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CBS News
29-06-2025
- Sport
- CBS News
D. Wayne Lukas, a 7-time Preakness winner, honored by Maryland horse racing community
Not many horse trainers had the success at Baltimore's Pimlico Race Course as Hall of Famer D. Wayne Lukas, who died on Saturday, June 28, in Louisville, Kentucky. He was 89 years old. Lukas won the Preakness Stakes seven times, behind only rival trainer Bob Baffert, who won the Triple Crown's second leg eight times. The Preakness Stakes was Lukas's most accomplished race of the Triple Crown. He had won the Kentucky Derby and Belmont Stakes four times each. Lukas has saddled 48 horses in the Preakness since his debut at the track in 1980. On June 22, Lukas's family said he had been hospitalized and would not return to training. Maryland racing community reacts The Maryland Jockey Club called Lukas a "legendary trainer" and a "true titan of Thoroughbred racing." "We extend our deepest condolences to his family, friends, & the entire racing community," The Maryland Jockey Club said on social media on Sunday. "His legacy will forever be part of Maryland Racing and the Preakness Stakes." Pimlico Race Course added that Lukas "will be deeply missed." "It was an honor to witness the legacy of D. Wayne Lukas," Pimlico Race Course said in a statement. "We extend our deepest condolences to his family, friends, and the entire racing community." The Preakness Stakes social media also expressed its sympathy. "A legend," the Preakness Stakes social media said. "Our hearts our heavy. Our thoughts and well wishes are with D. Wayne Lukas and his family during this time." D. Wayne Lukas's final race at Pimlico Race Course Lukas was in Baltimore for his final Preakness Stakes on Saturday, May 17, training American Promise, which had 15-1 morning line odds to win the race. American Promise, jockeyed by Nik Juarez, finished eighth out of nine horses. "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 at the Pimlico Race Course in May. "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." 2024 Preakness Stakes stunner A Lukas-trained horse won the Preakness Stakes at Historic Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore in 1980, 1985, 1994, 1995, 1999, 2013, and 2024. In 2024, Seize The Grey, a gray colt, dashed Mystik Dan's Triple Crown aspirations. Seize The Grey started with 4-1 odds and ended up taking out the favorite. That victory moved Lukas within one of the record at Pimlico, inching him closer to his good friend Bob Baffert. "I'm only one behind him — I warned him already," Lukas said. "It never gets old at this level, and I love the competition. I love to get in here with the rest of them." Lukas's memorable Preakness Stakes races Lukas's first victory at Preakness was with Codex in 1980, beating Kentucky Derby winner Genuine Risk. According to a Sports Illustrated article, Genuine Risk's owners challenged Codex's victory, claiming that jockey Angel Cordero Jr. deliberately interfered. The Maryland Racing Commission ruled that contact was incidental, allowing the victory to stand. Tank's Prospect (1985), Tabasco Cat (1994), Timber Country (1995), Charismatic (1999), and Oxbox (2013) were the other Lukas-trained horses to win the Preakness Stakes.
New York Times
16-05-2025
- Entertainment
- New York Times
After 150th Preakness, a wrecking ball and ‘philosophical dilemma' for Triple Crown's middle child
Gathered around a dinner table in Saratoga, N.Y., in 1868, then Maryland governor Oden Bowie offered a wager to his colleagues, all of them fans of thoroughbred racing: In two years' time, their current crop of yearlings would race head-to-head as 3-year-olds. The winner would enjoy dinner at the losers' expense. The parties agreed to the bet and set about determining where to host the race. Advertisement Saratoga, America's first racetrack, built five years earlier, made sense. But Bowie had bigger and bolder plans. Eyeing an opportunity to build a track in his home state, one with a long history of and affinity for horse racing, Bowie organized the Maryland Jockey Club. On Oct. 25, 1870, the track he named Pimlico (after a familiar area in London and a favorite watering hole, Olde Ben's Pimlico Tavern) opened its doors. That day, the two-mile Dinner Party Stakes was won by a horse derided as 'half-trained and fat as an ox.' His name was Preakness. Three years later, Bowie named his signature race after the winning horse, and on May 27, 1873, the Preakness Stakes was born. This Saturday, the Preakness celebrates its 150th anniversary, thanks to a three-year hiatus beginning in 1890 messing up the math. Pimlico, in the meantime, awaits a wrecking ball. That the Preakness' big party coincides with the temporary death of its track feels like a suitable pairing. The second jewel of the Triple Crown has long owned its forlorn middle-child status. Stuck in the middle of the pageantry of the Kentucky Derby and the history-making potential of the Belmont, it's at the mercy of a calendar not necessarily suitable for modern-day racing, and over time its facade started to reflect the race's despair. If the three Triple Crown races were played out on TikTok, the Derby would be Janice, the Belmont Holly and the Preakness Dooneese. This year, part of the problem will be solved. After the Preakness, Pimlico will be razed entirely. The Preakness will move to nearby Laurel Park for 2026 and return to its entirely reimagined Park Heights neighborhood digs in 2027. 'The Preakness is still the single biggest sporting event in the city of Baltimore,' says Alan Foreman, a former Maryland assistant attorney general and current chairman of the Maryland-based Thoroughbred Horsemen's Association, who has been instrumental in securing Pimlico's future. 'Sure, we have the Orioles, the Ravens, but in terms of a single event, there is nothing that compares to the Preakness. Now we'll have a great track. We just need to make sure we can keep the race relevant.' Advertisement Once upon a time, the fight to save Pimlico was no less complicated than the conversations surrounding a reimagined Triple Crown calendar. Changes in ownership groups, spiraling costs and the absence of the casino revenue that bolsters horse racing in other states eventually added up to an eyesore. The track, which has not undergone significant renovations for close to 60 years, became appropriately known for its urinal runs, in which (presumably inebriated) infield denizens ran across the tops of the port-a-johns while others threw objects at them to knock them off. At the last five Preakness races, well-heeled fans given access to the swanky Turfside Terrace inside the turf track looked out upon a huge tarp covering the 6,000 seats deemed unsafe and thereby condemned. Savvy reporters regularly took the stairs to the press box to avoid the inevitability of the elevator malfunctioning. 'Sure, there's some nostalgia,' says Foreman, who grew up a little more than a mile from the track. 'But no one is crying about the wrecking ball.' That the track sits in a distressed neighborhood made it easier for owners to think about reasons to leave instead of ways to stay. Once a 'streetcar suburb' sitting just five miles outside downtown Baltimore, Park Heights has declined for decades, with the city's mayor, Brandon Scott, who grew up in the neighborhood, commenting last December on the city's failures to fix issues of violence and vacant homes. The fence around Pimlico almost serves as a barrier to keep the trouble out. Rumors about relocating the Preakness and shuttering Pimlico had legs for years. Finally, in 2018, the Stronach Group, which owned both Pimlico and Laurel Park, announced it was only committed to hosting the race at Pimlico through 2020. Advertisement 'Every year we try to do things better and better,' Belinda Stronach, the company's chairman and president, said at the time. 'But also, people realize this facility is very old and in need of repair and major renovation. So for us at the Stronach Group, we ask ourselves, 'What is the best option?'' 'That was the catalyst,' Foreman says. 'That ran deep into the nerves of a city that still hasn't gotten over Bob Irsay taking the Colts out of Baltimore.' The city responded with a lawsuit against the ownership group, arguing the owners had 'systematically underinvested in the track since 2011.' As the public feud continued, privately a small group that included Foreman started to think of ways to save the track. By 2019, the Stronach Group was out of Maryland track ownership, and in 2020, the state passed the Maryland Racing and Community Development Act, authorizing $375 million in state bonds to refurbish Pimlico. The new Pimlico will lean into the grandeur of old in its clubhouse, but the grandstand will house only 5,000 spectators. The plan is to steal from the PGA Tour model and construct overlays and temporary seats in outside areas. The bonds also will cover the cost to acquire the nearby Shamrock Farm, which will serve as a thoroughbred training center (the footprint of Pimlico only allows stables for some 400 horses). The idea is to make Maryland the epicenter of Mid-Atlantic racing, with Pimlico offering live racing and the farm providing trainers a place to work from and easily reach tracks in Virginia, Delaware, New Jersey, Pennsylvania and West Virginia. That, of course, only solves one problem. The Kentucky Derby is the goal for 3-year-olds, trainers mapping out routes to acquire enough points and simultaneously peak for the first Saturday in May. The Belmont, run a full five weeks after the Derby, is more well-suited to the modern-day thoroughbred. Although winning the Triple Crown can't happen without the middle child, its two-week turnaround is an ask many trainers don't want to make of their horses. This year, that number includes Bill Mott, who, within days of winning the Derby, opted to point his horse, Sovereignty, toward the Belmont. That leaves a nine-horse Preakness field that includes only three Derby horses (runner-up Journalism; Sandman, who finished seventh; and American Promise, who came in 16th). Only two, Journalism and Sandman, have won Grade 1 races. Advertisement Plenty of decision-makers in horse racing, including previous operators of the Preakness, have toyed with retooling the race calendar, but it creates a philosophical dilemma. Is it right to change tradition and reorganize the calendar when the very thing that makes the Triple Crown so special is how difficult it is to achieve? Only 13 horses have done it, and only two since Affirmed in 1978. A reorganization would also require multiple TV partners to manipulate their broadcast schedules. The Derby and Preakness are on NBC (though the Preakness rights are up this year), and Fox now has the Belmont. 'The single greatest marketing tool the industry has is the Triple Crown, and the industry needs to look at if the Triple Crown needs to be modernized,' says Foreman, an admitted traditionalist. 'Every single sport has taken its traditions and made changes. Horse racing should be no different.' (Top photo by Rob Carr / Getty Images)
