Whether through his unrelenting drive, flair, meticulous attention to detail or confidence in himself, D. Wayne Lukas pushed the boundaries by which American racing operates.
Love or hate him, it was an approach that yielded immense success, at times rewriting the record books. There were the four leading trainer Eclipse Awards, 14 trainer titles, 20 Breeders’ Cup wins and 15 Triple Crown Classic victories highlighted by four winners of the Kentucky Derby. Only last year, he broke another record when at the age of 88, he sent out Seize The Grey to take the Preakness Stakes, thereby surpassing James ‘Sunny Jim’ Fitzsimmons almost 70 years previously as the oldest trainer to win an American Triple Crown race.
It says plenty for the man’s work ethic that he prepared American Promise for an assault on this year’s Preakness, monitoring the colt astride his pony during early morning training just weeks before his death at the age of 89 in late June.
Lukas’ death will have marked the end of an era for many, but his impact reverberates across all areas of the North American industry, in particular through the likes of Todd Pletcher, Kiaran McLaughlin and Dallas Stewart, each former assistants who have gone on to become leading trainers in their own right.
Then there are the many top-flight horses to have passed through his hands, many of them found at auction.
The 1980s was a heady era in the Kentucky yearling market, driven in part by the ambition of the Maktoum brothers and the Coolmore – Robert Sangster partnerships. Lukas had trained quarter horses before turning his hand to thoroughbreds in 1978 and brought with him a slick style embodied by the use of private jets, a Rolls Royce and designer suits. He also threw his weight behind that bullish market, with his ability to persuade wealthy owners to trust in his judgement resulting in its own new sales dynamic.
It is estimated that between 1979 to 1988, Lukas pumped in approximately $103 million to the American yearling market.
Early on, he was invariably working for San Diego Chargers owner Eugene Klein. The partnership was mutually beneficial; Lukas received the quality of bloodstock he craved and in return crafted the careers of champions Winning Colors, a $575,000 yearling and one of only three fillies to win the Kentucky Derby, and Klein homebred Lady’s Secret alongside Grade 1 winners such as Fiesta Lady, one of the early success stories, 1985 Breeders’ Cup Distaff winner Life’s Magic and 1989 Kentucky Oaks heroine Open Mind. The latter was an inexpensive $150,000 yearling but was sold at the end of her three-year-old season for $4.6 million. Similarly, Winning Colors made $4.1 million once her championship career was over.
Of the colts, neither 1986 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner Capote or Grade 2-winning sprinter Pancho Villa were cheap purchases at $800,000 and $1.8 million for Lloyd French. However, both were later syndicated for stud in multi-million dollar deals. The same was also true of Saratoga Six, an expensive $2.2 million yearling who won the 1984 Del Mar Futurity in a brief unbeaten four-race career for a Klein-French partnership. While none of them went on to leave much of a legacy at stud, the same can’t be said of French’s fast filly Terlingua, an early yearling purchase who went on to foal Storm Cat.
Joe Bagan, author of Lukas at Auction, calculated that the aforementioned $103 million outlay yielded a return of $162 million.
Lukas’ modus operandi was to buy on type and think about pedigree afterwards. In a ‘X’ post shared recently by SF Bloodstock’s Tom Ryan, Lukas uses an image of the Grade 1-winning Sadler’s Wells horse Perfect Soul to outline his desired checkpoints in a yearling. The animal was then graded on a scale up to ten, although it is said that no yearling ever received full marks; reportedly Saratoga Six and Landaluce, a brilliant two-year-old who died tragically young, were among those to come closest on a nine.
Bill Landes, general manager of Hermitage Farm in Kentucky, remembers those days well from when Hermitage was under the ownership of Warner L. Jones. The source of Classic winners such as Lomond, Northern Trick and Dark Star, Jones was a perennial vendor of high-end yearlings, making him something of a magnet for Lukas.
“Obviously the 1980s were heady times for North American yearling sales and D. Wayne Lukas was a key driver,” he says. “Wayne, training from Churchill Downs and so only 30 minutes from Hermitage Farm, would pre-sale examine Mr Jones’ yearling crop.
“My remembrance were his conformation lessons, especially when it came to evaluating back at the knee conformation – he looked at it from a totally different angle that we had never considered before.”
He adds: “He never gave his conformation secrets away but once let slip what he looked for in a filly – ‘I want to see the head of a princess, the butt of an Irish washerwoman and the walk of a hooker!’”
Lukas came close to securing history on a Hermitage yearling when coming off second best to the Coolmore-Sangster partnership at $13.1 million on the Nijinsky yearling Seattle Dancer in 1985. The price remains a record for a yearling at auction.
“Wayne and the team of Gene Klein, Mel Hatley and Barry French were the immediate underbidders on Seattle Dancer from the Hermitage July consignment in 1985,” says Landes. “Reviewing the video of the bidding shows Wayne using all his persuasive skills to get his team to respond to John Magnier and Robert Sangster’s ultimate final bid!
“Hermitage did have success with Wayne as he bought the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile winner Is It True for $550,000 off us at Keeneland in July 1987. He became the sire of Grade 1 winner Yes It’s True.”
Headley Bell of Mill Ridge Farm also vividly recalls those days.
“D. Wayne Lukas always had a flair of confidence matched with his talent to perform as a horse trainer,” he says. “His timing was perfect with his first champion Landaluce in 1982, who was purchased at the 1981 Keeneland July Sale. This was in the heat of a market driven by Robert Sangster and team and the Maktoum brothers.
“Wayne was the ‘entire package’ of confidence, flair, style, discipline and performance. He was the ultimate in promotion and his owners believed in him because he backed it up with the runners on the track. With the carnival atmosphere present in that day with Tom Gentry, Wayne had a platform to entertain and celebrate the recruitment of his team of owners and yearlings provided with the yearling sales.
“He had an eye for the athlete and an air of confidence that gave his owners the belief that purchase would fulfill their dreams. This was a ‘new era’ and Wayne Lukas helped define and establish how the game was going to be played.”
“He was a charismatic character,” says Anthony Stroud. “He brought a lot of new owners into the sport, a lot of affluent people into California when it was at its peak. I was working in California at that time and he always had the smartest barn you could imagine. It was a golden era for Californian racing – he came in, he was on a par with it and lifted it to a different level. He was very good at getting people into racing and motivating them. He made it fun, interesting and captivating. He brought a whole new dimension to it.”
He adds: “He came from a quarter horse background and quickly became very successful with the thoroughbreds. All those good horses like Winning Colors, Life’s Magic, Open Mind, Capote – some were expensive, some were not so expensive. He was an incredible judge of a yearling.”
Lukas’ training operation duly became a who’s who of the ownership hierarchy. For Overbrook Farm’s William T. Young, there was the Breeders’ Cup Classic winner Cat Thief and Preakness Stakes winner Tabasco Cat. For the Wildenstein family, there was the Breeders’ Cup Mile winner Steinlen while for Peter Brant, he trained Breeders’ Cup Sprint winner Gulch.
However, the good times couldn’t last forever. As some of his owners died or drifted away from racing, the Lukas barn went through a slump. There was also a personal tragedy when his son and assistant, Jeff, almost lost his life when Tabasco Cat galloped over him at Santa Anita in December 1993. The collision left Jeff Lukas with a skull fracture and severe brain injury, and he died 23 years later at the age of 58.
Lukas picked himself up and during the latter half of the 1990s, it was back to business thanks to three winners of the Kentucky Derby; Michael Tabor’s Thunder Gulch, Overbrook Farm’s Grindstone and Robert and Beverly Lewis’ Charismatic. Come the late 1990s, there was another Lewis star in Serena’s Song, a $150,000 yearling who wound up as a typically tough Lukas product, winning 11 Grade 1 races and over $3.2 million.
Numbers subsequently dropped but Lukas never lost his ability to draw in the big-hitting owners, a case in point being Brad Kelley, the latest owner of the famed Calumet Farm in whose colours Lukas saddled Oxbow to win the 2013 Preakness Stakes. Just over a decade later aged 88, Lukas struck again in that same Classic with Seize The Grey, this time for a very different type of owner in the microshare syndicate MyRacehorse; over 2,500 owners were cheering him on as he crossed under the wire at Pimlico.
The market of the 1980s is a world away from today but Lukas remained a major player until the end. The Justify colt American Promise, who took his chance in this year’s Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes following his romp in the Virginia Derby, was a throwback of old as a $750,000 yearling.
“He was one of a kind in promotion, dedication, discipline, and talent,” says Bell. “Through his longevity and love of life, he is recognised as the standard of excellence and likely the greatest of his era.”
