Lukas, thrown by pony, rests up with 5 broken ribs

"I'm OK as long as I don't move."

That was the status of Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas on Sunday as he continued to recover from five fractured ribs after being thrown by a pony Thursday.

Lukas said the accident at Oaklawn, which was reported earlier by Daily Racing Form, happened "right in front of the barn, right where we leg the riders up. Everybody was here. We had a good audience."

It all started with a bit of misunderstanding, Lukas told Horse Racing Nation.

"What happened was I've got a second pony horse here," Lukas said. "My old horse, the one I ride every day, is here. And this horse, I'm just holding him here and I'm going to ship him up to my wife at my facility in Colorado and let them do some cattle work on him.

"So I told my assistant, I said, saddle the gray horse. So they're both gray – I should have known better. So he saddled the gray horse all right, he saddled the other one. And when I came out to get on him, I thought, this horse has been in the stall just doing nothing, eating grain for about eight or nine days, I probably should saddle the other one. But I thought, ah, hell, I'll just ride him.

"I rode him seven seconds."

He described how the fall happened.

"The horse I was going to lead hit him in the butt, and he jumped forward. And when he did, I obviously reacted to the jump. My spur caught him. And then the second jump, both spurs caught him, obviously, and the third and the fourth and the fifth, I was trying to stay on with everything, grabbing everything I could get a hold of. But the sixth, seventh jump, I was airborne, lost the stirrup and that was the end of that."

Three days later, he said, "I'm a little bit stiff yet. They tell me it takes a little while to heal, the way mine are broke. I thought I'd be back out there in a day or so, but I think it might take a little more."

Lukas acknowledged that his injuries could have been much more serious.

"When you're 87, it could be serious every time you hit the ground. Especially when you're airborne like he had me."