Hall of Fame horse trainer D. Wayne Lukas, winner of 15 Triple Crown races, dies at 89

D. Wayne Lukas, the Hall of Famer who became one of the most accom­plished train­ers in the his­to­ry of horse rac­ing and a face of the sport for decades, has died. He was 89.

His fam­i­ly said Sun­day that Lukas died Sat­ur­day night at his Louisville, Ken­tucky, home. Lukas had been hos­pi­tal­ized with a severe MRSA blood infec­tion that caused sig­nif­i­cant dam­age to his heart and diges­tive sys­tem and wors­ened pre-exist­ing chron­ic con­di­tions.

“Wayne devot­ed his life not only to hors­es but to the indus­try — devel­op­ing gen­er­a­tions of horse­men and horse­women and grow­ing the game by invit­ing unsus­pect­ing fans into the win­ner’s cir­cle,” his fam­i­ly said in a state­ment. “Whether he was boast­ing about a maid­en 2‑year-old as the next Ken­tucky Der­by win­ner or offer­ing qui­et words of advice before a big race, Wayne brought heart, grace, and grit to every cor­ner of the sport. His final days were spent at home in Ken­tucky, where he chose peace, fam­i­ly, and faith.”

Lukas won 15 Triple Crown races, includ­ing the Ken­tucky Der­by four times. Only good friend Bob Baf­fert has more Triple Crown vic­to­ries, and Lukas owns a record-tying 20 in the Breed­ers’ Cup World Cham­pi­onships.

“The whole secret of this game, I think, is being able to read the horse: Read what he needs, what he does­n’t need, what he can’t do, what he can do,” Lukas said in May before his 34th and final Preak­ness Stakes. “That’s the whole key. Every­body’s got the black­smith, every­body’s got to the same bed avail­able, the feed man. We all can hire a good jock­ey. We all can hire a pret­ty good exer­cise rid­er if we’ve got the means, so what the hell is the dif­fer­ence? The horse is the dif­fer­ence and what we do with him in read­ing him.”

Lukas was affec­tion­ate­ly known around the barns and the race­track as “Coach” because he coached high school bas­ket­ball before his pro­fes­sion­al career with hors­es began. Even with months to go before his 90th birth­day, he would get up on his pony in the ear­ly morn­ing hours and go out to the track him­self, rather than let­ting his assis­tants do the day-to-day work.

Born Dar­nell Wayne Lukas on Sept. 2, 1935, in Wis­con­sin as the sec­ond of three chil­dren, he rose to promi­nence in the sport with quar­ter hors­es in races that are effec­tive­ly sprints. He moved into thor­ough­breds in the late 1970s and won his first Preak­ness with Codex in 1980.

Lukas has 4,967 doc­u­ment­ed vic­to­ries in thor­ough­bred rac­ing, with his hors­es earn­ing more than $310 mil­lion from more than 30,600 starts.

“Today we lost one of the great cham­pi­ons of Churchill Downs and one of the most sig­nif­i­cant fig­ures in Thor­ough­bred rac­ing over the last 50 years,” Churchill Downs Inc. CEO Bill Carstan­jen said. “We will miss his humor, his wis­dom and his unmatched capac­i­ty to thrill the fans with the per­for­mances of his hors­es on our sport’s biggest days.”

Achiev­ing some­thing of a career renais­sance over the past decade, one he cred­its to find­ing the right own­ers will­ing to spend mon­ey on hors­es, Lukas won the Preak­ness last year with Seize the Grey. Asked what moti­vates him to keep doing his job well into his late 80s, he gave a pep talk fit for a lock­er room before a big game.

“If you have a pas­sion, you elim­i­nate all the excus­es,” Lukas said. “That’s how it works. You get up ear­ly. You go with­out a meal. You dri­ve. You go with­out sleep — as long as you got the pas­sion. Don’t let that sofa pull you down. It’s a lit­tle easy when that alarm goes off to say, ‘Oh my God, I don’t know if I real­ly want to do this today.’ Erase that. The most impor­tant deci­sion you’ll ever make in your life is your atti­tude deci­sion. Make it ear­ly, and make the right one.”