THOROUGHBRED RACING / BILL CHRISTINE : Lukas Arrives Late at Pimlico

Before last year’s Preakness, trainer Wayne Lukas had had enough good luck at Pimlico to fill the pot at the end of the rainbow.

Besides his two Preakness victories, with Codex in 1980 and Tank’s Prospect in 1985, Lukas had won the Pimlico Special with Criminal Type in 1990 and Farma Way in 1991. Twice Lukas saddled 3-year-old fillies who won the Black-Eyed Susan, the companion stake to the Preakness.

But then came the 1993 Preakness.

Lukas had enough bad luck in last year’s Preakness to erase the good that had trailed him around Pimlico for more than a decade.

The bad luck--Union City breaking down on the backstretch and being euthanized shortly afterward--was followed by bad press, a mountain of negative notices that questioned his ability as a trainer. He had trained Union City lightly at Pimlico after a 15th-place finish in the Kentucky Derby, one day not even taking the colt out of his stall. There were suggestions that Lukas had force-fed an unsound horse into the race.

Lukas, who misses little that’s written about him, retaliated by freezing out some reporters.

“I won’t be as accommodating as I’ve always been,” he said in the fall. “And they know who they are.”

It’s a year later, and Lukas, 58, is at a familiar stand, trying to win another Preakness. This time the horse is Tabasco Cat, who was sixth in the Derby and is 6-1 on the morning line against nine opponents Saturday. And once again, Lukas has chosen to march to an unfamiliar drummer.

Since the Derby, which was run on May 7, he has been training Tabasco Cat at Churchill Downs. The colt didn’t reach Pimlico until late Wednesday, after most of the Preakness horses were already bedded down, having completed their important preparations over the track.

Before Lukas’ arrival Thursday morning, there had been speculation that he and Tabasco Cat lingered in Louisville to deflect the glare: The glare that would be waiting here for the trainer a year after Union City’s tragic death; the glare that will be with Tabasco Cat for eternity, because he’s the horse that ran over Jeff Lukas, the trainer’s son and No. 1 assistant, in a near-fatal accident in the Santa Anita barn area in December.

Lukas said Thursday that he stayed away for none of those reasons.

“I’ve got 38 other horses to take care of at Churchill Downs,” he said.

Left unsaid was that Jeff Lukas, 36, in the midst of a long rehabilitation program, might normally have been tending to those horses.

Wayne Lukas has also studied the patterns of recent Preaknesses and decided that arriving at Pimlico late is the winning thing to do.

“Historically, it’s worked,” he said. “I know that it’s worked for me. Tank’s Prospect didn’t have a workout over the track. Neither did Winning Colors.”

After becoming the third filly to win the Derby, in 1988, Winning Colors didn’t win the Preakness, but she gave a good account despite a bump-and-run trip with Forty Niner most of the way. Winning Colors finished third, four positions better than Forty Niner. Risen Star won the race.

Just the mention of Union City on Thursday reopened wounds. Lukas took a deep breath and fired a lengthy diatribe at his detractors.

“I won this race twice,” he said. “And then I had one really bad day. . . “Before the race, nobody asked about what I was doing with Union City. My plan didn’t seem to bother anybody then. These (Triple Crown) races are hard on the athletes and something’s going to happen, just like you’re bound to have knee injuries and fractured ankles in a Super Bowl. I hope I’m wrong, but I’d be willing to bet a year’s salary that in the next three weeks (between the Preakness and the Belmont Stakes), the same thing will happen to somebody.

“What really got to me was that somebody else’s horse (Preakness winner Prairie Bayou) had the same injury (as Union City) in the Belmont and was put down, but nobody made a big deal out of that training job. You were all running around writing about Julie Krone (who rode Colonial Affair, becoming the first female jockey to win a Belmont). Yet the autopsy reports on Union City and Prairie Bayou were interchangeable.

“All I do is the best job I can. You can’t find anybody who gets to the barn as early as I do, and stays as late. Instead of being judged by the press, I’d like to take 100 of the best trainers out here and follow what they think. Bring in guys like Charlie Whittingham and Nick Zito and ask them. They might disagree with individual things I’d do about this horse or that horse going into a race, but you won’t find one of them that says I don’t take care of my horses.

“Before Union City had cooled out from the Derby, there was a world-renowned veterinarian who examined him from top to bottom. His comment was that the horse came back with absolutely nothing wrong with him. That same vet was here at the Preakness, checking the horse, and again he couldn’t find anything wrong. And why was he here? Because I asked him to be here.

“Now the Triple Crown people have this trio of vets running around, checking all the horses before the races. God bless them. It’s good press to have them here, and it keeps the animal-rights people at bay. But all of them combined wouldn’t have checked out Union City as well as I had him checked before he ran.”