Trainer D. Wayne Lukas won the first four runnings of the GIII Honeybee S. starting way back in 1988, and after picking up another trophy in 2007, sits tied with fellow Hall of Famer Steve Asmussen at a record five wins in Oaklawn's penultimate GI Kentucky Oaks prep. Lukas looks well positioned to break that tie with Asmussen as he sends out expected heavy favorite Secret Oath (Arrogate) in Saturday's renewal.
Briland Farm homebred Secret Oath was a second-out romper around two turns at Churchill on Halloween before finishing a distant fifth in that venue's GII Golden Rod S. Nov. 27. She took a dramatic step forward when airing by 8 1/4 lengths in a local allowance on New Year's Eve–good for a 93 Beyer Speed Figure–and justified 1-2 odds when dominating the track-and-trip Martha Washington S. Jan. 29.
Asmussen trainee Optionality (Gun Runner), previously an easy winner of stakes at Zia Park and Remington, was 7 1/2 lengths behind Secret Oath while completing the Martha Washington exacta after setting the pace. Asmussen makes a rider switch from Ricardo Santana, Jr. to Tyler Gaffalione this time.
Yuugiri (Shackleford), piloted by Gaffalione in all three starts last season, will be ridden this time by Hall of Famer John Velazquez and seems the main danger on paper to Secret Oath. A 7 1/4-length debut romper sprinting at Churchill in September, she was a well-beaten second in the Oct. 31 Rags to Riches S. and then turned the tables on that race's winner when second in the Golden Rod. While Secret Oath has certainly flattered the form of the Golden Rod, no others have, including the winner, who was sixth in last weekend's GII Rachel Alexandra S.
Wayne Lukas has won the GI Kentucky Oaks four times, but should there be a fifth this year it would no doubt be among the most special accomplishments of this Hall of Famer's career.
He's no longer able to attack the race with an arsenal of well-bred, expensive and talented horses sent his way by some of the sport's biggest owners. Those days are long gone. Instead, the 86-year-old trainer will have to overcome the odds and an inherent bias in the sport against older trainers and try to win the Oaks with the best filly he has trained in some time, Secret Oath (Arrogate). Lukas is hoping she takes another step toward the Oaks with a win in Saturday's GIII Honeybee S. at Oaklawn Park, where she will likely be a solid favorite.
“I have been there already and have had that experience, but at 86 it's quite a nice feeling to know that there is maybe one more in the history books out there for me,” Lukas said.
It's not just Lukas. The sport has a way of turning its back on older trainers, no matter how successful they may have been at one point. Lukas has averaged 17 winners a year since 2018 and, prior to Secret Oath's win in the Martha Washington, his last stakes win came in the Apr. 4, 2017 GIII Commonwealth S. at Keeneland with Warrior's Club (Warrior's Reward).
“I don't want to be shuffled to the back burner,” he said. “I don't want the young guys who weren't around when we were having so much success… I don't want them to look over and say, 'That old man over there, he used to win races.'”
The dominant trainer in the sport in the eighties and for much of the nineties, Lukas was forced to reinvent himself about 20 years ago. Once having a 100-plus horses with barns spread out across the country, he's down to one division, which divides the year between Oaklawn and Churchill Downs. Lukas has 25 horses and no longer has the luxury of working for deep-pocketed owners who supply their trainers with an assembly line of talent. Typical of the type of owners Lukas has, Secret Oath, a homebred, is owned by Robert and Stacy Mitchell, and she is their only horse in training.
“We didn't start out with six fillies like this one,” Lukas said. “We started out with one. We're probably beating the odds that an old man like me with a one-horse stable could take this to the next level.”
Yet, Lukas has never shown any signs of bitterness nor has he allowed himself to feel sorry for himself. Rather, he's gone about his business the same as he always has since getting started with Thoroughbreds in 1977. That means showing up the barn early every morning and putting in a full day of work while trying to get the best out of every horse in his stable. He may have slowed down some, but just some. For someone his age, his energy level is remarkable.
“I love the competition,” he said. “I've always wanted to win the big ones. My energy level comes from a passion for the game. I'm getting a lot more speaking engagements where people want me to answer that question, what keeps me going? I don't think about it. It just comes natural. It's something I've been doing my entire life and as long as my health is good, which it is, why stop?”
His daily routine includes getting on a pony and supervising morning training from that vantage point. He's not about to stop doing that, but he admits it's no longer as easy as it used to be.
“I have a little more trouble getting on the pony and a little more trouble getting off him.” | Coady photo
“I have a little more trouble getting on the pony and a little more trouble getting off him,” Lukas said. “I don't just bounce off him. I call one of the assistants over and say that I'm getting off, catch me if I fall.”
He says that he is enjoying training a small stable, which has its advantages.
“I like the fact I can go out there and get on my horse every morning,” Lukas said. “I get on my saddle pony and I am able to deal one-on-one with every horse in the barn. Even if it were offered to me, I wouldn't want a stable in New York, one in California and one here. Those days beat me up. It doesn't have any appeal anymore.”
Secret Oath took a while to figure things out. She won one of her first three starts while posting modest Beyer figures and was drubbed when trying stakes company in the GII Golden Rod S. last fall at Churchill Downs, where she was fifth, beaten 11 1/4 lengths.
Everything changed in a Dec. 31 allowance at Oaklawn. Out of nowhere, she won by 8 1/4 lengths while earning a 93 Beyer figure. Lukas brought her back in the Jan. 29 Martha Washington S. and she turned in another huge effort, winning by 7 1/4 lengths.
“We thought from the very beginning that she would win races,” Lukas said. “You never know how far they are going to go. She gets over the ground so beautifully. She tipped her hand. We ran her in that allowance race with some good horses to see where we were at and that race was beautiful. You couldn't have scripted it any better than that. When she came back in the Martha Washington, we were looking for that same type of performance and actually we got a full duplication of that race. We are high on her and we're getting optimistic. We will go into the Honeybee full of hope. When she accelerates she does so so quickly she just breaks their heart.”
Lukas will also be represented in the $1-million GII Rebel S. Saturday at Oaklawn with Ethereal Road (Quality Road). He's coming off a maiden win where he broke slowly, was last of 12 and then closed with a rush to draw off to a four-length win. He'll be a longshot in the Rebel, but Lukas said he is high on his chances.
“Our little barn has some balance to it,” he said. “We might have a Kentucky Derby prospect, too.”
Thirty-two years after he last won a Kentucky Oaks in 1990 with Seaside Attraction, Lukas seems comfortable in his role as the sport's elder statesman. He said he finds it gratifying when younger trainers come to him seeking his advice, which he is happy to give.
“At this stage of my career, I think I owe it to the industry to do the best job that I can,” he said.
Should Secret Oath get to the Oaks, Lukas will be the story, the octogenarian trainer seeking one more coveted win. His glory days are well behind him, but it's not like he has forgotten how to train a good horse. He's been doing his very best to show that 86 is just a number. So is five, the record for most wins in the Kentucky Oaks, which is held by Woody Stephens. Lukas needs just one more win to tie him. Can he do it? Why not?
On Jan. 29, Briland Farm's Robert and Stacy Mitchell came to the stark realization that their public profile in the Thoroughbred racing world was about to be raised in a big way.
Crossing the finish line first by 7 1/4 lengths that day in Oaklawn's Martha Washington Stakes was their homebred filly, Secret Oath. As part of the Road to the Kentucky Oaks points series of races, the victory awarded the filly 10 qualifying points toward the classic race, and stamped the sophomore as one to watch ahead of the Run for the Lillies.
“It's a little bit overwhelming and I don't want to get ahead of myself,” said Stacy Mitchell. “We're just going to have fun each day.”
The journey of Briland Farm actually began more than two decades before. As a young couple with a growing family and with the Millennium approaching, the Mitchells were struck by the impulse that so many before them have felt: it was time to escape the city.
“We didn't just want to buy a house in a subdivision,” said Rob Mitchell, who, like his wife Stacy, is a Kentucky native. “I wanted land. My grandparents had land and so we found a farm with an old wooden farm house in Fayette County. We wanted to get outside of downtown so we went for it and we ended up getting a 90-acre farm.”
With their new farm in Lexington, Ky., in hand, the Mitchells were gifted an older Quarter Horse by a friend. It was their realtor who pointed out that as social herd creatures, the horse would likely do better with a companion in the field.
“When our friend told us to get a companion horse, he basically said to get a broodmare and if we get a broodmare, find one in foal,” said Stacy. “Our kids were young at the time and he said, 'Your kids would love growing up seeing horses being born.'”
“So we found someone who wanted to sell a young mare with a pretty good pedigree that had never raced,” said Rob. “They wanted to just give her to us but I said, 'Let's buy her for $1.00 and make it official.'”
Named Chao Praya, the mare was a daughter of Gold Legend out of the Pancho Villa mare Casting a Spell. While she was not in foal at the time of sale, the Mitchells decided to breed to the mare to Level Sands, a son of Storm Cat, for $1,500.
“That foal, Level Playingfield, became a graded stakes winner, multiple stakes winner, and a track record-setter. Then we bred the mare back to Empire Maker just as he was starting his stallion career and we got another grade 3 winner (Imposing Grace).”
Suffice it to say, the Mitchells had been bitten by the breeding bug. In order to add to their numbers, the couple went shopping at the now defunct Fasig-Tipton Adena Springs Broodmare Sales. There they purchased a Great Above mare named Rockford Peach, who was in foal to Running Stag, for $36,000.
Rockford Peach would go on to produce the Quiet American mare Absinthe Minded, a multiple stakes winner who earned over $600,000 on the track. Now a broodmare in the Briland Band, Absinthe Minded has continued to reward the Mitchells as the dam of Secret Oath.
With success coming early on the track and in the breeding shed for the Mitchells, it would have been natural for them to return to public auction. But as it would happen, Rockford Peach would be the last Thoroughbred ever purchased in the name of Briland Farm.
“The bottom line is we've never bought a race horse,” said Rob. “Every horse we've ever raced was born on our farm. We haven't bought any Thoroughbred for over 20 years. We have a few families, we have three or four foals a year, and we race our foals. We sell about 75 percent and keep about 25 percent and we've just been very blessed and lucky.
“I think it's a good thing that there are partnerships and syndicates that buy horses off the track after they win a few races and they keep those horses in training and go on racing to more success. That's great for the business, but we have never bought a race horse. They're all born here on the farm.”
From this small, insular operation, the Mitchells have been able to generate a strong strike rate on the track. Between 2002 and 2018, Briland Farm campaigned 44 homebred horses. Of those, 6.8 percent were graded stakes winners, 13.6 percent were graded stakes-placed, 25 percent were stakes placed, and 11.3 percent were stakes winners.
Self-taught when it comes to matings, the Mitchells—while they do sell a handful of foals—consciously stray from what's commercially popular.
“When we first got into it, we went to a few TOBA meetings but mostly it was reading and studying how to make it work,” said Rob. “But even then you don't know if your matings will be right.
“I try to never go for what is popular. That is the last thing in the back of my mind. I want to win the best horse that will win races because I own the broodmare. I want those horses to win to increase the value of the subsequent foals. It doesn't make sense for me to do what is popular because when you look back, you'll see stallions that start off super-hot and two years later you can't give those horses away. I want to breed the best horse I can with the stock I have.
“We've made bad decisions along the way, but we're getting better at it. In about 20 years maybe we will have it down. We don't really need to buy anymore because we have a few families that are genotypically different, but in some ways similar, so I think we're good at figuring them out and what they need.”
But while the Mitchell's strategy has proved more than reliable in getting horses to the winner's circle, it hasn't always translated to the sales ring where the pressure to tick all the boxes of buyers. Among those that didn't initially pass muster with buyers was Secret Oath, who failed to make an impression during her brief stint in the Bluewater Sales consignment at the 2020 Keeneland September Yearling Sale.
“I really liked Secret Oath when she was born,” said Rob. “We sent her to Keeneland, and I think they're pretty knowledgeable, but they put her in session 5. Her dam had won three stakes races and placed in five graded stakes, the filly was from Arrogate's first crop, but she was put in session 5. Not a lot of people looked at her so I took her out of the sale the day before she was supposed to go. I thought, 'If no one wants her, she looks just like her mom and sister so I will race her myself.'”
“She had that tall, narrow, Quiet American look like he had when he was young but that wasn't the look they wanted at that sale,” said Stacy. “They wanted to see big engines on the back and different body types. She wasn't what the commercial market wanted.”
With Secret Oath having taken her first steps toward the Kentucky Oaks, it's clear that the Mitchells have cracked the code to personal success. While she may have been overlooked at the sales, the filly's explosion onto the racing scene has garnered plenty of attention; the fear of missing out running strong with owners hoping to get in on the ground floor as the Classic season ramps up.
But just like they weren't selling in 2020, the Mitchells plan to hang on to their filly.
“We will try to hold (trainer) Wayne (Lukas) back,” joked Rob. “He's excited about her and people want to buy her. But we're going to take it one day at a time. Wayne calls about every few days saying, 'I have someone else who wants to buy her.' And I've said 'Wayne, if I was a wealthy man I would take the money, but I'm used to being poor so I don't need it'”.
“We got lucky with Secret Oath but you don't always get that lucky. We know we may never win another race. We've done this long enough to know that a horse can kick it's stall and chip an ankle or get a fever the night before the race. Nothing is ever sure.”
“We're just taking it one race at a time,” said Stacy. “I told someone that after all the work we've put in for 20 years I'm happy to take the ride with her as short as it may be. Anyone who has done this knows that the happier times are fewer than the hard times. You have to hold on to the good.”
Secret Oath breaks her maiden at Oaklawn on Dec. 31
Secret Oath stamped herself as a major player on the GI Kentucky Oaks trail with her second straight eye-catching victory at Oaklawn Park.
Breaking her maiden Oct. 31 by over five lengths beneath the Twin Spires in her second career start, Secret Oath came up empty finishing a well-beaten fifth in the GII Golden Rod S. next out Nov. 27. After dominating her allowance rivals with a visually impressive score with first-time Lasix last out Dec. 31 at Oaklawn Park, she returned just as brilliantly here.
Coming off Lasix for this race, and sent off an overwhelming 1-2 favorite, she broke in line with the field before being forced into the first turn widest of all when rivals to her inside ended up in no rush to push for Optionality's lead. Tracking the uncontested leader from fourth up the backstretch through easy fractions, Secret Oath was keen to get rolling before the bunched field hit the midway point on the final turn. Without being asked, the flashy chestnut cruised by her rivals coming to the top of the lane and was three in front by the final sixteenth. Optionality could only watch from second as the D. Wayne Lukas trainee disappeared from her competition, winning by an easy 7 1/4 lengths and earning 10 Kentucky Oaks points. Secret Oath is the first stakes winner for her Hall of Fame trainer since Warrior's Club (Warrior's Reward) won the GIII Commonwealth S. in April 2018.
“I had a great trip,” jockey Luis Contreras said. “She's a really good filly. I just tried to keep her covered as much as I could. She was fighting with me. She wanted to go every single step of the race… When I put her outside, she just exploded.”
Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas added, “It was a replay [of her last race] and that's what we were looking for. That consistency is now coming and we're getting that maturity, as far as a professional racehorse. She's been very manageable, but she was a little immature before. But I think it's coming together now and we've just got to keep her happy and fat and we'll go down the road.”
Secret Oath becomes the second stakes winner for the late Arrogate. Out of Oaklawn specialist and two-time Bayakoa S. victress Absinthe Minded, Secret Oath joins her dam as a stakes winner in Hot Springs. The mare also finished third and second, respectively starting in 2011, in successive years in the track's marquee race for the ladies, the GI Apple Blossom H. The third filly to find a winner's circle for the broodmare, and the first stakes horse, Secret Oath also has an unnamed 2-year-old half-sister by Medaglia d'Oro. The mare is expecting a foal by Liam's Map this season.
MARTHA WASHINGTON S., $200,000, Oaklawn, 1-29, 3yo, f, 1 1/16m, 1:46.21, ft.
1–SECRET OATH, 122, f, 3, by Arrogate 1st Dam: Absinthe Minded (MSW & MGISP, $607,747), by Quiet American 2nd Dam: Rockford Peach, by Great Above 3rd Dam: Strawberry Skyline, by Hatchet Man 1ST BLACK TYPE WIN. O-Briland Farm; B-Briland Farm, Robert
& Stacy Mitchell (KY); T-D. Wayne Lukas; J-Luis Contreras.
$120,000. Lifetime Record: 5-3-0-1, $285,167.
2–Optionality, 122, f, 3, Gun Runner–Simplify, by Pulpit.
O/B-Winchell Thoroughbreds LLC; T-Steven M. Asmussen.
$40,000.
3–Como Square, 122, f, 3, Into Mischief–Pangburn, by
Congrats. 1ST BLACK TYPE. O/B-Shortleaf Stable, Inc.; T-Brad Cox. $20,000.
Margins: 7 1/4, 4 3/4, 2. Odds: 0.50, 3.50, 6.00.
Also Ran: Hypersport, Princess Pauline, Cupid's Music. Click for the Equibase.com chart or VIDEO, sponsored by TVG.
