LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) – The problem with giving Hall of Fame thoroughbred trainer D. Wayne Lukas a Lifetime Achievement Award is that the achievements are still piling up. Lukas, who turned 88 last fall, is still very much full of life.
The Kentucky Derby Museum will honor Lukas with its inaugural Lifetime Achievement Award in a ceremony Thursday night, but he’s no museum piece. Lukas has a Justify colt, Just Steel, qualified for The Kentucky Derby, and a filly, Lemon Muffin, qualified for The Kentucky Oaks.
Lukas’ alarm clock still goes off at 3:30 every morning. He still rides a horse out to the track well before the sun comes up – though he needs a little more help to get into the saddle than he used to.
But as long as he has a good horse, he’s happy, and he has a bunch of them right now. He has enough enthusiasm about some of his 2-year-olds in training that the museum might need more trophy room in a wing that already can’t contain the lifetime of loot won by the trainer who ushered horse racing into the modern age.
“There’s probably a thousand trophies in the basement,” Lukas laughed. “. . . It's very gratifying to see the beautiful job that the Derby Museum has done and to make sure that it's going to last a little while maybe longer than I do. The wonderful thing about it though, is for my family. I've got great grandchildren now -- two boys -- and the fact that in years to come they can come to the Kentucky Derby Museum and walk through here and say, ‘Dad, you know, boy, this was something.”
Lukas has always been an innovator. He was the first trainer to fly horses around the country for stakes races. “D. Wayne Off the Plane,” they used to call him. Today, he’s just as into analytics and data to figure out ways to put his mounts into better positions to win.
And he has stories to burn. After the cameras went off in a media session on Wednesday, he told about an experience when Today Show host Joan Lunden fell off her horse during a live shoot, and hitting a Pick 6 at Del Mar with Bob Knight and Dave Gavitt, and Gavitt deciding to sit in the car with their winnings rather than go into a restaurant to eat after the races.
Lukas isn’t going to slow down. He’s having fun, and figures retirement might be bad for his health.
“I’m afraid if I stopped then I’d go downhill quickly,” he said. “I’ve really watched that in my friends, I’ve watched that in coaching. That sofa is very tempting. It pulls at you every day. It makes you want to stay every day, and I don’t want to get to that point where that gets too comfortable. I’d rather be tired.”
Like a song by the late Toby Keith said, “Don’t let the old man in.”
“Toby was a friend of mine. I love that song,” Lukas said. “And Clint Eastwood, who inspired the song, rode my horse in the movie Pale Rider. So Clint Eastwood and I are connected, too. The big, gray horse he rode in the movie Pale Rider was my horse.”
And on the stories go. Lukas will share more of them when he picks up the Derby Museum honor Thursday night.
“When they told me about it, I asked Pat Armstrong (president and CEO of the Derby Museum) who they gave it to before,” Lukas said. “I’m always curious to see who was in front of me. And he said, ‘Nobody. It’s the first time.’ So that was humbling and made it, I think, a little bit more special. We're excited, the family all is going to be present, which has not been the case on a lot of awards.”
It should be a memorable night for Lukas, who may have even more of them come early May under the Twin Spires.
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