May 7, 2022 
If you live to be 86 years of age, you probably will have experienced most of the highs and lows that life has to offer.
If you’ve spent the bulk of those years in horseracing, it’s almost certain you’ve experienced more lows than highs.
But experiencing both a disappointing low and an exhilarating high within a few hours is rare at any age.
That’s just what happened to 86-year-old Hall of Fame trainer, D. Wayne Lukas, Friday.
In racing, Lukas is referred to as “The Coach.” He is to horseracing what John Wooden was to college basketball at UCLA, what Vince Lombardi was to professional football with the Green Bay Packers—an iconic mentoring figure in the sport.
Easily identified by his oversized white Stetson, Lukas’ is both beloved and revered as a trainer who teaches and guides young trainers on to their own successful careers. His “pupils” include Todd Pletcher, Mike Maker, Dallas Stewart, Kiaran McLaughlin and a fistful of other success stories.
But Friday started badly for him. For the umpteenth time, Lukas had a horse in America’s signature race, Saturday’s Kentucky Derby (G1).
Ethereal Road had drawn the farthest outside gate, post position 20. The son of Quality Road (out of Sustained by War Front) had a thin 1-1-1 record in seven starts, but he cobbled together enough Derby points to earn a starting gate, largely by clawing his way to a third-place finish in the Rebel Stakes (G2).
The colt wasn’t given much of a chance, one of 10 horses in the field of 20 to be given the longest Morning Line odds, 30-1. But Lukas has been in racing long enough to forget how many horses he’s trained onto victory with far longer odds.
He’s also been in racing long enough to care less about odds and winning than about the well-being of this equine “students.”
During the week leading up to the Derby, Lukas grew increasingly uneasy with Ethereal Road’s progress. Experience has taught him to never second guess his intuition. It was thrilling to have a chance at winning a fifth Kentucky Derby (Winning Colors, 1988; Thunder Gulch, 1995; Grindstone, 1996; Charismatic, 1999).
But he decided something was not quite right with how Ethereal Road was training. He consulted with owners Julie Gilbert and Aaron Sones, who had to be equally thrilled to have a Derby horse. The advice they gave Lukas: “Treat him as if he was your own horse.”
So on Friday morning, D. Wayne Lukas scratched his fifth potential Kentucky Derby winner, opening up a gate for Rich Strike. At nearly 87 years of age, how many more could there be?
Experience and intuition can work both ways. Lukas had a secret, and that disappointing low Friday morning became an exhilarating high by dinnertime when his secret—Secret Oath—finished the stretch run at Churchill Downs with a devastating kick to win the Kentucky Derby’s three-year-old filly companion race, the Kentucky Oaks, nicknamed “Lilies for the Fillies.”
It was Lukas’ fifth Oaks’ win, compensation for abandoning a try at a fifth Derby score, and his first since 1990. Favored Nest would nestle into second.
Secret Oath drew the rail. The Briland Farm homebred is the daughter of the late Arrogate (out of Absinthe Minded by Quiet American) was the fourth choice at 6-1, behind undefeated Nest at 5-2, Two-Year-Old Eclipse Award Female winner and undefeated Echo Zulu, 4-1, and similarly undefeated Kathleen O., 7-2.
Those pesky odds again.
As for Secret Oath: “We knew the talent was there. We just needed to get a clean trip,” Lukas would say in a post-race press conference that was as entertaining as it was explanatory.
Explanatory because Lukas has changed riders for this race, from Luis Contreras to Luis Saez.
“He [Contreras] got into trouble in three races,” Lukas explained. “He knew it, we knew it, Rob [owner Mitchess] knew it.” Saez became available and, much to Lukas’ liking had won big races before crowds as large as the one at Churchill on Oaks Day. “I’ve had great luck with him. He rode Will Take Charge in the [Breeders’ Cup] Classic. We have a great relationship.”
Lukas said the Oaks unfolded on a soggy dirt track in much the way he anticipated.
“When Secret Oath started to get bigger, the thing that most developed in her was that devastating kick,” recalled the trainer. “Luis was concerned before the race, and I told him ‘When she eyeballs ‘em…don’t try to do too much or she’ll run right out from underneath you.’”
Lukas indicated no future plans for Secret Oath, aside from a little rest, but admitted the May 21 Preakness at Pimlico against males was a possibility.
…because in the experienced 86-year-old mind of The Coach, just about anything is possible.
