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"Somebody's been very good to you," he told a client. "It shows. A reporter reminded Lukas, a one-time high school basketball coach, of something Jack Nicklaus said about wanting to leave his sport before he became "a ceremonial golfer."
"I've got a win left in me," Lukas said, "in fact, more than one. Competing at this is different. It's not just a young man's game. I don't get nervous watching them run, never have. I don't shout. I'm more ... analytical. I'm looking to see, `Is that the stride we wanted? Are the feet positioned the way we worked on?'
"I'm learning as much as I ever did. From the bad as well as the good," Lukas said, acknowledging the lean times of late. "I still get a kick out of watching my former assistants work. There are things I pick up from them."
He has saved the best for last.
"And," Lukas said, with a smile, "I got a new guy."
That would be Optimizer's owner, Brad Kelley, the somewhat-reclusive billionaire who just purchased the legendary Calumet Farm, home to two Triple Crown champions, eight Derby winners and both Ben Jones and two-time-winning trainer Jimmy Jones. Once the gold-standard for the thoroughbred industry, Churchill Downs spokesman John Asher said anybody who loves the sport "is dreaming of seeing those fields filled with mares and foals again ... and maybe seeing those devil's red and blue silks on the track again."
A rumor swept across Churchill Downs late Friday afternoon that those fabled silks would be pulled out of storage and draped across Optimizer in time for Saturday's run. If so, Lukas was willing to take any edge he could get.
"It's not like the heyday, the 1950s and '60s, where seven or eight horses came to the post for the Derby and Calumet Farm won most of them," he said. "But this is still one game where a little bit of luck goes a long way."
[Associated Press;
Copyright 2012 The Associated Press. All rights reserved. This material may not be published, broadcast, rewritten or redistributed.
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