Lukas takes old-school approach to Lexington Stakes

Louisville, Ky.

D. Wayne Lukas had more important things to think about Wednesday than wheeling Ethereal Road back on just one week’s rest for a final shot at getting into Kentucky Derby 2022.

A big storm was bearing down on these parts that night. Tornado sirens were going off. TV shows were interrupted by weather bulletins. Hall of Fame training credentials meant nothing as Lukas was hunkered down at home in horse-and-thunderstorm country east of Louisville.

“I was in the basement,” he said about 10 hours later in his barn office at Churchill Downs. “My phone said a tornado warning was following this one road. That’s where I live. It went right over the top of me.”

Fortunately, Lukas only lost a few tree limbs. There was no further damage. He was right back at the track before dawn Thursday, continuing a routine he has repeated for most of his 86 years.

Lukas is proudly old school. The idea that he can bring Ethereal Road back only seven days after a seventh-place finish in the Blue Grass Stakes (G1) is unheard of in an era when a Triple Crown winner can have a career lasting only 112 days, and a horse can start the Kentucky Derby with only two races on his past performances.

“It’s a little bit unorthodox,” Lukas said of entering Ethereal Road into Saturday’s Lexington Stakes (G3) at Keeneland. “I’ve done it before. Woody Stephens from the old school used to do it every once in a while. He actually won the Belmont five days out.”

That was in 1982, when Stephens began an unheard of streak of five consecutive Belmont Stakes triumphs. Conquistador Cielo was brought back only five days after his Met Mile (G1) score to win for the fourth time in less than a month.

Old school, indeed. Now Lukas is doing it with a big colt who needs to win the Lexington in order to qualify for the Derby. With such a quick turnaround, the key word is “big.”

“This is a big, strong horse that weighs probably 1,300 (pounds),” Lukas said in the conversation for Horse Racing Nation’s Ron Flatter Racing Pod. “He won’t tuck up, and it won’t bother him.”

What bothered Ethereal Road last weekend was a track that was listed as good, but it had been sealed and sloppy and muddy and testing all day after a protracted dose of Kentucky weather.

“It was his lack of getting over it,” Lukas said. “His action wasn’t the same. I think he would have run around there twice if he had an affinity for the racetrack.”

The trip Ethereal Road got was not ideal, either. Luis Contreras took him back, which was not unusual for the deep closer. But out of post 3, the Quality Road colt went three wide into the first turn, five wide into the second and absorbed a bump at the top of the stretch before he faded to finish 11 1/2 lengths behind in the 1 1/8-mile race.

“We always have an excuse when we get beat,” Lukas said. “We were wide, and I didn’t think he handled the track well at all the other day. I think he merits another chance. If he doesn’t do well in this race, we’ll drop him in the Pat Day Mile (G2)” on the Derby undercard May 7.

For Saturday’s race, Lukas has called on Víctor Espinoza, himself a Hall of Famer who rode American Pharoah to the 2015 Triple Crown. At 49 he continues to rebuild his career nearly four years after he broke his neck in a training accident at Del Mar.

“I’ve had great luck with him,” Lukas said. “We have a great relationship. I picked him out of the blue, because I thought he was a good fit. It’s just his riding style and everything. He rides very, very smart. He’s in a position where he’s trying to get back on top. He won the Santa Anita Handicap (G1, on Express Train). That was a big one for him, but this one could be special, too.”

A drier track would help Saturday, although the National Weather Service has forecast an 80 percent chance of perhaps a quarter-inch of rain before dawn. The bigger problem for an off-the-pace horse like Ethereal Road is the shorter distance of the race, even though the Lexington has been won by closers four times in a row and 10 of the last 16 times it has been run.

Lukas said if Ethereal Road were to win as a 10-1 morning-line long shot Saturday, Espinoza would keep the ride in the Derby. For a horse who was second in the Rebel (G2) at Oaklawn way back in February, it would be his third race in 28 days.

Again, Lukas said a 3-year-old as big as Ethereal Road can handle the load.

“I don’t ever think it’s that big a deal, depending on the horse you have in front of you,” Lukas said. “If he’s a slight-built horse, it probably needs two weeks, three weeks to recover.”

That got the man who has won 14 Triple Crown races to thinking about how times have changed in the more than 60 years he has been working with racehorses.

“The younger trainers all have a tendency to want to give them even four or five weeks,” he said. “They complain about a three-week turnaround. They’re going to find out that the Derby is a tough race, and then the two-week turnaround to the Preakness will test them anyhow. So I don’t look at it too much as a big step forward.”

Ethereal Road represents what could be Lukas’s last chance to add to his four Kentucky Derby victories, the most recent of which was with Charismatic in 1999. Not that he necessarily is comfortable saying that. For years he would bristle at the suggestion that he ever was past his prime. Now it is a case of his having outlived loyal owners like Bob and Beverly Lewis and Eugene Klein and David Reynolds and William Young.

This spring has been like a trip back in time for a man who also trains the filly Secret Oath, third against males in the Arkansas Derby (G1) and quite possibly the favorite for the Kentucky Oaks.

“Finding these two horses that would end up in these two races is very difficult,” Lukas said. “The foal crop is smaller, my clientele has passed away. I’ve got some new ones, but it’s been a change. When you get old, a lot of people think you can’t train anymore, I guess.”

But then comes a colt like Ethereal Road. And owners like spouses Julie Gilbert and Dr. Aaron Sones. They are Thoroughbred breeders in California who are trying to get to their second Derby. Trojan Nation finished 16th for trainer Patrick Gallagher and them in 2016.

“The people that own him would like to run in the Derby, because he has the style for the Derby,” Lukas said. “He’s got that long drive and that good kick from the half-mile pole, so they’d like to get him in.”

And Lukas would like to get him there, too, if for no other reason than to show that good trainers may get older, but they do not lose their ability to manage horses.

“Exactly,” he said. “I just have to make good decisions.”