LOUISVILLE, Ky. (WDRB) -- Before there was Twitter, there were telegrams, cards and letters.
Before D. Wayne Lukas was horse racing royalty, he was public enemy No. 1.
Before there was Secret Oath, the filly who will try to give Lukas his 15th Triple Crown win Saturday at the Preakness, there was Codex, the colt who gave Lukas his first Triple Crown victory by defeating a filly (Genuine Risk) at the Preakness.
This was May 1980.
And those were not love letters.
“They were mostly telegrams,” Lukas once told Bill Christine of the Los Angeles Times. “From little girls and women.
“They were running about 50-1 against us, because we beat the filly in a controversial race. I quit reading them, because you could tell what most of them were going to say.”
Lukas later quipped that if he took a bullet for winning that Preakness, he hoped it would be in his arm not his chest.
Talk about a wild ride. At 86, Lukas has been on every side of this debate about fillies running against colts in the Triple Crown races debate.
The bad guy. The good guy. The beloved guy.
If Secret Oath wins Saturday, Lukas will tie Bob Baffert with seven victories in the second leg of the Triple Crown. He’ll be everybody’s hero, a tireless wonder who ranks with anybody who has saddled a horse.
Rich Strike, the Derby winner, isn’t here. The sentimental story has become the 86-year-old trainer and his filly.
That’s not where the D. Wayne Lukas story began. America was not pleased about the results from the 1980 Preakness. They didn’t like the way Lukas, his jockey Angel Cordero Jr. and Codex beat Genuine Risk, the filly that became everybody’s darling by winning the 1980 Kentucky Derby.
Everybody will be cheering for Lukas on Saturday. Everybody was jeering Lukas, Cordero and Codex. It had been 65 years since a filly won the Derby before Genuine Risk delivered her upset victory at Churchill Downs in 1980.
The country wanted more.
Genuine Risk looked like she was positioned to deliver exactly that as jockey Jacinto Vasquez put her in position to move approaching the clubhouse turn at Pimlico.
Cordero had another idea. Racing third in the middle of the track, he let Codex drift wide and then wider, slowing the filly’s momentum. The footnotes from the Daily Racing Form Preakness chart said this:
“Cordero looked back entering the stretch, angled extremely wide, intimidating and lightly brushing Genuine Risk ...”
Some people claimed Cordero hit the filly in the face with his whip.
The stewards denied a foul claim from Vasquez. Three days later, so did the Maryland Horse Racing Commission by a 3-1 vote. They confirmed the 4 3/4 length victory by Codex that started Lukas on the path to the Hall of Fame.
“I turned out to be the bad guy,” Lukas said this week in Baltimore.
“Before the race, I was the unknown guy, some cowboy who came in here and brought a horse. That was the story. After the race, half of America thought I was a bad guy. All the women.”
Lukas eventually flipped the narrative but not without taking more barbs. In 1984, he saddled the filly Althea in the Derby. She raced as the favorite and finished 19th in the 20-horse field. She was beaten by Swale, who was trained by Hall of Famer Woody Stephens, who laughed at the idea of a filly beating him in the Derby.
Four years later, Lukas returned with Winning Colors. Rival trainer John Campo said fillies did not belong in the Kentucky Derby.
Stephens had the Derby favorite, Forty Niner, ridden by Pat Day. He took it up a notch, saying, “I can’t see her winning the Kentucky Derby. It’s a weak kind of year and I might run a filly if I had one. But this one won’t get the money. Look what happened the last time Lukas tried me with a filly.”
Ouch and then ... oops.
Winning Colors scored, by a neck over Forty Niner and Stephens. She remains the third and last filly to win the Kentucky Derby as well as the horse who gave Lukas his first victory in the race.
Now Lukas is back with Secret Oath, who ran like she could run with anybody while winning the Kentucky Oaks on May 6. She figures to be the second- or third-betting choice, listed at 9-2 in the morning line in the nine-horse field.
And a seventh Preakness victory?
“Absolutely, it would be sweet,” Lukas said outside the stakes barn in Baltimore this week. “That's why we're here.
“Filly. Colt. Government mule. I don't care. I'm here to win the thing.”
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