Feeling’s mutual at Pimlico for Lukas

BALTIMORE —  It was 10:40 Wednesday morning at Pimlico Race Track, and a 71-year-old man in blue jeans and a white cowboy hat was in hog heaven. Had there been a puddle of mud nearby, he’d have rolled around in it.

Darrell Wayne Lukas, D. Wayne to his friends and several million horse race fans, is back at the Preakness, where he loves and is loved.

After years of working out of Santa Anita, he lives in Louisville, Ky., now and uses that as his horse-training headquarters. But Baltimore and the Preakness are as close to an emotional home as Lukas can find, especially when you are talking sites for Triple Crown races.

“At Churchill Downs,” Lukas said, “they tolerate you. Here at Pimlico, they embrace you. At the Belmont in New York, they don’t give a damn.”

Only he didn’t say “damn.”

Lukas has earned the right to be opinionated and feisty. He is a Hall of Fame trainer whose record winnings are in excess of $214 million, who has won the Kentucky Derby four times, the Preakness five and the Belmont four -- one more will make him the winningest Triple Crown trainer ever -- plus 13 Breeders’ Cup races. He has been around so long that he has trained some of the hot trainers of the day, namely Todd Pletcher, who started five horses in the Derby this year and will start two more in the Preakness on Saturday.

Somebody remarked to Lukas that the way Pletcher operates his barns, even the way they look, is a mirror image of a Lukas operation.

“They better be,” Lukas said. “He can take all he wants from what we did, but he is better off not having my personality.”

No, the quiet Pletcher does not have Lukas’ personality. Few do.

Lukas arrived Wednesday morning with a Preakness contender, Flying First Class, and a smile on his face that indicated he knew it. He sparred with reporters, as he always does, referring to them as “geniuses” and “experts,” and kidded them as they stood around and watched an aging, overweight white horse be taken off a van and walked toward the barns.

“Here comes Curlin,” he said, knowing that even the most naive of media members standing by wouldn’t mistake this for the Derby’s show horse.

This will be the 32nd horse that Lukas has sent to the post for the Preakness. He has won with Codex in 1980, Tank’s Prospect in ‘85, Tabasco Cat in ‘94, Timber Country in ’95 and Charismatic in ’99. Of those, only Charismatic had a chance for a Triple Crown, and he ended up in third, only lengths back, and took a career-ending misstep just feet beyond the finish line.

Of those 31 previous Preakness starters, 11 finished in the money, most recently Scrimshaw in 2003. He had an entry in 2005 in Going Wild, but the horse didn’t, finishing 14th. So, in many ways, the legendary Lukas hasn’t really been here with his kind of agenda for four years.

“We’ll have something to say about the outcome here,” said Lukas, who said his horse is the fastest in the field despite its 20-1 morning-line odds. “We’ll be in the mix.”

He left Southern California shortly after his primary owner, Bob Lewis, died in February 2005. The Robert and Beverly Lewis Trust still runs horses, but Lukas trains none of them. He said that, in addition to Bob Lewis’ death, he left because of the climate for horse racing in California -- smaller fields, smaller purses and tracks such as Hollywood Park owned by real-estate entities apparently poised to tear down barns and put up condominiums.

“Just say I was ahead of the curve, that I got tired of the traffic,” Lukas said, trying to resist a stiffer shot at racing in the Golden State and failing by continuing. “I wanted to go somewhere where the sport is revered a bit, where you aren’t treated just a notch above a child molester.”

Carl Nafzger won the Kentucky Derby with Street Sense two weeks ago and told the media that, at 65, training part-time now is enough for him. Lukas, who was in attendance and highly complimentary of the job Nafzger did, said that, at 71, he thought he might have 20 good years left. He loves it that much.

“I still have the energy for this,” he said.

Lukas’ most-recent Triple Crown race winner was Commendable, a Lewis horse that won the Belmont in 2000. That’s seven years for most people, an eternity for Lukas. He is determined to end the drought.

“I didn’t come here for the crab cakes,” he said.

All eyes here are on Street Sense, Hard Spun and Curlin, the 1-2-3 from the Derby, and Lukas likes that.

“I like to sneak up on people,” he said.

But make no mistake. Wednesday did not mark the return to Pimlico of a shrinking violet. He shook dozens of hands, barked orders to his crew and stepped forth to jab at the media and be jabbed back.

Midway through the session, he spotted a middle-aged woman, standing off to the side. He stopped, acknowledged a race official whose name was Helen and gave her a hug.

“You are the only man I’d ever wait around for,” she said.

He smiled broadly again. He was home.

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Bill Dwyre can be reached at bill.dwyre@latimes.com. To read previous columns by Dwyre, go to latimes.com/dwyre.