wayne lukas | Horse Racing Free Tips

Lukas Relishing His Return to the Kentucky Derby

For a time, Wayne Lukas was as much a part of the GI Kentucky Derby as mint juleps and roses. From 1981, when he sent out his first Derby starter in Partez, to 2000, he had at least one starter in the race every year while running a total of 38 horses. Four of them–Winning Colors, Thunder Gulch, Grindstone and Charismatic–won.

But he hasn't had a starter since Bravazo (Awesome Again) in 2018 and hasn't had a winner since Charismatic in 1999. But the drought is over as the 88-year-old training legend has managed to accumulate enough points (65) with GI Arkansas Derby runner-up Just Steel (Justify) that the colt, barring injury, is guaranteed a spot in the Derby starting gate.

“I'm really excited about being back, but I don't want to be back without a legitimate chance,” Lukas said. “I've already heard 'My Old Kentucky Home' and seen our silks out there on the track. I don't need to go through that. I am interested in trying to get a good horse there.”

Just Steel was seventh, beaten 10 lengths, in the GII Rebel S. and looked to be in over his head that day facing some of the best in the division. But he ran a much-improved race in the Arkansas Derby, finishing second behind Muth (Good Magic) at odds of 32-1.

It was just the type of effort Lukas was looking for from his colt.

“I've been managing this horse a little bit and trying to get him really good,” he said. “He stands 17 hands and he weighs 1,300 pounds. He's a big growthy horse that I didn't want to push a lot in March and April. I wanted to have him good enough so that I could sneak in on the points. But I didn't want to push hard on him.”

With Lukas yet to fully tighten the screws, he is expecting a much-improved performance come Derby Day.

“I finally put a mile work into him to get him ready,” Lukas said. “He's got some quality about him. If I can use the next month to tighten on him a little bit I think he will keep the race honest. I think he will take a quantum leap forward. I could see him improving something like 10 points from the last race to this race. I expect him to jump forward quite a bit.”

That Lukas is back in the Derby isn't necessarily a surprise. For the first time in a few years he has deep-pocketed clients that are spending serious money at the sales. Just Steel runs for BC Stables LLC, the stable name for the partnership of John Bellinger and Brian Coelho.

“I'm very happy for those clients,” he said. “These are my new guys and they have really stepped up financially. They are our No. 1 clients. The yearlings they bought last year are outstanding. I'm more interested in getting them to the Derby than I am getting myself back there. I was really happy after the Arkansas Derby knowing we have gotten them into the Derby.”

Lukas is also holding out hope that Seize the Grey (Arrogate) will earn enough points in Saturday's GI Blue Grass S. to also make it into the Derby field. Owned by MyRacehorse, he was third last time out in the GIII Jeff Ruby Steaks.

“He's a solid horse. And he's got 600 owners, so if we can get him in we'll make a lot of people happy.”

While Lukas will be the oldest trainer taking part in this Derby, his 25-year-old jockey, Keith Asmussen, the son of Hall of Fame trainer Steve Asmussen, will be among the youngest and the least experienced. But Lukas has taken a liking to him and is using him not only on Just Steel but his GI Kentucky Oaks candidate Lemon Muffin (Collected). Asmussen started his riding career in 2020 and this will be his first mount in a Triple Crown race.

“I go back a long way with his family,” Lukas said. “His grandfather and grandmother and I are very close friends. We went from South Dakota to Laredo, Texas together. We combined our stables. We've been close family friends forever. The young Keith has got such a good horse background and he is a really smart rider. He's got a master's degree, for crying out loud. He listens and he does what you want him to do. He makes very good decisions in the race. I understand experience-wise he is lacking but he's a real cool customer. He doesn't get all caught up in it. He is very solid. I will not be changing jockeys.”

Just Steel won't be one of the favorites, but Lukas has won plenty of big races with horses few people gave a chance to. He's won four Derbies but never lost the desire to win a fifth. It's just taken him a while to get back there, and he plans to make the most of the opportunity.

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Seize the Grey Rebounds To Capture Spa Maiden

by Bill Finley & J. N. Campbell

Seize the Grey (Arrogate) didn't show a thing in his debut, a July 1 maiden special weight race at Ellis Park. Trained by Hall of Famer Wayne Lukas and a $300,000 purchase at the Fasig-Tipton Saratoga sale as a yearling, he beat just one horse and lost by 17 1/4 lengths.

So it was no surprise when he was sent off at 16-1, a price that looked about right considering the competition he was set to face in Saturday's seventh race at Saratoga, a 6 1/2-furlong maiden race. The race included, among others, Dornoch (Good Magic), a full-brother to this year's GI Kentucky Derby winner Mage (Good Magic), and Lambo (Uncle Mo), who cost $950,000 at the OBS March sale and was second in his debut for Steve Asmussen.

But a very different Seize the Grey showed up Saturday.

Ridden by five-pound apprentice Jaime Torres, who picked up his first ever Saratoga win Friday, the grey colt led every step of the way to win by by 1 3/4 lengths over Dornoch. Lambo, who pressed the early pace, faded in the stretch and finished fifth.

Seize the Grey showed no speed in his debut in which he was ridden by Luis Saez.

“He didn't break too well last time and he might not have liked the pressure of being around other horses,” said Lukas after picking up his first winner of the meet. “Today, he just took off and he looked very professional.”

Lukas added that he thought the five-pound apprentice allowance might come in handy.

“I thought if he could get him away the five pounds we were getting because he is an apprentice would really help us,” he said. “It might have helped us a little bit in those last 50 yards.”

Said Torres: “As soon as they opened the gate he was determined to go to the lead. I just helped him a little bit. Then I tried to get him to relax. On the turn, I was thinking 'let's go, let's get it.'”

Seize the Grey is owned by MyRacehorse.

“The photographer loves me after this one,” said Lukas, who turns 88 in September. “He'll be able to sell about 400 pictures off of this one. I am really happy for all the people who own him.”

Run over a sloppy, sealed track, Seize the Grey covered the distance in 1:17.95 and paid $34.80. The colt was bred in Kentucky by Jamm, Ltd.

7th-Saratoga, $105,000, Msw, 7-29, 2yo, 6 1/2f, 1:17.95, sy, 1 3/4 lengths.
SEIZE THE GREY (c, 2, Arrogate–Smart Shopping {SP}, by Smart Strike) debuted a well-beaten eighth July 1 at Ellis Park before heading to New York. Bet down to 16-1 at the windows, the gray colt took up a position in the lead along the rail up the backstretch, held four competitors at bay around the far turn and digging down deep past the eighth pole, the D.W. Lukas trainee splashed home by 1 3/4 length over Dornoch (Good Magic) who was second. Out of an extended female family which includes GISW and MGSW Miss Shop (Deputy Minister) and MGSW Tin Type Gal (Tapit), GISW Power Broker (Pulpit) and SW Fierce Boots (Tiznow) are both half-siblings to the winner's dam. Smart Shopping is responsible for a yearling filly by Justify and she was bred to Life Is Good for next year. Sales History: $300,000 Ylg '22 FTSAUG. Lifetime Record: 2-1-0-0, $57,750. Click for the Equibase.com chart or VIDEO, sponsored by FanDuel TV.
O-MyRacehorse; B-Jamm, Ltd. (KY); T-D. Wayne Lukas.

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The Week In Review: A Wayne Lukas Renaissance

As Hall of Famer Wayne Lukas entered his mid-eighties, his longevity and his persistence became one of racing's best feel-good stories. A trainer who belongs in the conversation as one of the best of all time, he was still out there every day, physically active, mentally sharp. There didn't seem to be anything stopping him.

But there was a missing ingredient. Lukas, now 87, simply wasn't winning many races, especially important ones. Lukas won the 2018 GII Risen Star S. with Bravazo (Awesome Again) on Feb. 17, 2018. He didn't win another graded stakes until Secret Oath (Arrogate) won the GIII Honeybee S. on Feb. 16, 2022, nearly four years after Bravazo's win. From 2018 through 2021, he won just 69 races and his winning percentage was just 10.8%. It wasn't hard to figure out what was going on. There just weren't many owners willing to trust their horses to a trainer in his mid-eighties. The days of having Eugene Klein, William T. Young. Bob and Beverly Lewis and so many other top owners were long gone.

At his age, Lukas appeared destined to spend the rest of his days with a relatively small stable with the kind of horses that might give him an allowance win here or there. Counting him out seemed like a safe bet. Only it wasn't.

When Last Samurai (Malibu Moon) won Saturday's GIII Essex H. at Oaklawn Lukas picked up his third graded stakes win on the year. He also won the GIII Razorback H. with Last Samurai and the GII Azeri S. with Secret Oath. It's early but both look like Eclipse Award candidates. He has not had an Eclipse Award winner since Take Charge Brandi (Giant's Causeway) was named champion 2-year-old filly in 2014.

He may not be the Wayne Lukas of the mid-eighties when he dominated the sport. What he is is relevant again.

A lot of this has to do with Secret Oath, who put Lukas back in the spotlight last year and proved that he could still get the job done at the highest level. Her win in the GI Kentucky Oaks was arguably Lukas' biggest win since Will Take Charge (Unbridled's Song) won the GI Travers S. in 2013. It's not that Lukas remembered how to train. It was that someone-the filly's owners and breeders, Rob and Stacy Mitchell–were willing to give Lukas a chance with a talented horse.

“We've been with him, gosh, 15 or 17 years,” Stacy Mitchell told the TDN's Chris McGrath last year. “He's fair, he's honest, a true gentleman, someone everyone should have the opportunity to sit down and have a coffee with. As he has said, times have changed. Some of his big clients got out of the business, some passed on. Again, he said it himself, people used to love the old guys, now they love the new guys. But a lot of those are people he trained himself. You don't forget how to ride a bicycle, and I don't think you forget how to train a horse. People can say Wayne is back, but in my mind, I don't think he ever went away.”

In mid-summer last year, Willis Horton, who had had several top horses with Lukas over the years, also showed some faith in the Hall of Famer. He made a switch, sending the then 4-year-old Last Samurai from Dallas Stewart to Lukas. (Horton has since passed away and Last Samurai now races for his family). Initially, it looked like Lukas wasn't going to get much out of the horse who lost seven straight after the change in trainers. But Lukas figured something out and Last Samurai is now one of the hottest horses in the sport.

Ask Lukas and he will tell you he's lost nothing off of his fastball.

“Our game is an experience based game,” he said. “There are no how-to books. If you've been at it as long as I have been it becomes a little bit easier. You see things that you can correct. l see things I can do with a horse now that I wouldn't have been aware of when I was in my forties or fifties. The game gets a little easier. Believe it or not, I think it's easier for me now to develop a nice horse than when I was 50 and I had some nice years in that era.”

After all these years, is he still learning?

“If you're in the horse business you are always learning,” Lukas said. “The whole secret to this game is to read the horse. You need to read the horse and figure out what its capabilities are without over doing it. That's where you get in trouble. You think you can develop a horse to a certain level in a certain time frame and when you fail at it you're not going to get the maximum out of the horse. If you can read them and know when to push them and when not to the game can be pretty good.”

Secret Oath is heading to the GI Apple Blossom H., where she'll likely be the favorite. Up next for Last Samurai will likely be the GII Oaklawn H., a race he won last year for Stewart. They're both $1 million races. Lukas also has Caddo River (Hard Spun), who was second in the 2021 GI Arkansas Derby and won a Feb. 25 allowance at Oaklawn, and Major Blue (Flatter), a recent maiden winner at Oaklawn. He's on track to have his best year since 2013.

He'll turn 88 in September. Yes, he's a survivor but this year he's showing that he's something a lot more than just that.

Secretariat | Coglianese

Fifty Years Ago, Secretariat Won His 3-Year-Old Debut

On March 17, 1973, Secretariat made his 3-year-old debut in the GIII Bay Shore S. at Aqueduct. Click here for the replay of the race.

How things have changed. The purse was just $27,750 and the attendance was 32,906. It was the first of his three preps for the GI Kentucky Derby and they would come within a span five weeks, culminating in his defeat in the GI Wood Memorial.

The Bay Shore was not without a dose of controversy. Riding Impecunious, jockey James Moseley claimed foul against Secretariat and rider Ron Turcotte. Secretariat was blocked for much of the race and Turcotte did have to bull his way through horses in the stretch. Trainer Lucien Laurin was not pleased.

“That Moseley,” he said. “He claimed against me in the Garden State, but it turned out that his horse was at fault in that race.”

According to the report in the New York Times, some fans booed when the stewards declared there would be no change in the order of the finish.

“Let them boo,” Penny Tweedy said. “We've won the race.”

But Laurin was pleased with the end result.

“He was wonderful,” he said. “He did everything I expected him to.”

Fifty years after what was the most memorable season in the history of horse racing, it would have been a perfect time for NYRA to announce it had named a stakes races in honor of Big Red. The GI Hopeful S., a race Secretariat won, would have been a perfect candidate. But it was not to be.

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Some Old, Some New As Saratoga Opens For Summer 2022

SARATOGA SPRINGS, NY – D. Wayne Lukas is back and so is the Wilson Chute, after a much, much longer absence, for the 154th summer of Thoroughbred racing in Saratoga.

The 40-day season at historic Saratoga Race Course launches Thursday and runs through Labor Day, Sept. 5. It will be the 77th consecutive year of competition at Saratoga–since the closing for three years during World War II–which coincidentally makes it the second half of the very long run since the first meet was held in 1863. During the eight-plus weeks of racing, 77 stakes worth $22.6 million in purse money will be contested.

In 2020, the Saratoga season was conducted without fans to comply with COVID-19 protocols in place at the time. With fans back on the grounds last summer, the meet was a smashing financial success. Even though 45 races were moved off the turf due to wet conditions, Saratoga had a record all-sources handle of $815,508,063. Luis Saez was the leading rider for the first time and Chad Brown won his fourth training title.

Lukas, 86, was stabled at Saratoga for 36 consecutive years, but missed the last two seasons due to a combination of the pandemic and a drop in quality of his long-powerful stable.

After his 3-year-old filly Secret Oath (Arrogate) won the GI Longines Kentucky Oaks and finished fourth in the GI Preakness S., he talked about shipping her to Saratoga for the GI Coaching Club American Oaks and the GI Alabama S. Instead, the typically enthusiastic Hall of Famer brought a crew of runners from Kentucky and is back at his longtime Saratoga base, Barn 83, on the northeast corner of the Oklahoma training track stable area.

“We're a little bit deeper than that one horse,” Lukas said. “That's one of the reasons. You cannot survive here financially if you don't have a couple of horses that are competitive. If you try to come up here with one horse, this place is just right under the national debt as far as expenses. We've got a little depth. We've got a couple of 2-year-old fillies that have already exposed themselves and can run and we've got a couple of colts that we think can run. So, we brought 16 head trying to think that we were somewhat competitive. The racing here is good but it's not overwhelming. It's awful good in Kentucky right now, too.”

Lukas debuted at Saratoga in 1984 and made an immediate impact, finishing 1-2 in the Alabama with Life's Magic (Cox's Ridge) and Lucky Lucky Lucky (Chieftain) and won the GI Spinaway S. with Tiltalating (Tilt Up). He has won at least one race every year at Saratoga, is a six-time training champ and has 254 victories, 60 in stakes. Three of those stakes wins came in Saratoga's signature race, the GI Runhappy Travers S. He could have his 21st Travers runner on Aug. 27, Ethereal Road (Quality Road), who is headed to the GII Jim Dandy S. on July 31.

Briland Farm's Secret Oath will have her final work for the $500,000 July 23 GI CCA Oaks on Friday or Saturday.

Lukas suggested using capital letters for his comments on how the filly is doing a week out from the race.

“Very, very good,” he said. “Very good.”

Lukas will saddle BC Stables's 'TDN Rising Star' Summer Promise (Uncle Mo) in the GIII Schuylerville S. for 2-year-old fillies on Thursday. He has won the six-furlong opening day feature six times and sits in a tie with his former assistant and fellow Hall of Famer Todd Pletcher. Summer Promise, a $500,000 yearling purchase, won her debut by five lengths June 25 at Churchill Downs. His most-recent win in the Schuylerville was in 2004 with Classic Elegance (Carson City).

This will be the eighth summer that the Fitch brothers, Patrick, Jason and Adam, have operated King's Tavern on Union Avenue, across from the main entrance to the track. They leased a drab seasonal bar and turned into a busy year-round venue that is popular with track fans. They managed to get through the difficult first pandemic year in 2020 and had a solid 2021.

“We're looking at this meet and the only real concern we have is the weather,” Jason Fitch said. “If we can, let's get some sunny days and have the rainy days be on Monday and Tuesday. We're hoping that it's smooth sailing and the buzz has been–even throughout the hard winter with foot snow storms–that people are coming out.

“People just want to be out of the house. That whole post-COVID-locked-up-let-me-be-free vibe is still going on. I think this is going to be our busiest Spa meet yet. Hands down, I think it's going to be the busiest one.”

In January, NYRA announced plans to rebuild the Wilson Chute, which would bring back one-mile dirt racing back to Saratoga. The chute, which runs parallel to Nelson Avenue, provides jockeys and horses a straight run before entering the main track on the first turn. The original Wilson Chute was first used in 1902 after the track, which opened in 1864, was reconfigured and expanded from one mile to 1 1/8 miles by the new ownership group headed by William C. Whitney. It was named for Richard T. Wilson, Jr., a prominent horseman and partner in Whitney's group. Wilson, a three-time winner of the Travers, served 20 years as the president of the Saratoga Association and was instrumental in rebuilding the clubhouse and Turf Terrace, which opened in 1928. The chute was closed after the 1972 season and the space it occupied used for parking.

With the Wilson Chute gone, NYRA could not card dirt races at distances between seven furlongs and 1 1/8 miles. It was also an issue when one-mile turf races had to be moved off the grass and run at either seven furlongs or nine furlongs.

In 1992, NYRA experimented with one-mile races, ran 25 of them during the season, then scrapped the plan amid criticism that the configuration favored horses that drew inside.

“It wasn't a chute,” said retired jockey Richard Migliore, who was in the midst of his long career that season. “They basically just put the starting gate on the outside fence. They backed it up as far as they could with room enough, obviously, to load the horses, but there was no true chute there at all.”

Migliore said he was skeptical at first when he heard about the new chute, but changed his opinion after seeing images of how it was constructed.

“It appears to be a proper chute where the angle's good,” he said. “It shouldn't be bad on the horses and the riders to get position and it looks like there's actually a straightaway into the bend, not that it's a long one.”

A half-dozen jockeys tested the chute on Tuesday. A decision on how many horses will be allowed to start from that gate will be made after some races are run. NYRA would like a maximum of 10 starters. The first one-mile dirt race in 30 years will be the inaugural running of the Wilton S. for 3-year-old fillies on opening day. The Wilton drew nine starters, three of them from Pletcher.

A new permanent two-story building on the west side of the horse path from the paddock to the track will open Thursday. The Post Bar and Paddock Suites replace The Post Bar, which operated under a canopy for several seasons. The Post Bar will remain an open-air facility, while the suites above it are climate controlled.

A year after he won the GI Saratoga Derby Invitational with State of Rest (Ire) (Starspangledbanner {Aus}), Irish trainer Joseph O'Brien is scheduled to have six stalls for a satellite division at Saratoga this summer. O'Brien, the son of legendary trainer Aidan O'Brien, and Freddy Head are the only two people to ride and train Breeders' Cup winning horses.

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