Mere Return to This Barn a Victory

Nine and a half months after his awakening from a coma, Jeff Lukas points to the spot where the horse ran him down.

“Over here, I guess.”

He scuffs the dirt.

“That’s what they tell me.”

Lukas looks along the hardpan behind his barn at Santa Anita, where he is back at work, training thoroughbreds, for the first time since being trampled by the frightened colt Tabasco Cat last Dec. 15. Racing resumes at the track today.

“How much do you remember?” he is asked.

“Of the accident?”

“Yes.”

“Nothing.”

Of everything else, his amnesia is gone. Or almost.

Taking cover under a morning drizzle, Linda Lukas, dandling their infant daughter, waits for her husband to finish work. It is no wait at all compared to her Christmastime hospital vigil. There she sat by Jeff’s bedside, praying for the blink of an eye, for the flutter of an eyelash, anything.

Once his recovery began, his memory returned. Piece by piece.

“Did he remember your wedding day? How you met?” Linda is asked.

She shakes her head and says, “He didn’t know who I was.”

Within a few weeks, Jeff Lukas, 37, was lucid again. He says, “I knew I was in a hospital. I knew I’d been in some kind of accident.”

He fought off pneumonia. He regained his strength after having lost 39 pounds. He was well enough to be transferred from the trauma unit of the Huntington Medical Center in Pasadena to the Casa Colina Hospital in Pomona, where his manual dexterity and mental awareness improved.

But not overnight.

Linda says, “It’s not like that ‘Regarding Henry,’ that Harrison Ford movie. You don’t suffer a serious brain injury and then they say, ‘OK, you’re fine. You can go home now.’ ”

Together, the Lukases endured. Their son, Brady Wayne Lukas, was the bravest 3 1/2-year-old boy in the world, making audio tapes and taking them to the hospital to set beside his comatose father’s ear. Jeff’s own dad, Wayne Lukas, the prominent trainer, took care of their horses and took calls from former Presidents and sportsmen, strangers and friends.

And the horse?

In a storybook plot twist if ever there was one, by May he was running in the Kentucky Derby, trying gamely, though not winning, as Jeff and Linda Lukas watched from home on television.

Two weeks later, Tabasco Cat won the Preakness.

Two more weeks later, Jeff Lukas put on the same clothes he had worn on the day of the Preakness, returned to the same friend’s house, sat in the same chair and watched the same TV.

He saw Tabasco Cat take the Belmont Stakes as well, winning two-thirds of the Triple Crown.

“That horse,” Jeff Lukas says, in the understatement of his life, “can definitely run.”

Saturday, as it happens, Tabasco Cat will be running at Belmont again in the Jockey Club Gold Cup. That same day, Jeff Lukas is expected to run his fine filly, Serena’s Song, in the Oak Leaf Stakes at Santa Anita. His well-being is such that Jeff is totally entrusted again by his father to conduct business as before.

It was Wayne Lukas who rushed to his son’s side, that morning 10 days before Christmas, after hearing a commotion outside his barn. The 2-year-old chestnut Tabasco Cat had panicked while being washed. The horse broke free from his handlers and went galloping along the road.

“I guess I was working over there,” Jeff Lukas says, gesturing toward the stables, “when the horse got loose. It must have come charging up the road and I jumped out in the way, trying to slow him down. I really don’t remember a thing.”

He was trampled, and his head hit the gravel. He was unconscious instantly. A helicopter air-lifted Lukas from the track in Arcadia to the hospital in Pasadena, where his condition was listed as grave.

When he awoke, he had to be told what happened.

“Had the horse ever stampeded that way before?” he is asked.

“Never.”

“Had any of your horses?”

“Never.”

Lukas toes the ground, looking around.

“Ever intend to try to stop one that way again?” he is asked.

“Not on your life.”

With a new Oak Tree racing meeting beginning at Santa Anita, he has responsibilities galore. Two top juvenile fillies alone, Serena’s Song and Flanders, are among the best around, and could end up in the Breeders’ Cup next month.

But much as a trainer brings a horse along gradually, everyone wants to bring along Jeff Lukas gradually.

One of his friends, Shane Crowell, has been helpful in getting the Lukas horses fine-tuned. He says, “Jeff’s doing great. Just great. His first day back, though, he stuck out his hand and said, ‘Hi, I’m Jeff. We’ll be working together.’ Now I’ve known Jeff a long time. I just laughed and said, ‘Yeah, Jeff. We’ve been introduced before.’ ”

Once a month, Linda takes her husband back to the doctors for an exam.

“They say the human brain is like a computer, that a wire can come loose from time to time, but it still has great backup systems built in,” she says.

Lukas does still have a blind spot here and there.

“Not about anything major,” he says. “Every so often someone will mention something and it won’t immediately ring a bell. But I feel perfectly fine. Everything’s pretty much back to normal. It was an experience I don’t recommend, but going through this really makes you count your blessings.”

Among them, having a horse that can run so fast.

And being around to see him run.

Jeff Lukas, at work again, at ease again, shrugs and says, “I guess I couldn’t slow him down.”