After 50 Derby entries, trainer D. Wayne Lukas trying for fifth win with Ethereal Road

D. Wayne Lukas’ bucket list would fit in a thimble.

There is nowhere he wants to go. There is nothing he needs to see. He has either been there and done that or is willing to wait until whatever and wherever appears on the Discovery Channel.

“The nearest thing I ever come to a vacation is to maybe go to a (horse) sale,” the 86-year-old trainer said Tuesday. “Maybe 12 or 13 years ago I went to the National Finals Rodeo for two days. If I miss a couple of days (at work), I get pretty apprehensive.”

Four times the winner of the Kentucky Derby, most recently in 1999, Lukas continues to rise long before dawn to chase No. 5. When Un Ojo was scratched from Saturday’s race, it opened a spot in the starting gate for Lukas’ 50th Derby entry, Ethereal Road. And though the colt has won only one of his seven career starts, has failed to finish in the money in the last two, drew the outside gate and morning line odds of 30-1, Lukas has made it his mission to indulge dreamers.

Some of the horses he has saddled on the first Saturday in May peaked during the post parade. His last 10 Derby horses have finished no better than sixth. But if an owner has enough horses to qualify and enough cash to compete, Lukas won’t stand in the way.

“These checkwriters, they sign on the front, we sign on the back,” Lukas said. “They absolutely have a vote that’s a lot bigger than yours. There’s no sense in me saying, ‘We don’t belong here.’ I might say something like, ‘I’ll go through the embarrassment with you.’ If they tell me they want to go, I say ‘OK.’”

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Lukas won his first Derby with the filly Winning Colors in 1988. Overbrook Farm’s William T. Young, 71 years old the following spring, decided he had waited long enough to see his silks on racing’s biggest stage.

“Wayne, we’re going to run Shy Tom in the Derby,” Young told Lukas. It was not a question.

“I knew that it was uphill,” Lukas recalled. “So what do I do? There were about 20 of you (reporters) and I walked out there and said ‘Shy Tom is doing so well, we’re going to run him in the Derby.’ And he ran just like we thought (10th in a field of 15).”

The official chart’s capsule summary read as follows: “Shy Tom saved ground to no avail.”

Lukas would train 11 Derby starters for Young, owned a piece of three of them and earned his client the garland of roses with Grindstone in 1996.

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Only Bob Baffert and Ben Jones have won the Derby more often than Lukas. Only Todd Pletcher has trained more Derby horses. And though “The Coach” no longer attracts the wealthiest owners or the fastest 3-year-olds, he remains a magnet for new money eager to experience the Kentucky Derby.

“It’s important to give them that experience,” he said. “That’s what it’s all about. Honestly, 20 of these guys don’t think they’re realistically going to win this race, but we’ve had some upsets. You’ve got to give them the opportunity.”

Case in point: 1999. Lukas said jockey Jerry Bailey was so impressed by Charismatic in the Lexington Stakes that he would have been willing to refund a bonus he had accepted to ride Worldly Manner in the Derby to stay in Charismatic’s saddle.

Accompanied by Bo Schembechler on Derby Day, Lukas said he handed the former Michigan football coach $2,000 with instructions to bet it on his 35-1 shot.

Leaving the track that night, Schembechler asked what he should do with the winning tickets. Lukas told him he would come back and cash them another day. When Lukas explained the tickets were worth more than $64,000, Schembechler “just about passed out.”

“My first five years of coaching, I didn’t make that much,” Schembechler said.

“Well,” Lukas replied. “I’m buying dinner.”

Tim Sullivan: 502-582-4650, tsullivan@courier-journal.com; Twitter: @TimSullivan714