Derby Week has kept its familiar rhythm this spring at Churchill Downs, with Kentucky Derby (G1) and Kentucky Oaks (G1) contenders taking to the track each morning under the watchful eyes of their trainers, some of them atop ponies.
Yet someone is unmistakably absent at the Louisville, Ky., track in 2026: “The Coach,” D. Wayne Lukas, the four-time Derby-winning conditioner who died last summer at age 89. Across five decades—beginning in 1981 and continuing through last year, when his horse American Promise finished 16th in the Derby—the landscape-shaping Hall of Fame trainer was often a regular participant in North America’s most famous horse race.
“It’s not the same without him,” said fellow Hall of Fame trainer Todd Pletcher, one of many accomplished horsemen to emerge from Lukas’ extensive coaching tree. “I mean, this is what he lived for. He identified a long time ago how important these Triple Crown races and Breeders’ Cup races are. And he thrived in those settings.”…