SOME OWNERS and trainers who have horses in stakes races at Saratoga may be disappointed if their horse finishes second or third. That doesn’t seem to bother owner and trainer Uriah St. Lewis.
As he loaded Discreet Lover, as well as Norma’s Charm, into his two-horse Little Hawk trailer attached to the Ford F-150 truck bound toward his home base just north of Philadelphia, St. Lewis was still ecstatic about the outcome of Saturday’s Whitney Stakes.
At 38-1 with Manny Franco wearing the black and gold triangular colors that represent St. Lewis, Discreet Lover made a six-wide move off the turn over the sloppy track and continued making up ground in the stretch, only to get beaten by a half-length by Mind Your Biscuits for the second place while Diversify took Saturday’s Grade 1 Whitney.
“We knew he was going to hit the board,” St. Lewis said. “When he gets clear outside, he’s going to be coming; he’s going to roll. He tries all of the time.”
Discreet Lover’s performance in the Whitney was a sharp contrast to last year’s effort after finishing fifth – beaten nearly 15 lengths – by Horse of the Year Gun Runner. However, that didn’t discourage St. Lewis.
“Gun Runner was something special,” the 60-year-old native of Trinidad and Tobago said. “Last year, we had not won a stake race. We were shooting for the sky. Gun Runner won the race by five lengths. Everyone else was beaten by three or four lengths. You take Gun Runner out of the picture, you have a different race.”
Even though Discreet Lover has just one win this year in the Grade 3 Excelsior Handicap at Aqueduct earlier this year, the 5-year-old continues to run faster against tougher competition that includes Diversify, Bee Jersey and Mind Your Biscuits in The Suburban Handicap and The Metropolitan Mile – both at Belmont Park.
St. Lewis is not surprised that his horse is getting physically stronger, especially since he witnessed John Henry win multiple Grade 1 races throughout the country in the gelding’s later part of his career.
“He’s older and more mature,” St. Lewis said about Discreet Lover. “He’s been getting better. He’s sound and he does what we want him to do. John Henry didn’t hit his peak until he was 7 or 8 years old.”
While Discreet Lover needed some time to develop since St. Lewis purchased him for $10,000 three years ago, the horse has earned $941,560 from 41 races while competing at more than 10 different tracks, including six wins, seven second-place finishes, and six third-place finishes. St. Lewis ignores the criticism and odds each time he enters Discreet Lover in a race.
“He has been a bargain-basement horse,” he said. “Why would I be embarrassed if he is making $90,000 or $100,000 at 60-1? You can only make that kind of money in the stock market. I went to school. The numbers say if you are making money, don’t worry about what everyone is thinking.”
St. Lewis has enjoyed horse racing since he was five years old when his sister brought him to Arima Park and Queen’s Park Savannah in Port of Spain. After coming to the United States in 1973 when he was 15, St. Lewis eventually went to a trade school in Manhattan to learn about computers.
By combining his education and horse racing passion, St. Lewis worked for AmTote as technician to fix the betting computers throughout the New York Racing Association circuit, as well as Yonkers, the defunct Roosevelt Raceway, Meadowlands and Pimlico, through the late 1970s and early 1980s
At the same time, St. Lewis also liked gambling on the horses. His wife Amanda encouraged to him to learn more about the horses and sport by getting directly involved. St. Lewis and his wife took their chances by selling their home in Brooklyn and buying a farm in Oklahoma while working with Robert Hayes on training horses.
Since winning his first race with a claiming horse named Doublemagic at Blue Ribbon Downs in March 1988, St. Lewis has won 373 races in over 6,000 starters. He has also made an impact as the underdog, including the $2,700 purchase of Bleu Madura who nearly pulled off a 34-1 upset against heavily-favored Concerto in the 1997 Federico Tesio Stakes Stakes at Pimlico.
“As a gambler, you don’t know what always is going on in the background,” St. Lewis said. “I’ve always took chance in my entire life. Most people wouldn’t do what I am doing. When you own a horse, you can do whatever you want. That’s the biggest thing – I don’t have to answer to anyone. I may never get this opportunity again. So, I’m going to enjoy it.”
With the Parx racing season closed for the next two weeks, St. Lewis is coming back to Saratoga next week with Discreet Lover to train for the Grade 1, $750,000 Woodward on Sept. 1.
“We are going to take it one step at a time, but the Woodward is next,” St. Lewis said about Discreet Lover’s plans. “We’re going home and get a few days off. We’ll probably bring him back up here a little early. In a few days, if he says he is ready, we go back into training.”
Along with Discreet Lover, St. Lewis plans to bring back Norma’s Chase, who finished fifth in the Test Stakes on the Whitney undercard, as well as Harley Q for possibly the $200,000 Seeking the Ante Stakes on Aug. 24 and unraced 2-year-old Black Light.
