Following the legendary trainer’s recent death, Patricia McQueen takes a trip down memory lane to review his success with the progeny of the celebrated Triple Crown winner
My first personal introduction to the D. Wayne Lukas ‘way’ was in 1986. I was still in college, and through a friend’s connections, I got permission to visit Secretariat’s best daughter, Lady’s Secret, at Hollywood Park one afternoon in March 1986. She had already won three important stakes at Santa Anita that winter, starting her Horse of the Year campaign in style.
Outside the immaculate Lukas barn was a carefully manicured strip of grass; my memory tells me there weren’t many such patches in that stable area. For Lukas, it was standard procedure wherever he went; one way or another, he made sure there was grass available for his horses.
For about 30 minutes I watched in awe as a true champion grabbed mouthfuls of grass, stopping every now and then to survey her surroundings. The experience is still fresh in my mind’s eye.
Almost 40 years later, the architect of that afternoon is gone, as the world lost 89-year-old Lukas on June 28. Others have carefully chronicled the trainer’s amazing career; my goal is simply to revisit his connection with sons and daughters of Secretariat.
He trained seven of the stallion’s 17 American graded stakes winners, including three of the seven American G1 winners. That unique success with some of Secretariat’s best and most impactful runners forever left a soft spot in my heart.
All three of the Lukas-trained G1 winners were in the stallion’s exceptional 1982 crop. The best, of course, was Lady’s Secret. She was the product of Lukas’s theory that Secretariat would cross well with speedy mares – he encouraged the owner of Great Lady M. to breed her to Secretariat, and the result was the little gray filly who ended up in the Hall of Fame.
Patricia McQueen: Lady’s Secret – The tiny filly who became one of the greatest ever
Patricia McQueen: Image Of Greatness – The ‘gorgeous’ G1 colt who couldn’t take the pressure
Another G1 winner born in 1982 was a homebred for owner George Steinbrenner. Image Of Greatness was transferred to Lukas early in his three-year-old year, and became a G1 winner with a narrow victory in the 1985 San Felipe at Santa Anita.
Fiesta Lady strikes first
The first of that bountiful 1982 crop to score a G1 win for Lukas was a more typical acquisition – a yearling sale purchase. A chestnut filly with a big blaze out of the stakes-placed Bolinas Boy mare Faneuil Girl, she was plucked out of the 1983 Keeneland July sale for $525,000 as Lukas was building a racing stable for newcomer Eugene Klein.
Named Fiesta Lady, she was pulled up in her first start at Hollywood Park on June 17, 1984. She returned about two weeks later to run a game second in another maiden race at the track. The third time was the charm; on July 22 she dominated a similar race, winning off by almost 10 lengths.
Lukas had two good Secretariat fillies in his barn that summer. Lady’s Secret was already a stakes winner, taking the Wavy Waves at Hollywood Park the day after Fiesta Lady broke her maiden. Both fillies ran in the Junior Miss at Del Mar on August 8, with Fiesta Lady finishing second to Doon’s Baby as Lady’s Secret finished fourth.
The gray then received a brief freshening, while Fiesta Lady continued on at the seaside track. She finished fourth with a troubled trip in the Sorrento on August 20 under Laffit Pincay Jr. – her fifth jockey in five starts.
Then came the G2 Del Mar Debutante on September 2. The oversubscribed race was split into two divisions, and Fiesta Lady won the first by 2¾ lengths over favored Doon’s Baby. Pincay was back aboard.
Lukas shipped the filly to New York for the G1 Matron on September 29. There were just four in the race, including the Klein/Lukas entry of Fiesta Lady and G1 Spinaway winner Tiltalating. Favored at 7-10 was Contredance, who had defeated Tiltalating in the G1 Arlington-Washington Lassie after finishing third to her in the Spinaway. On paper, the Matron was seen as a battle between those two, with longshot Something rounding out the short field.
Fiesta Lady and Pincay lagged behind the others for the first half-mile, then made a strong move to move past early leader Tiltalating to win by a length and three-quarters in 1:24 4/5. Secretariat had his third G1 winner, after Dactylographer and General Assembly.
Patricia McQueen: Dactylographer – ‘Crazy’ horse who got him off the mark as a G1 sire
Patricia McQueen: General Assembly – The son whose mighty Travers record was finally eclipsed by Arrogate
Those two stakes races were all Fiesta Lady could give. She was the heavy favorite in her next start, the G2 Alcibiades at Keeneland on October 13, but finished fifth and “didn’t run her race,” according to Pincay.
She was in the field for the first running of the G1 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies on November 10 at Hollywood Park. She never fired and finished far back, as she did in her next and final start, the G1 Hollywood Starlet on December 2.
For her overall record, she was ranked at 116 pounds on the Experimental Free Handicap, just two pounds below top-weighted divisional champion Outstandingly.
Fiesta Lady was injured and retired early the next year. Klein sold her in-foal to Alydar; she brought $2.2 million at the 1985 Keeneland November breeding stock sale. The resulting foal never raced, and none of the mare’s seven foals were stakes class; she was sent to Venezuela in 1992.
Fiesta Lady was the second dam of multiple G1 winner Thorn Song, and to date there are a few other graded stakes winners among her descendants, including Mary Delaney and her son Dr Post, who was second in the 2020 Belmont Stakes.
Clever Secret closes the book
Two of the four other Secretariat stakes winners trained by Lukas were the full-siblings Terlingua and Pancho Villa. Six years before Fiesta Lady’s G1 success, the trainer made a smashing debut on the Thoroughbred scene with the help of the sensational Terlingua, a member of Secretariat’s second crop born in 1976.
Patricia McQueen: Terlingua – The flying filly responsible for Storm Cat
Several years later, Lukas picked up her yearling brother at the same sale where he purchased Fiesta Lady. He paid $1.8m for Pancho Villa, who became a multiple graded stakes winner.
Patricia McQueen: Pancho Villa – The $1.8 million yearling who developed a passion for Coors beer
There was also Cinegita, born the year after Terlingua; she became another foundation broodmare for Overbrook Farm.
Finally, there was Clever Secret, the last of the seven Secretariat stakes winners trained by Lukas. He was a chestnut colt out of the Pia Star mare Small Loaf; she had already produced the stakes-winning full siblings Rising Raja and Small Raja, both by Raja Baba. Lukas purchased Clever Secret for Klein, getting him for $240,000 at the 1985 Keeneland July sale.
The colt made his racing debut at the old Ak-Sar-Ben track in Omaha on June 19, 1986, finishing fourth in a maiden race. Lukas had other horses at the track that year, including another two-year-old Secretariat colt, Atlantic Exit, who won two races.
Shipped to Northern California, Clever Secret broke his maiden at Bay Meadows in his fourth start, starting a three-race winning streak. The third was his first stakes race, the Atherton Stakes on January 24 at the same track; it was a popular stop for up-and-coming three-year-olds. Over a sloppy track going a mile-and-a-sixteenth, Clever Secret closed to get his nose in front of Conduction Charger at the wire with jockey Tim Doocy up.
The colt’s next start was Bay Meadows’ signature race for early three-year-olds, the G3 El Camino Real Derby on February 1. He finished fourth to favorite Masterful Advocate.
Lukas sent Clever Secret east, and after more disappointing stakes efforts, any thoughts of Kentucky Derby potential were quickly dismissed. Instead, the trainer tried him on grass in the G2 Saranac Stakes at Belmont Park on May 17. He was close to the pace early, but finished fifth.
He would continue to switch between turf and dirt, and was successful on both surfaces. He won a Monmouth allowance on the dirt, then was just a nose back of winner Yucca in the Chati Stakes on the Monmouth turf course on June 23.
Clever Secret got his second stakes win in the off-the-turf Lamplighter, taking the G2 event at Monmouth on July 3 by three lengths. He was then sent against top three-year-olds Alysheba, Bet Twice and Lost Code in the G1 Haskell, finishing fourth behind them. He raced eight more times in 1987, with three seconds, including the G3 Choice Handicap on the Monmouth turf on Sept. 5.
The colt started 1988 with a stakes win, courtesy of the Aqueduct stewards. In the G3 Aqueduct Handicap on January 2, he finished a half-length behind popular favorite King’s Swan. But that one was disqualified for bothering the fourth-place finisher, so Clever Secret inherited the win.
He raced 12 more times in 1988, placing in four stakes races and winning allowance races at Monmouth Park and Churchill Downs.
Clever Secret raced into early 1989 as a five-year-old, with his best finish in four starts a close second at Aqueduct on April 23. That concluded his career, in which he had eight wins in 42 starts, with eight seconds and five thirds, for earnings of $406,355. He won three stakes races, and was second or third in six others.
The horse was sold for $185,000 at the Klein dispersal in November 1989. After a brief stint at stud in Maryland, he was sold again for $13,000 and sent to the Dominican Republic. He found his niche there; he was the country’s leading sire in 2002, and ultimately sired three champions.
That’s a wrap
Lukas trained a number of other Secretariats over the years, continuing to purchase at auction while also receiving homebreds from new clients including Overbrook Farm (which also sent him numerous descendants of Terlingua and Cinegita).
There were five stakes-placed runners in addition to the seven stakes winners: Border Run (a full-brother to Terlingua and Pancho Villa) and the fillies Royal Weekend, Be Your Best, Secretly and West Virginia.
Patricia McQueen: Border Run – The 30-year-old with that ‘do you know who my father is’ look
Of course, the trainer’s success went far beyond his Secretariats. Again, others have documented his many achievements, but I’ll close here noting that of his 12 American Classic winners, only one entered the Belmont Stakes with a chance to win the Triple Crown.
That was Charismatic in 1999, who was by Secretariat’s grandson Summer Squall. Lukas had the former claimer in top form to win the Derby and Preakness, and the colt appeared on his way to a Triple Crown sweep with just over a quarter-mile left in the Belmont. He weakened late, and jockey Chris Antley pulled him up immediately after the finish with a career-ending injury.
Despite that premature end to his racing days, Charismatic earned Horse of the Year honors – the trainer’s third Horse of the Year, following Lady’s Secret and Criminal Type.
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