Lukas Celebrates--for a Minute : Horse racing: Workaholic trainer will seek first Belmont victory with Tabasco Cat after colt wins the Preakness.

Wayne Lukas went out to celebrate Saturday night after his Tabasco Cat won the Preakness--all the way to a park bench 10 yards from the barn, where the trainer and a groom dined on fried chicken, french fries and chocolate milkshakes that Lukas had brought back to Pimlico from a nearby fast-food outlet.

A workaholic, Lukas, 58, has little in his life besides his family and racing. His wife, Shari, brings rented movies home, but her husband seldom watches without falling asleep. At home one day, Lukas said to Shari: “I’m going to take a nap. Will you wake me up in seven minutes?”

On the morning after his third Preakness victory, a woman gave Lukas a small bottle of bourbon. Lukas accepted graciously, but after the woman left, he held the bottle as though it were a hand grenade. Finally, he set it down on the wooden railing at the front of the shedrow. “If I drank all the bourbon that’s in there,” he said, “that’d be more bourbon than I’ve had my whole life.”

If Tabasco Cat wins the Belmont Stakes in three weeks, that would also be more Belmonts than Lukas has won. Despite a Kentucky Derby victory with Winning Colors and previous Preakness victories with Codex and Tank’s Prospect, Lukas is winless in seven Belmonts, his best finish is a fourth by Corporate Report in 1992. Winning Colors ran last in the 1988 Belmont; Codex was seventh in 1980 and, in 1985, Tank’s Prospect went lame in the race and was pulled up before the finish line.

“I’m going to have to give Woody a call,” Lukas joked, referring to New York trainer Woody Stephens. Stephens saddled a record five consecutive Belmont winners starting in 1982.

“I’m not crazy about the mile and a half,” Lukas said. “But we’ll try it. I may not bring the horse to New York until a few days before the race, just I like I did at the Preakness. I’m thinking of shipping him back to Churchill Downs, where he trained before he came here.”

Lukas says that at 1 1/2 miles the Belmont is outmoded. “I’m not saying that they shouldn’t have mile and a half races,” he said. “I’m just saying that they shouldn’t make a mile-and-a-half race a fixture of American racing.”

Of the nine horses whom Tabasco Cat beat in the Preakness, at least two--Kentucky Derby winner Go For Gin, who was second, and Kandaly, who was fourth--are expected to run in the Belmont. Kandaly, the Louisiana Derby winner who had never raced on medication, bled from the lungs in the Preakness. Lasix, the medication to prevent such bleeding, is prohibited in New York, but Louie Roussel, the colt’s trainer and part owner, said there are legal ways of treating the horse’s condition.

In what appears to be a small Belmont field, other probable starters are Strodes Creek, who was second in the Kentucky Derby, and Brocco, the Santa Anita Derby winner who was fourth at Churchill Downs.

“I expect my horse to run big in the Belmont,” said Go For Gin’s trainer, Nick Zito. “He came out of the Preakness in great shape and he loves Belmont.”

The Preakness was a clean race, two weeks after the rough-and-tumble Derby, but there were still trainers with excuses. Besides bleeding badly, Powis Castle, who finished next to last, was diagnosed as having pharyngitis, a disorder that impairs breathing, and Blumin Affair might have suffered a problem that affected his breathing.

Then there was the erratic start that eliminated Numerous, who came into the Preakness off a victory in the Kentucky Derby Trial. “He ducked to the right when the door opened,” jockey Pat Valenzuela said. “I was lucky I stayed on him.”

Numerous finished fifth, beaten by nine lengths. His trainer, Charlie Whittingham, will saddle Strodes Creek in the Belmont.

Before running sixth in the Kentucky Derby, Tabasco Cat ran second in the Santa Anita Derby, behind Brocco and one length in front of Strodes Creek.

“Strodes Creek will have his supporters in the Belmont, I’m sure,” Lukas said. “But he’s still got to run by some horses. I’m not saying he won’t turn out to be a nice horse. But let’s not bronze him and put the statue in the infield yet.”