Lukas pair get feel for wet Pimlico surface

BALTIMORE – D. Wayne Lukas jogged both of his Preakness horses, Sporting Chance and Bravazo, over a muddy Pimlico track early Tuesday morning. Lukas and his horses pulled into Pimlico at 3:30 p.m. Monday following an 11 1/2-hour van ride from Churchill Downs.

Lukas accompanied Sporting Chance to and from the track on his pony soon after Pimlico opened for training at 5:30 a.m. He then did the same with Bravazo.

Both horses showed good energy while jogging one lap the wrong way -- clockwise -- around the one-mile Pimlico surface after entering the track from the stakes barn gap at the three-sixteenths pole in upper stretch.

“They both looked good today,” Lukas said. “I was very pleased.”

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Lukas 82, is a six-time winner of the Preakness, which ties him with Bob Baffert as the second all-time winningest Preakness trainer. R. Wyndham Walden sent out seven Preakness winners in the late 1800’s.

Sporting Chance comes into the Preakness off a troubled fourth-place finish in the Grade 3 Pat Day Mile on the Kentucky Derby undercard. He was checked by jockey Luis Contreras at the five-eighths pole of that race, then was fanned extremely wide into the stretch in the 14-horse field.

“Another horse came out and hit him in the hip on the backstretch,” Lukas said.

Although Sporting Chance was well behaved Tuesday, Lukas admitted he can be a handful at times.

“He can be tough,” Lukas said. “Tiznow, his sire, was that way. It’s a little bit in the gene pool.”

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Sporting Chance has twice ducked outward in the stretch of his races, each time, coincidentally, bothering Free Drop Billy, who is trained by Dale Romans. He ducked out in deep stretch of his neck win in the Grade 1 Hopeful last year and did it again in the Grade 2 Blue Grass last month, when he was disqualified from third to fourth.

On Sunday at Churchill Downs, there were reports Sporting Chance refused to breeze. Lukas, calling it “no big deal,” explained what happened.

“We started off with him, I wasn’t going to breeze him,” he said. “I was just going to give him an open gallop. But the rider reached and hit him a couple of times and he will not tolerate that. So we just galloped him.”

Bravazo, winner of the Risen Star at Fair Grounds in February, comes into the Preakness off a sixth-place finish in the Kentucky Derby.