D. Wayne Lukas, a Hall of Fame trainer who saddled the winners of 15 Triple Crown and 20 Breeders’ Cup races and who revolutionized thoroughbred racing with a modern-day corporate approach in a career spanning nearly 50 years, died on Saturday at his home in Louisville, Ky. He was 89.
His family announced the death in a statement released by Churchill Downs, the Kentucky Derby racetrack. They had said in June that he had been treated for methicillin-resistant Staphylococcus aureus, a serious bacterial skin infection.
Lukas evoked the image of an Old West cowboy when he donned a white Stetson and leather chaps to survey his stables, often arriving at 4:30 a.m. or so to make sure his horses were fit and the grounds were groomed to the immaculate standards he insisted upon. When it was time for training, he would escort his charges on horseback.
But he was also an astute businessman who attended races in designer suits and aviator shades and had horses in training from coast to coast.
He forged relationships with wealthy owners who would spend millions on premium horses, stocking stables across the country manned by his assistants. The goal was simple — win the sport’s biggest races — and he regularly flew across the country and did so. Handicappers took note, giving rise to the phrase “D. Wayne off the plane.”
One of Lukas’s biggest clients in his early years as a thoroughbred trainer was the former San Diego Chargers owner Eugene Klein. In 1988, his filly Winning Colors gave Lukas his first Kentucky Derby victory.
Lukas trained winners of seven Preakness Stakes, four Kentucky Derbies and four Belmont Stakes, and his horses swept all three legs of the Triple Crown in 1995 when Thunder Gulch won the Kentucky Derby and the Belmont Stakes, and Timber Country captured the Preakness. His Cat Thief scored an upset victory in the 1999 Breeders’ Cup Classic, the most prestigious race in the Breeders’ Cup series.
Lukas received the Eclipse Award as the nation’s outstanding trainer four times. Three of his horses won the Eclipse Award for horse of the year: Lady’s Secret in 1986, Criminal Type in 1990 and Charismatic in 1999.
Lukas’s entries earned purses of more than $300 million, much of that before the prize money at major stakes races had soared. He was inducted into the National Racing Hall of Fame in 1999.
But the Lukas family was touched by tragedy.
Lukas’s son, Jeff — his top assistant and a brilliant horseman in his own right — was nearly killed in December 1993 while trying to corral Tabasco Cat, an especially high-strung 2-year-old colt, who was galloping on a path outside the Lukas barn at Santa Anita and charged into him after breaking loose from his groom.
He sustained significant brain and skull injuries, never fully recovered and was unable to resume work as a trainer. David Burrage, a longtime friend of the Lukas family who had been general manager of the family’s racing interests, looked after Jeff Lukas and hired him in 2007 to work in the lending and insurance departments of a bank in Atoka, Okla., that he owned with a brother.
D. Wayne Lukas provided extensive financial support for his son, whose survival in the face of his grievous injuries was considered extraordinary, but their relationship was strained. Jeff Lukas died of heart disease at 58 in March 2016.
“I don’t think our legacy could have been complete without his input,” Lukas told TVG, the race-betting cable outlet.
For all his anguish, Lukas said he did not want to view Tabasco Cat as a villain. “I said we were going to do the right thing and see if we can make him the best horse we can,” he told TVG. The colt won the Preakness and the Belmont in 1994.
Darrell Wayne Lukas was born on Sept. 2, 1935, in Antigo, Wis., where his parents had a farm. He received a master’s degree in education from the University of Wisconsin-Madison and became a high school teacher and basketball coach in La Crosse, Wis.
But he had developed a love for racing early on and was successful in training quarter horses before turning to thoroughbreds in the 1970s. He was inducted into the American Quarter Horse Hall of Fame in 2007.
Lukas emerged as a dominant figure in thoroughbred training circles in the 1980s when he had some 250 horses in his stables and flew around the country in his corporate jet to check out the best of them. He became known as the Coach, developing future training stars like Todd Pletcher, Kiaran McLaughlin, Dallas Stewart and Mike Maker, and relentlessly promoted the sport with a relatable storyteller’s flair.
“In racing, there’s no how‑to book,” he told reporters after winning the Kentucky Oaks in 2022, contrasting it with football, where coaches diagram plays on a blackboard. “And most guys do not share anything. So when we came along, I thought, well, the basketball coach came out in me a little bit and we started with these great young guys. And a lot of nice records fell and a lot of good things happened.””
Lukas was fond of saying “you can’t win it if you’re not in it,” but over the years, he faced criticism for his rigorous training and racing methods with horses who later broke down.
His Union City fractured a leg during the 1993 Preakness Stakes and did not survive. Tabasco Cat was retired with a leg injury at the age of 4. Timber Country strained leg tendons and was retired on the eve of the 1995 Belmont. Thunder Gulch fractured a cannon bone in his foreleg while racing in the Jockey Gold Cup in 1995, five months after his Kentucky Derby victory, and was also retired. Lukas’s 1996 Kentucky Derby winner, Grindstone, was injured and retired while preparing for the Preakness. Charismatic fractured a leg during the 1999 Belmont Stakes, finished third and was retired.
In defending his regimen, Lukas cited the large number of entries he trained and the desire of many of his owners to focus on the rich races for 2- and 3-year-olds, when horses were still developing.
“He doesn’t run unsound horses,” Carl Nafzger, also a Hall of Fame trainer, told The New York Times in 1999. “That’s pure envy talking when anyone says that. He has a program geared to winning early. He’s a coach, and he pushes his athletes. That’s the nature of the game.”
After a 13-year drought in Triple Crown races, Lukas, at age 78, captured his 14th victory in the series with Oxbow at the 2013 Preakness, surpassing Sunny Jim Fitzsimmons for most wins as a trainer in America’s highest profile races. (Bob Baffert now owns the record with 17.)
Last year, Lukas broke another record set by Fitzsimmons, when at 88 his horse Seize the Grey won the Preakness, making him the oldest trainer to win a Triple Crown race. He also won a record-tying fifth Kentucky Oaks, the marquee race for 3-year-old fillies, with Secret Oath in 2022.
This spring, he was back where he felt most comfortable: on his pony overseeing training while on the Triple Crown path. His colt American Promise finished 16th in the Derby and eighth in the Preakness. On June 22, his family announced that he had been hospitalized with an infection and would hand over his operation to his veteran assistant Sebastian Nicholl.
“Wayne built a legacy that will never be matched,” Nicholl said in a statement. “Every decision I make, every horse I saddle, I’ll hear his voice in the back of my mind. This isn’t about filling his shoes — no one can — it’s about honoring everything that he’s built.”
Lukas, feisty and exacting, was married five times. He once said: “I’ve been married to these horses for a long time, and I thought I could blend in a relationship, but that hasn’t been the case. It’s been my fault.”
Lukas’s son, Jeff, from his marriage to his first wife, Janet Blank, was his only child. He is survived by his wife, Laurie Lukas; his brother, Lowell; his sister, Dauna Moths; two grandchildren; and four great-grandchildren.
Reflecting on his career in an interview with The Times in 2012, Lukas said: “It’s a lifestyle for me. I don’t know any other way to do it. My son, Jeff, told me, ‘You’ll be out there on your pony some morning, you’ll fall off dead, they’ll just harrow you under the track, and everything will go on as usual.’”
Alex Traub contributed reporting.
Melissa Hoppert leads The Times’s Express team, which focuses on breaking news and trending stories across the globe.
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