her.”
The chance to return to the limelight has clearly been life-affirming for Lukas.
After Secret Oath’s victory within the Oaks, Lukas was swarmed beneath the dual spires by former assistants ecstatic for his or her Corridor of Fame boss. They’re a formidable bunch: Todd Pletcher (like Lukas, a Corridor of Famer), Dallas Stewart and Mike Maker are stalwarts within the sport’s largest races.
Lukas has all the time likened his operation to a cross between a McDonald’s franchise and an athletic program, emphasizing consistency in addition to growing expertise. His New York operation adopted the identical regimens and protocols as his California secure. On the finish of every day, for instance, the dust surrounding his barns was raked in the identical herringbone sample.
“In racing, there’s no how‑to ebook,” he mentioned. “If you happen to get Nick Saban up right here from Alabama and he’s acquired a room filled with coaches, all prime Division I coaches, he’ll go to the blackboard and diagram all the things they do on offense and protection, share it with each man within the room.
“However in racing, you’ll be able to’t go and discover it within the library,” Lukas continued. “There’s no ebook. There’s no solution to look it up.”
Early on, nevertheless, Lukas bucked the norms of the customarily secretive and paranoid tradition of the backstretch.
“The basketball coach got here out in me a little bit bit, and we actually recruited good guys, fantastic younger males,” he mentioned. “And we determined that we’d train and share with them.”
Lukas’s teaching tree was a lot spectacular for the homeowners of Secret Oath, Rob and Stacy Mitchell.
“See what I’m saying?” Rob Mitchell requested. “He hasn’t forgotten how you can practice a horse.”
The hallmark of Lukas’s profession has been a ardour for his work. He’s on the barn at 4 every morning and atop his pony till all of his horses have been put by means of their paces. Holidays don’t exist.
Lukas is the primary to confess that this single-mindedness has value him. He’s on his fifth marriage.
“Whenever you acquired ardour for one thing, you’ll keep up all evening, go with out meals, drive, sleep, no matter to get the place you wish to go,” Lukas mentioned. “When you may have these fillies that present up in your life, like this one or a colt, it’s such an incentive and drive for me.”
From Gordon Gekko to forgotten, from D. Wayne off the aircraft to previous man off the van, Lukas has been a constant kind. He needs to command the game’s largest levels.
“That’s why we’re right here,” he mentioned. “Filly. Colt. Authorities mule. I don’t care. I’m right here to win the factor.”
