Uriah St. Lewis has won only eight races this year and his winning rate is a paltry 7%. He's never going to win an Eclipse Award and no one is going to send him to the sales to buy six and seven-figure horses. But, when it comes to the bottom line, there may not be another trainer in the sport who does more with less.
In Saturday's $250,000 GIII Iselin S. at Monmouth, the competition included horses from the barns of Todd Pletcher, Jerry Hollendorfer and Chad Brown, two Hall of Famers and a future Hall of Famer. St. Lewis, who is based at Parx and has 27 horses in his stable, sent out Informative (Bodemeister), a 14-1 shot who had lost nine straight. On paper, Informative didn't look to have much of a shot and most trainers would have picked out an easier spot. But St. Lewis is not like other trainers. He'll run a 14-1 shot, he'll run a 140-1 shot, he'll run them in spots where it looks like they don't have a prayer of winning.
“If you're not in it, you don't have a chance,” he said.
That's what he does. He keeps throwing horses into what seems like impossible spots. But in this day and age where there are so many small fields in stakes races he, more often than not, walks away with a check. Case in point: Informative ran fifth and last in the GI Hill 'n' Dale Metropolitan H., but St. Lewis walked away with a check for $40,000. And if you send out enough big longshots in big races sometimes you're going to win and cash even bigger checks.
St. Lewis started in the sport as a fan and a bettor. He got his first job in racing working at the NYRA tracks as a technician for AmTote. His wife encouraged him to give training a try and he took a job under a trainer named Robert Hayes. St. Lewis won his first race in 1987.
Along the way, he has figured out that you don't have to win 150 races a year and have a high winning percentage to make money. He says that his stable makes a profit every year and is his sole source of income. After making $150,000 with the Iselin win, St. Lewis's Trin-Brook Stable has banked $814,325 on the year.
St. Lewis's biggest win came in the 2018 GI Jockey Club Gold Cup, which he won with Discreet Lover (Repent). He was coming off a twelfth-place finish in the GI Woodward, but did not embarrass himself when finishing third in the GI Whitney S. and GII Suburban H. He was 45-1 in the Gold Cup, which he won by a neck, defeating horses trained by Pletcher, Brown, Aidan O'Brien and Saeed bin Suroor. Discreet Lover finished his career with $1,452,735 in earnings.
Informative is 4-for-35 lifetime with earnings of $527,040. His other graded stakes win came in last year's GIII Salvator Mile S. at Monmouth, which he won at odds of 79-1.
The other star in St. Lewis's barn this year has been Forewarned (Flat Out). He's 1-for-7 on the year, but won the Excelsior S. and has earned $147,500 in 2022 and $909,883 during his career.
St. Lewis is from Trinidad (Trin) and his wife, Amanda, is from Brooklyn (Brook). He has no outside owners and family members make up the bulk of his staff. That, he says, is a big reason why he has been successful, albeit in his own unique way.
“We are in it to make money,” he said. “If you do the right thing, treat the horses right and take some chances you can make money. We can take the chances because we own all the horses. A lot of trainers can't do that. It's been working for us. This would be hard for other trainers to do because they don't own their own horses. I used to train for other people. It's a real pain because they say 'don't go there, I don't like this spot, I don't want to get embarrassed.' I ran Discreet Lover in the Met Mile and he finished fourth. I made $80,000. I wasn't embarrassed to make $80,000. But a lot of trainers wouldn't have run him in that race.
For his system to work, he's got to do it with inexpensive horses. He paid $10,000 for Discreet Lover, $25,000 for Informative and $40,000 for Forewarned. He buys almost all of his horses as 2-year-olds at the Fasig-Tipton Midlantic sale.
“We go to the sale in Timonium and we sit there for two days and look at every horse,” he said. “You have to take your time. I'll pay $3,000 for a horse, I'll go up to $60,000. It all depends on the horse and how much I like them.”
St. Lewis hasn't decided where Informative will run next, but he said that a Breeders' Cup race is definitely on his schedule. He's not sure whether he will go in the GI Breeders' Cup Dirt Mile or the GI Breeders' Cup Classic. In either race, Informative will probably be 50-1, maybe higher. A 50-1 shot in race where the horse looks completely overmatched, that's exactly where St. Lewis is most dangerous.
Nest Is Special
Now that the race is in the books, you can't fault the owners for running Nest (Curlin) in the GI Alabama S. instead of against the boys on the GI Runhappy Travers S. The Alabama had a fat purse of $600,000 and is among the most prestigious races on the calendar for 3-year-old fillies. It was a race she probably couldn't lose while, for her, the Travers would have been a tough spot.
With the win, they've already wrapped up an Eclipse Award for the sport's top 3-year-old filly. With wins in the Alabama, the GI Coaching Club American Oaks and the GI Ashland S. and a second-place finish in the GI Belmont S., she's done more than enough to earn year-end honors. With so many top males horses out there, Nest probably won't be named Horse of the Year, but you never know.
For her, the GI Breeders' Cup Distaff will no doubt now become the main goal for the rest of the season. After that, let's see what she can do as a 4-year-old and whether or not her team will take another crack at beating males. Let's hope that they do. With another big year, they can start thinking Hall of Fame.
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