LOUISVILLE, Ky. — Veteran horse trainer D. Wayne Lukas always talked up his latest crop of 2-year-old thoroughbreds with an eye toward the next Kentucky Derby and all that went with the big week at Churchill Downs.
That included telling his wife to get her dress for Kentucky Oaks day, when 3-year-old fillies step into the spotlight the day before the annual “Run for the Roses” on the first Saturday in May.
“This was what he lived for,” said Todd Pletcher, an accomplished trainer himself with six Triple Crown race victories — four in New York’s Belmont Stakes and two in the Kentucky Derby — after previously working for Lukas from 1989-95.
The eternal optimism Lukas held about the future was an annual tradition that endured until last June, when the longtime U.S. Racing Hall of Famer was hospitalized with a severe blood infection and died at age 89 in Louisville. The horse racing community gathers this week for the first Kentucky Derby without Lukas, though his presence lingers over everything around the sport’s biggest event.
“I miss Wayne. I miss talking to him,” said longtime friend Bob Baffert, a two-time Triple Crown winner as a trainer, having saddled American Pharoah in 2015 when he swept the Kentucky Derby, Preakness Stakes and Belmont Stakes before doing so again in 2018 with Justify.