Rivals share strong bond
PREAKNESS STAKES
Bob Baffert spent his whole life following D. Wayne Lukas.
As a teenager at the quarter-horse track in Arizona where Baffert tagged along with his dad and learned about racing, he looked up to Lukas as a legend.
“I’ll never forget when he came in with his fancy trailer and, man, there’s Wayne Lukas,” Baffert said. “He was huge then. He’s always set the bar.”
Baffert even asked Lukas for a job out of high school. Lukas turned him down, but in the four-plus decades since, they’ve developed a friendship as deep as their combined success.
They are two of the best thoroughbred trainers in racing history and their paths are crossing again this week at Pimlico Race Course in Baltimore. They will go head to head in the Preakness, a race that each has won six times.
“We’ve become good friends because we have a lot in common. We had a lot of quarter-horse stories and friends that we knew coming up,” Baffert said. “It’s been a lot of fun.”
Baffert goes into the Preakness with Kentucky Derby-winner Justify, the heavy favorite to advance to the Belmont Stakes with the chance to give the 65-year-old his second Triple Crown champion in four years. A win Saturday would tie the 83-year-old Lukas’ record of 14 Triple Crown victories.
Baffert “is going to roll right past that. Bob is an excellent horseman,” said Lukas, who is expected to start Bravazo and Sporting Chance in the Preakness. “Not only has he got a good clientele base and gets some nice horses, but he absolutely knows what to do with them.”
Calling Lukas one of the hardest workers he has ever seen, Baffert set out to duplicate his efforts with incredible success. Lukas and Baffert just keep winning, including a combined 34 Breeders Cup’ races to go along with the Triple Crown victories. They became closer along the way.
“The one thing that you quickly find out is who you can greatly respect and respect is what really starts to bond these friendships that we develop over the years,” Lukas said. “I have developed a deep friendship and respect with him, his whole family, (his wife) Jill and everybody for the simple reason that I think he’s a very good horseman and he does a very, very good job.”
Baffert has come a long way from the 18-year-old who Lukas had no job for back in the day. Baffert ended the 37-year-old Triple Crown drought with American Pharoah in 2015 and continues to build his resume race by race.
“I learned it by trial and error, mostly error,” Baffert said. “And I said (to Lukas), ‘I’m sure glad you turned me down, because you’d be taking all the credit for this.’ ”