Daily Racing Form National Digital Edition
Whitney win worth a gamble for St. Lewis, Discreet Lover
SARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. – Uriah St. Lewis liked to bet on horses. His wife thought he was too ill informed to be successful.
“You like to gamble, why don’t you learn the trade?” St. Lewis said his wife, Amanda, told him back in the early 1980s.
Taking his wife’s advice, St. Lewis – whose family was in the real estate business in Brooklyn – bought a ranch in Oklahoma in the early 1980s and learned all about horses from trainer Robert Hayes, referred to in that state as a horse whisperer. When St. Lewis returned to the East Coast, instead of simply betting on horses, he started training them. Over the last 30 years, St. Lewis has won 373 races from almost 6,000 starters.
In 2015 at the Timonium sale of 2-year-olds in training, St. Lewis found his diamond in the rough. He purchased a son of Repent for $10,000. Three years later, that horse, Discreet Lover, has earned $821,560. Discreet Lover has run in 28 stakes races, winning the Grade 3 Excelsior at Aqueduct in April. On Saturday, Discreet Lover will make his second straight appearance in the Grade 1, $1.2 million Whitney Stakes at Saratoga.
Discreet Lover, who finished fifth of seven to Gun Runner at odds of 58-1 in last year’s Whitney, will be a longshot again, but that doesn’t deter the 60-year-old St. Lewis.
“We always take a chance, my wife and myself,” said St. Lewis, who is also planning to run the longshot Norma’s Charm in Saturday’s Grade 1 Test at Saratoga. “We keep trying. A lot of people criticize us, but we own them ourselves. We don’t have to answer to nobody.”
St. Lewis is a native of Trinidad and Tobago. He moved to the U.S. in 1973 at the age of 15 and lived in Brooklyn. He attended East New York Vocational and Technical High School, about 3 1/2 miles from Aqueduct. St. Lewis said he ran track, and on his runs he often would go to Aqueduct, sneak in to place a few bets, and then run back.
St. Lewis eventually got a job as a computer technician for AmTote. That was, until he learned how to train.
The family’s real estate business helped finance St. Lewis’s racing operation. He won his first race in 1988 and trained steadily through 2005. From 2006 through 2013, he won only 14 races. St. Lewis said he spent more time with his twin children, attending their sports games and other activities.
“The day they went to college, I started back,” St. Lewis said. “My wife’s a registered nurse; she made good money. I just wanted to get them through high school and into college.”
St. Lewis is based at Parx, where he keeps about 23 horses.
“The purses are so big, you can make a nice living if you take care of your business,” St. Lewis said. “I’m hands on. I buy my hay myself, I buy my food myself. We do a lot of stuff ourselves.”
St. Lewis has had a handful of stakes horses, including Bleu Madura, Arty’svirginiagirl, and Distinctive Trick. But it’s Discreet Lover who has carried the stable the last few years. In 2016, he finished third in the $500,000 Ohio Derby and was second in the Parx Derby.
Last year, St. Lewis ran Discreet Lover in both the Whitney and Woodward, finishing fifth to Gun Runner in both. Discreet Lover earned $75,000 for those races, and, St. Lewis points out, in the Woodward, the horse was beaten only 3 3/4 lengths for second.
This has already been a productive year for Discreet Lover. He won the Excelsior to give St. Lewis his only graded stakes win. Discreet Lover also finished fourth at 79-1 in the Grade 1 Metropolitan Handicap and third in the Grade 2 Suburban at Belmont at odds of 41-1. His back-to-back 98 Beyer Speed Figures are the highest of his 41-race career. Only two horses – Mind Your Biscuits and Diversify – enter the Whitney with higher last-out Beyers.
“He’s not flashy,” St. Lewis said. “He’s put together right, and he’s real smart. I have horses that want to do too much. He just does what he has to do. You walk in the barn, he ate up all his food, and he finds a corner to stand.”
St. Lewis credits a lot of Discreet Lover’s success to Jose Flores, who had ridden him 21 times. In March, Flores died from injuries suffered in a spill at Parx. It was on April 7 – about 10 days after Flores died – when Discreet Lover, ridden by Manny Franco, won the Excelsior.
“To this day, it still hurts me,” St. Lewis said. “He was such a nice guy. It was very emotional when we ran that day. Jose had to be on that horse’s back. The gate opened, he stumbled, he grabbed himself, and he still came and ran by the field and won. Every time he runs, I ask Jose to take him safe and sound around the racetrack.”
One race before the Whitney, St. Lewis will run Norma’s Charm in the Test. Norma’s Charm, 1 for 15, is coming off an eighth-place finish in the Grade 3 Victory Ride.
“These are basically the same horses that beat me 3 1/2 lengths, so I think I can run with [them],” St. Lewis said. “Seven furlongs is right up our alley, so we’ll take our chance.”
Spoken like a true gambler.