ELVIS has left the building.

D. Wayne Lukas has died. The Hall of Fame trainer rode out just the way he rode in, going from training horses - a Kentucky Derby runner in May - to hospice care in a matter of days. Like you would expect, Lukas didn’t linger as rumour turned to news and, in a puff of smoke, the man who changed the game left the game. Lukas was 89.

Legends leave legendary memories.

It was a slow morning at Saratoga last summer. The Belmont Racing Festival had relocated to the upstate haven. Horses were scattered here and there, most trainers hadn’t arrived yet, there wasn’t a tourist in sight, and I wandered the tumbleweed backstretch looking for a story.

Once the eye of every Triple Crown storm, D. Wayne Lukas sat alone, in a folding chair in an empty shedrow in a near-empty barn.

There were no green and white WL plaques, no hanging baskets of flowers, no dutifulness of assistant Bas Nicholl, no hustle, no bustle. Just the Hall of Famer sitting in a chair.

In a DWL hat and a DWL vest, dark sunglasses, spit-shined cowboy boots, long sleeve shirt with creases that could cut diamonds, and the Preakness winner Seize The Grey standing behind a webbing, Lukas’ lead pony behind another one. I looked north, south, east, west. There wasn’t a person within a Hail Mary throw.

I said good morning to Lukas, a man I knew but I didn’t know knew me, moved a giveaway magazine from a mounting block and hit record on a voice recorder that hadn’t seen action in months.

We talked. Well, Lukas talked, and I listened. Roping steers and racing ponies. Miles and marriages. Breaks and banks. Thunder Gulch and Terlingua. Broadway Blaze and Seize The Grey.

Hit home

It was the last time I spoke to Lukas, something that hit home when a friend of mine called to say the man who everyone called Coach had gone into hospice care two weeks ago. I sat down, opened my laptop, found a file simply called “Lukas” and took one long walk with the man who changed it all.

Santa Anita 2012: Aidan O'Brien is greeted by D Wayne Lukas while watching his horses at morning work \ Healy Racing

About the keys to success.

“If you’re going to be successful at anything, you have to be a risk-taker. I think people who play it close, analysing, I don’t think they ever get real successful,” Lukas said.

“If you look back at history, at any successful people and they probably took a lot of risk early on. You hear about the self-made man, you know they took risk. You have to take risk.”

About his biggest risk.

“Here I am a schoolteacher. Got a teacher retirement. Very secure. Going to get an offer to be the head assistant at Michigan, which would have ended up being the head coach at Michigan. My wife wasn’t for the horse part at all. I decided to quit teaching. If you’re married to a schoolteacher and all of a sudden he says he’s going to be a horse trainer… we got a divorce,” Lukas said.

If you have a passion for anything, you eliminate all the excuses

“I’ll share with you. I’m at Ruidoso Mexico. I gave her everything. My teacher retirement. Credit cards up to date. Brand new Buick Station Wagon. House. Everything. I remember her driving out the gate and I took my money clip out and I had $142. I turned to this one kid who was working for me at the time, and I said, ‘You’re not going to get paid for a while. I’ve got $142 here.’ I knew we would make a living. What the hell, a single guy, all you’ve got to do is eat.”

Climbed the mountain

Lukas took that $142 and climbed the mountain, transitioning from Quarter Horses to Thoroughbreds and tutoring future trainers Todd Pletcher, Kiaran McLaughlin, Dallas Stewart, Mark Hennig, Mike Maker and so many others.

“You’ve got to have something that really gets a hold of you,” Lukas said. “You shouldn’t have to work, by that I mean it never should be a job. If it’s a job, you’re going to be 9 to 5 and you’re going to go home. These guys I could say, ‘Look, jump in the truck and drive to Churchill and pick up a horse and come back tomorrow.’ They’d say, ‘Ok, boss,’ and jump in that truck.

“You either have it or you don’t. Just like those young guys I interviewed before I hired them. I never hired one guy that I thought was going to stay with me. If I thought he was going to stay with me, I didn’t want him.”

And you’ve always got a choice.

“When I do those corporate speeches, I don’t talk about horses, I talk about what we’re talking about right there. I tell people if you have a passion for anything, you eliminate all the excuses. You’ll go without lunch, you’ll drive all night, you’ll go without sleep, you eliminate any excuse if you’ve got the passion,” Lukas said. “That’s what drives you, but you need to get it, and you need to find it.

Pimlico 2024. The Preakness Stakes and Seize The Grey's winning trainer D Wayne Lukas (left) is congratulated by Bob Baffert after his win \ Healy Racing

Attitude

“The biggest decision you’re ever going to make in your life is your attitude. You’ve got to make it early in the morning and make the right one. That’s the biggest one you’ll ever make.”

An optimist’s optimist, Lukas woke up every morning and made that big choice. That choice to keep going, keep looking ahead, keep searching for the next winner, keep getting on the road.

“I was so intense and focused. I went through those marriages, I blame myself. Hell, I didn’t see my wife awake for a month. The barn is so dominant, and the racing is so dominant,” Lukas said.

“You’ve got to be careful because when you get to where I am that recliner will pull you in, it’s like a magnet. At 3am, it’s hard to walk past it. You think, ‘What the hell? I’m financially OK. I’ve got great assistants. Why am I fighting this? I’m tired. But I’d do it all the same.”

At the end of one hour, 11 minutes and 23 seconds, I thanked Lukas for the history lesson, for the racing gallivant, for the pep talk.

“Oh, hell, I rambled on,” Lukas said. “Brought up a lot of memories.”

Thanks for the memories, Coach.