Lakeside Arena

One year ago today. June 28, 2025🐎
A former high school basketball coach from Wisconsin. Nobody expected him to become the most dominant trainer in American racing history.
They were wrong.
The numbers:
4,953 wins. Over $300 million in earnings. 15 Triple Crown victories. 20 Breeders' Cup wins.
The horses:
🏆 Winning Colors – Kentucky Derby 1988. A filly. Only the third female horse to win the Derby. None has done it since.
🏆 Tabasco Cat – Preakness & Belmont 1994. The same horse that months earlier had nearly killed his son Jeff in a shedrow accident at Santa Anita.
🏆 Thunder Gulch – Kentucky Derby & Belmont 1995.
🏆 Timber Country – Preakness 1995.
Same year. Two different horses. All three Triple Crown races. Never been done before.
🏆 Grindstone – Kentucky Derby 1996. Six classics in a row. Four different horses.
🏆 Charismatic – Derby & Preakness 1999. Entered in a $62,500 claiming race — and nobody claimed him. Went off at 31-1 at Churchill Downs. Then a broken leg at the Belmont, leading the field.
🏆 Oxbow – Preakness 2013. 15-1 shot. Lukas kept rotating jockeys until he landed on Gary Stevens — 50 years old, seven years out of retirement — who stole the race on the front end.
🏆 Seize the Grey – Preakness 2024. Lukas was 88 years old. The oldest trainer ever to win a Triple Crown race.
Horse of the Year: Lady's Secret (1986), Criminal Type (1990), Charismatic (1999).
Six days after announcing his retirement, he was gone.
His final winner: Tour Player, Churchill Downs, June 12, 2025.
Until the end. Exactly as he always said it would be.
D. Wayne Lukas (September 2, 1935 – June 28, 2025)🐎