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Lukas returns to Triple Crown
NEW YORK (AP) -- D. Wayne Lukas grinned when a bunch of racing writers showed up at his Belmont Park barn to talk about his return to the Triple Crown. "They're getting around to the 80-1 shots," said Lukas, who will start Buckle Down Ben in the Belmont Stakes after being without a Derby starter for the first time in 21 years. He missed the Preakness for the first time since 1996. Buckle Down Ben, 30-1 in the early line, will be Lukas' 80th starter in his 52nd Triple Crown race. "I didn't think you'd get around to me until Saturday morning," he said. "Just so you get to me Saturday night." Should Buckle Down Ben win his Triple Crown debut, it would be the fifth Belmont victory and 14th triumph in a Triple Crown race for the 65-year-old Lukas. Lukas was asked if he regretted not having starters in the Derby or Preakness. "Not a bit, but everybody wants to make that a story," he said. Lukas planned to watch the Derby on television in his tack room at Churchill Downs, but he accepted an invitation to watch it from the box of William T. Young and his family. Lukas won the 1996 Derby with Young's Grindstone. "I almost missed the Preakness," he said. "I was building a fence around the pool." By the time he realized the race was almost ready to start, the gate was half loaded. A Buckle Down Ben victory would be the second straight Belmont upset for Lukas, who won last year with 18-1 shot Commendable, who had finished 17th in the Derby and didn't run in the Preakness. The winners of the Derby (Fusaichi Pegasus) and Preakness (Red Bullet) skipped the Belmont last year. Buckle Down Ben, however, will not only be facing Derby winner Monarchos and Preakness winner Point Given, but also Invisible Ink, second in the Derby, and A P Valentine, the Preakness runner-up, in a field of nine 3-year-olds. Buckle Down Ben enters the Belmont after a victory in a 1-mile race May 27 at Churchill Downs. That was his first start since he finished a distant sixth on March 24 at Turfway Park. And it was his first win in five starts as a 3-year-old after having won two of four races last year, including the Grade I Laurel Futurity. "I made a commitment to the owners (Michael Tabor and Demi O'Byrne) that I was going to wait for the Belmont," Lukas said. After Lukas tries to win the 1 1/2-mile Belmont in the afternoon, his wife, Laura, will try to win a 350-yard trial for a $400,000 quarter horse stakes at night at Ruidoso Downs in New Mexico. She trains the couple's quarter horses. "I've learned two things you never do," Lukas said. "You never help your wife train a horse or redecorate the house."
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