Antigo native D. Wayne Lukas continues Derby legacy

Hours after the 150th running of the Kentucky Derby, Antigo native D. Wayne Lukas was back at his Churchill Downs barn, supervising morning training from the back of his pony. At age 88, Lukas continues to look ahead.

“We’re very fortunate to have some solid horses in the barn this year and in both the Kentucky Derby and Oaks but I’ve got a great two-year-old class getting ready to come in the barn,” he said. “Derby 150 is special, but we always have to keep thinking forward. I think we’re stronger next year than this year.”

Twenty-five years after Lukas trained Charismatic to win the 125thDerby, the trainer sent out Just Steel on Saturday trying for an elusive fifth victory in the Run for the Roses. It was not to be, with the horse fading to finish in the back half of the 20-horse field.

“I thought he ran OK,” Lukas said after the race. “But he got roughed up leaving there and those fast early fractions didn’t help at all.”

“I got squeezed a little bit leaving the gate” jockey Keith Asmussen said. “He was a little aggressive down the frontside for the first time but relaxed beautifully up the backside. I think the world of the horse still. I thought he was in a position to win but just couldn’t get it done today.”

It wasn’t a complete washout. Lukas was in the winners circle hours earlier, when Seize the Gray, a colt he originally pointed toward the Derby, won the Pat Day Mile on the Derby undercard.

“He ran the race of his life this afternoon and it’s such a great way to kick off our Derby Day,” Lukas said.

It has been a remarkable season for Lukas, known throughout the industry as “The Coach.” He spent the winter successfully running horses at Oaklawn Park in Hot Springs, Ark. prior to returning to Churchill Downs in April. That meet saw the emergence of Just Steel, who qualified for the Kentucky Derby after a runner-up finish in the Arkansas Derby. It also provided Lukas with a runner in Friday’s Kentucky Oaks, the Derby-equivalent for three-year-old fillies, when Lemon Muffin won the Honeybee Stakes. She finished eighth in the Oaks, a race Lukas last won in 2022 with Secret Oath.

And earlier this spring, the trainer was honored with the first-ever Kentucky Derby Museum Lifetime Achievement Award. It was presented at the Derby 150 Birthday Tribute Dinner on April 11.

“I am deeply honored to receive the Kentucky Derby Museum Lifetime Achievement Award,” Lukas said. “The Kentucky Derby Museum has been instrumental in documenting and sharing the joy of racing with the world, and I extend my sincere thanks for this prestigious honor.”

Still at the top of his game, Lukas is one of dozens of prominent horse trainers, jockeys, breeders and managers with ties to the Northwoods.

In fact, Antigo might have been represented with three Kentucky Derby trainers this year. Linda Rice, whose father Clyde was a teacher in Antigo prior to becoming a full-time trainer in 1970, is currently the second-winningest female trainer in Thoroughbred racing and had El Grande O on the Derby trail this spring. A last-minute scratch due to a foot bruise in the Wood Memorial in New York ended his hopes.

In addition, Mike Campbell, whose father, Art, raced horses from Campbell’s Training Center in Monico for decades, flirted with Derby dreams with Patriot Spirit. Those hopes were derailed by a poor showing in the Sam F. Davis at Tampa Bay Downs in February. The colt roared back to win the Illinois Derby at Hawthorne Race Course in Chicago on April 21.

Horse racing started in Antigo shortly after the community was founded, with trotting and running competitions down Superior Street dating to the first agricultural fair in 1886. The site for the present-day fairgrounds was procured a year later and within a couple years included a half-mile racetrack and grandstand promoted by the Antigo Trotting Association.

By the 1940s the “Leaky Roof Circuit” brought racing to communities across the region, including at the Langlade County Fair and the Veterans of Foreign Wars Potato Festival. Lukas was a regular rider, often competing on Queenie, a little Arab-Welsh cross he came across while running the milk route with his father, Ted.

“I always said my career was based on one horse and that was Queenie,” Lukas said. “She gave me the opportunity to go places.”

Lukas graduated from Antigo High School in 1953 and earned a master’s degree in education from the University of Wisconsin. He was a teacher and head basketball coach in high school for nine years, while spending his summers training and racing horses in South Dakota. In 1966, he began training Quarter Horses full time, developing 23 champions before turning to Thoroughbreds in 1978.

His statistics are astonishing. He was the first trainer to earn more than $100 million in purse money and has been the year’s top money winner 14 times. In addition to four Kentucky Derby wins, his horses have won the Preakness six times and Belmont Stakes on four occasions.

In 1995, Lukas won all three of the Classics with Thunder Gulch (Kentucky Derby, Belmont Stakes) and Timber Country (Preakness), making him the first trainer to sweep the Triple Crown with two different horses in a season.

Lukas has won the Eclipse Award for Outstanding Trainer four times and was inducted into the National Museum of Racing Hall of Fame in 1999. In 2013 he was awarded the Eclipse Award of Merit for his accomplishments

He would rather win trophies than plaques though.

“When they start giving you awards...they are trying to get you to retire,” he said in his acceptance speech for the 2013 Eclipse Award. “Well, you young trainers get ready because I’m not retiring. We’re coming after you, so you’d better get up a little more early in the morning from now on. We’re coming after you with a vengeance.”

In an echo of Antigo, the contingent joining Lukas at Churchill Saturday included Clyde Rice’s son, Bryan, and his wife, the former Holley Beattie, also an Antigo native. They operate a Thoroughbred farm in Florida and trained Just Steel as a yearling. It was their first time at the Kentucky Derby, and they were ready to “just experience the excitement,” according to Clyde’s sister, Connie Steckbauer of Antigo.

At 88, Lukas still rises every day at 3:30 a.m. and heads to the track. Two years after a fall from his stable pony left him with several broken ribs, he continues to spend upwards of five hours a day in the saddle. With his wife, Laurie at his side, he regularly holds court with fans and admirers, laughing at Oaklawn recently that “I get a lot of visitors from Antigo.”

With a full season of racing ahead, he is already looking toward the 151st Kentucky Derby on May 3, 2025.

“God-willing I’m still able to get my leg over the saddle,” he said. “We’ll be back next year.”