Amid strong run with juveniles, Lukas stocks for future

SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas saddled his fifth Kentucky Oaks winner with Secret Oath this spring, and on Saturday is expected to send her in the Grade 1 Alabama Stakes at Saratoga Race Course. Meanwhile, the legendary trainer is looking ahead to his 2023 and 2024 3-year-old crops.

Lukas, who will turn 87 on Sept. 2, is enjoying a strong Saratoga meeting with his juveniles. In between sending those out, he found time to shop the elite Fasig-Tipton Saratoga selected yearling sale, where he picked up five yearlings, including a $1.35 million Medaglia d’Oro colt.

“It is fun to be back here and be in this arena,” Lukas said. “We’ll try to keep things going in the fall at Keeneland. As long as we can keep buying yearlings like this, we will have a nice race stable. I don’t want a lot. I don’t want to train like I used to. I still get up early in the morning, but I want them all in front of me.”

Lukas has sent out seven 2-year-olds to start at this Saratoga meet through Sunday. Those include Naughty Gal, winner of the Grade 3 Adirondack Stakes for Holy Cow Stables; Summer Promise, second in the Grade 3 Schuylerville Stakes for BC Stables; Bourbon Bash, who was second on debut in July before winning by eight lengths on Saturday for BC; and Take Charge Briana, who has been fourth and third in a pair of maidens for her breeder, Willis Horton.

Summer Promise was the most the expensive of six yearlings Lukas signed for at the 2021 Keeneland September yearling sale, going for $500,000. She is leading the nascent BC Stables of friends John Bellinger and Brian Coelho. Bellinger was introduced to Lukas several years ago through a mutual friend, equine veterinarian Charlie Graham.

With those new owners behind him, Lukas, who had not been at the Saratoga sale for the last two years due to the COVID-19 pandemic, was prepared to rejoin the seven-figure buying ranks. The $1.35 million Medaglia d’Oro colt who will eventually race for BC marked the first time in many years the trainer had been the agent on a seven-figure horse, although the sight of him signing high tickets was a familiar one during a run atop the sport from the 1980s through the early 2000s. The colt, out of the Grade 3-winning Tapit mare Walk Close, is a full brother to Breeders’ Cup Juvenile runner-up Anneau d’Or. Grade 1 winners appearing on the catalog page include Editor’s Note, whom Lukas saddled to win the 1996 Belmont Stakes.

“He has a really good physical,” Lukas said. “Obviously, we weren’t the only people who liked him. I thought he had a tremendous walk and a tremendous disposition. I watched him come out and back two or three times, and he looked like he has a good head on his shoulders. I got a hunch that the horse will get over the ground pretty good. I have a theory on angles and skeletons, the way they’re put together, and he had all of that.

“Nobody in the building knows if he’s a bargain or not. We’ll find out. You think you know, and we all think we’re smart about it. But people have opinions, and horses have the facts. That’s the way that works.”

Also for BC Stables, Lukas purchased a $425,000 Into Mischief colt and a $425,000 Munnings filly. The trainer also signed for a $325,000 American Pharoah colt and a $200,000 Arrogate filly, both in the name of John Napoli.