Hurricane Sandy blasted New Jersey – and much of the East Coast – in the summer of 2012, all but stranding trainers and horses at the New Jersey track. That’s when Monmouth Park-based trainer Mike Lerman got a phone call that changed his life.
“They stopped training because there was damage to the racetrack, to the barns, to the fencing and everything,” Lerman said. “It came down to going home to Florida or something else. Bobby Triola is a longtime friend and said half the barn he was in was empty here. I had never been here. I drove down to see it and I said, ‘We can do this for six weeks or so.’ And six weeks turned into six months, which has now turned into 3 1/2 years and I’m not going anywhere.”
Here is Fair Hill Training Center, where Lerman trains 17 horses including recent stakes winner Black Mission Fig and even more recent Penn National winners Ya and Little Miss Amy. Lerman started out in a barn formerly owned by Earle Mack and overseen by Triola and now rents stalls in Fairy Chant Three, a barn owned by trainer Niall Saville and his wife Rosella. With three months to go in 2016, Lerman is sitting on a career year. He’s matched his career high (set last year) of 12 wins and already set a new mark of $373,692 in purse earnings from 44 starts.
Homebred Black Mission Fig has done her part, winning her last two including the $100,000 Dr. Theresa Garofalo Memorial at Parx Racing Sept. 3. The 4-year-old filly won the 6-furlong stakes for Pennsylvania-breds by 3 1/4 to improve to 5-for-12 lifetime and continuing building on a solid career.
The dark bay ran once as a 2-year-old for trainer Steve Margolis, finishing seventh at Indiana Grand, but then went to the sidelines with an injury. Gold Mark owner Al Gold sent Lerman to look at the filly.
“I saw her for the first time around Thanksgiving of her 2-year-old year,” Lerman said. “They told me they were trying to decide what to do with her. “
A former assistant to trainer Vinnie Blengs, Lerman saw a tall, “racy-looking” filly, an athlete, and told Gold to get her going. She’s been on an upward trajectory ever since – winning three times last year and gaining stakes status this year. The daughter of Fusaichi Pegasus and the Vindication mare Lady de Rosa fits at Fair Hill.
“She’s a perfect example of a horse who thrives in this environment,” Lerman said. “I don’t think, if she was in the traditional racetrack environment where you have one dirt oval to go to every day, that she would develop like she has. She trains moderately, and she spends a lot of time out in the fields. She really benefits from being out there and being up and down the hills. I’m the biggest believer of that.”
During a recent visit, Black Mission Fig munched mints, accepted some attention and listened to her trainer.
“She’s intermittently friendly,” Lerman said. “You feed her a mint, she’s your friend. She’ll take the mint, then she’ll lay the ears back at you until you get another one. Most good fillies have a little mean streak in them.”
That was all said with a smile, and came from a man who knows his horse. She followed every description of her behavior with the exact behavior.
“You take good care of them, they’re going to last and hopefully they’ll come on for you,” Lerman said of treating horses as individuals. “She’ll run next year, maybe more. I think that last race gets her to the possibility of running in one of those restricted overnight stakes in New York in the fall. She’s got some options.”
Lerman had options too. He grew up on Long Island, and his family and some friends owned a few horses. He worked on the track during summer breaks, but went to the University of Miami to get a finance degree. Diploma in hand, he promptly got a job working for racetrack veterinarians.
“I thought about going to vet school when I was in undergrad,” he said. “When you go to see people at a vet school, they tell you it’s not just racehorses it’s dogs, cats, pigs, goats, sheep and cows. It became a lot less appealing. Then I discovered the training end of it. It was much more interesting.”
Lerman saddled his first runner in 1991, and got a big break the next year when owner Sandy Price left Antarctic Wings (who had been running for Blengs) with Lerman in Florida. In January 1993, Antarctic Wings won the Grade 2 W.L. McKnight Handicap at Calder – Lerman’s first graded stakes win. The second came 13 years later when Gigawatt triumphed in the Grade 3 Miami Mile.
Number three might be on the horizon, someday soon.
“I’ve had lesser horses for some good people over the years but you get them when somebody else has had them already,” Lerman said. “It’s nice to get them fresh now, as 2-year-olds as opposed to 4-year-olds who’ve had surgery or something. To really get ahead you need the opportunity with the right kind of stock. I have some of it now and it’s starting to pay off.”
