'Born salesman' D Wayne Lukas rewrote the record books in the US and at the Breeders' Cup with his relentless pursuit of success

Legendary trainer D Wayne Lukas, who has died at the age of 89, was a true racing great.

The charismatic Wisconsin-born trainer's unorthodox, innovative methods turned the sport on its head in the last two decades of the 20th century, when his fame extended well beyond his nation's borders to make him one of the most recognisable faces in the racing world.

Lukas rewrote the record books in the US, where he trained a multitude of champions, including three Horses of the Year in Lady's Secret (1986), Criminal Type (1990), and Charismatic (1999), the last of his four Kentucky Derby winners.

Seize The Grey's 2024 Preakness Stakes success brought his total of Triple Crown victories to 15. That includes an unprecedented six in a row between the Preakness of 1994 and the Kentucky Derby of 1996. Lukas also shares the record, with Aidan O'Brien, as the most successful trainer at the Breeders' Cup with 20 victories.

Seize The Grey in the winner's circle after success in the Preakness Stakes

During a halcyon period in which he led the US money lists on 14 occasions (1983-1992, 1994-1997), milestone after milestone fell to Lukas's rapacious operation. In 1990, he was the first US trainer to top $100 million in prize-money; in 1999, he was also first to $200m – and when his career earnings were surpassed, it was by Todd Pletcher – one of several former Lukas assistants to enjoy notable success in their own right.

“If thoroughbred racing is the Sport of Kings, then D Wayne Lukas is its absolute ruler,” wrote journalist Dan Peterson.

However, for all his success, the outspoken Lukas was seldom free from controversy. He suffered near-bankruptcy in the 1990s and he was far from popular with the old-money Kentucky bluebloods who dominated US racing before his arrival in the 1970s. With multiple barns spread across the country, he was accused of running an assembly line, factory farming a vast team of thoroughbreds: he worked his horses too hard, raced them too often, and broke them down, said his detractors. 

Lukas was not embraced by the racing community until he was decades into his record-smashing career, especially when he enjoyed an unlikely Indian summer well into his seventies with yet more success in the Triple Crown and the Breeders' Cup. If he had been a more sympathetic figure, he would surely have won more than his four Eclipse Awards as outstanding trainer. He was inducted into the Hall of Fame in 1999 and he is the only person who is also a member of the Quarter Horse Hall of Fame, reflecting his status in the sport in which he started out in the 1960s.

Darrell Wayne Lukas was born in Antigo, a small town 80 miles north-west of Green Bay in Wisconsin. His father, Ted, drove construction machinery but Wayne displayed a keen interest in horses from an early age, showing a natural aptitude with ponies and becoming a regular at county fairs. However, after earning a degree in education from the University of Wisconsin he worked as a teacher and high-school basketball coach; hence his enduring nickname, 'Coach'.

He supplemented his teacher's earnings with horse trading and began training quarter horses in his summer vacations until going full-time in 1967. He soon became one of the top trainers in the discipline and would train more than 20 champions.

There was more money to be made in the thoroughbred world, however, and he switched full-time in 1978 with a barn at Hollywood Park; later, his primary base was nearby Santa Anita.

Always keen to produce a high-profile performer to showcase his talents, Lukas wasted little time and his first star was two-year-old filly Terlingua, a daughter of Secretariat who in 1978 won three Grade 2s in California.

Lukas's first taste of success in the Triple Crown came in 1980 when he saddled Codex to win the Preakness Stakes. Under Angel Cordero, Codex outmuscled Kentucky Derby-winning filly Genuine Risk for a controversial success. Though the winner had to survive an appeal, Lukas was on the map.

D Wayne Lukas 1935-2025:

'He was second to none as a trainer' - Aidan O'Brien leads tributes to D Wayne Lukas after US racing legend dies aged 89 

D Wayne Lukas: six of the greatest horses saddled by US training giant 

His public persona was already well developed. Aware of the PR advantages of leaving a memorable impression, Lukas was always immaculately dressed in his ten-gallon hat and sunglasses. His horses were easily picked out with their distinctive white bridles; his racing colours were fashioned in a distinctive green – the colour of money, critics pointed out. 

Lukas was meticulous, insisting on the highest standards in professional and personal arenas, as his biographer, Carlo DeVito, outlined: “Lukas is known for clean talking (he rarely swears and doesn't allow it in his barns), clean walking (he is always impeccably dressed, even in jeans) and loving clean barns (they are known as the cleanest and prettiest on the backstretch at any racetrack.)”

DeVito also describes Lukas as “walking ad for himself”, adding that while he could be “generous and understanding”, he was also “arrogant, charming, demanding, gregarious, driven and a born salesman.” 

Lukas's first real superstar was Landaluce, a juvenile filly who garnered national attention when she won five races by a combined total of more than 46 lengths in 1982. Left in tears when she died of a viral infection in December that year, Lukas vowed never again to become so emotionally attached to a horse.

In conjunction with Eugene Klein, a tough-talking Bronx businessman, Lukas developed the model that was to drive his success. The Lukas/Klein blueprint, known as 'The Program', involved buying lots of stock at public auction, racing them for big money and then selling them at the end of their racing career. This was heresy to the owner-breeder operations that had ruled the roost for a century.

Lukas developed multiple barns across North America, his Californian base supplemented by strings at Belmont Park, New York, run by Jeff Lukas, and Churchill Downs in Kentucky. Lukas was a tough disciplinarian with a fearsome work ethic, but those who bought into his methods tended to stay a long time; they also thrived when branching out on their own. As well as multiple champion Pletcher, Lukas's assistants included Kiaran McLaughlin, at one time the Maktoums' principal US trainer, Dallas Stewart, Mark Hennig and Mike Maker. 

The US racing landscape was changed utterly in 1984 with the advent of the Breeders' Cup and by the end of the decade Lukas had won ten of the 42 available races to have been run, the majority with two-year-olds.

His numbers in the 1980s beggared belief. He set a record with 92 stakes winners in 1987 when he achieved his career-high 343 victories. His horses won $17.8 million in 1988, more than double won in a single year by any other trainer; and he won three consecutive Eclipse Awards (1985-87).

However his record in the Kentucky Derby was zero from 12 until 1988, when he saddled Klein's Winning Colors, ridden by Gary Stevens, to become only the third filly to claim America's most beloved race. 

The Lukas machine continued its remorseless pace. Criminal Type, was his second Horse of the Year in 1990 after a campaign in which he beat Sunday Silence in the Hollywood Gold Cup and Easy Goer in the Met Mile.

Trouble, though, was not far away. Lukas's reputation was severely dented when ownership venture Mid-America Thoroughbreds fell apart, leaving investors empty-handed. The trainer was also hit by the Calumet Farm scandal in which the historic bloodstock operation, which had raced Criminal Type, was declared bankrupt in 1991. Lukas was among the creditors who lost millions. He also lost his major patron when Klein pulled out of racing owing to ill health.

Lukas's brashness meant there was no shortage of individuals keen to see him taken down a peg or two and the vultures came out in force when his Preakness runner Union City broke down at Pimlico in 1993. It was claimed Lukas had risked a horse he knew was unsound. 

Lukas was at his lowest ebb in December 1993 when the two-year-old Tabasco Cat charged at his son Jeff, his second-in-command, knocking him into the air. Jeff Lukas landed on his head and went into a coma. He suffered severe head injuries, and while he returned to work for Team Lukas, he was never able to handle the same level of responsibility. He died, aged 58, in 2016.

Tabasco Cat was also to start Lukas's rejuvenation by winning the last two legs of the Triple Crown in 1994, when Lukas won his fourth Eclipse Award as champion trainer. Consciously seeking out more classically bred specimens, Lukas was untouchable in the mid-1990s in the Triple Crown. After Tabasco Cat's dual Classic success in 1994, he won the Kentucky Derby and Belmont in 1995 with Michael Tabor's Thunder Gulch; Timber Country took the Preakness, while Grindstone won the 1996 Kentucky Derby to make it six Classic wins in a row. None of them raced beyond their three-year-old season. 

This period was also marked by a major rivalry with Bob Baffert, whose horses knocked heads with Lukas on a regular basis. Baffert came within an inch of winning the Triple Crown in 1997 and 1998.

Bob Baffert: a major rival to LukasCredit: Edward Whitaker (racingpost.com/photos)

In 1999, however, it was Lukas who was on the verge of capturing the holy grail when the unheralded Charismatic won the Kentucky Derby and Preakness Stakes under troubled jockey Chris Antley. There was to be no fairytale ending as, within touching distance of immortality, Charismatic broke down at Belmont Park, suffering career-ending fractures to his near foreleg after passing the post in third. Tragically, Antley was to succumb to his addictions in December 2000, aged just 34; Lukas did himself few favours by openly criticising the jockey's attitude during the Triple Crown.

The first decades of the new century were not without achievements but generally Team Lukas was becoming a shadow of its former self. Still rising every day at 3.30am, the workaholic trainer made few concessions to age. When asked what he planned to do when he turned 80, the trainer quipped: “Date younger women.” In December 2013, he married the fourth of his five wives, Laurie Krause, 17 years his junior.

In 2014, in his acceptance speech for the 2013 Eclipse Award of Merit, Lukas was as bullish as ever. “When they start giving you awards,” he said, “they're trying to get you to retire. Well, you young trainers get ready because I'm not retiring. We're coming after you, so you'd better get up a little earlier in the morning from now on. We're coming after you with a vengeance.”

D Wayne Lukas may have divided opinion but, as he often liked to remind his critics: “People have opinions; horses have the facts.” The facts were that Lukas's horses compiled a towering record of achievement over a quarter of a century and more. Love him or loathe him, he could seldom be ignored.

D Wayne Lukas 1935-2025:

'He was second to none as a trainer' - Aidan O'Brien leads tributes to D Wayne Lukas after US racing legend dies aged 89 

D Wayne Lukas: six of the greatest horses saddled by US training giant

The Front Runner is our unmissable email newsletter available exclusively to Racing Post+ subscribers. Chris Cook provides his take on the day's biggest stories and tips for the upcoming racing every morning from Monday to Friday. Not a Racing Post+ subscriber? Join today and also receive our Ultimate Daily emails plus our full range of fantastic website and newspaper content.