By Dick Jerardi
Jamie Ness is going to win his fifth consecutive Park trainers’ title. Since the 2020 racing season, he has had 704 winners at the track.
As good and as dominant as this run has been, it is actually the second time a Parx trainer has been on such a streak. Starting exactly 25 years ago (1999), Scott Lake embarked on a 7-year run at Parx, which saw him win the title every year with 984 total wins.
The parallels in their careers are fascinating. Lake began in 1987, Ness in 1999. In Year 1, Ness went 2-for-43. In 1992 and 1993, Lake went 4-for-63. This game is nothing if not humbling.
Lake’s 10-year run from 2000-2009 when, at one point, he had 287 horses at seven tracks and one year put 100,000 miles on three cars, is really quite remarkable. His horses won 4,130 races during the decade. He won 528 races in 2006, 485 in 2007, 455 in 2003, 421 in 2008, 417 in 2005 and 400 in 2002. In 2006 and 2007, he had 4,503 starts. And yes, there were just 365 days in each of those years.
Ness has had two great 5-year runs in his career while having to rebuild his stable and switch from the Midwest to the mid-Atlantic between runs. From 2009 to 2013, he won 1,495 races. In the last five years, he has won 1,394 races with horses at Parx, Laurel Park and Delaware Park. So, a cool 2,889 wins (and counting) over his best 10 years.
Lake’s wins at Parx starting in 1999 were 112, 146, 148, 167, 171, 136 and 104. (Lake won the title again in 2008 with 126). Ness, starting in 2020 at Parx is 109 (pandemic shortened), 186, 166, 154, 89 (and counting in 2024).
Lake ranks sixth all-time with 6,407 wins while Ness is 14th with 4,386. Lake is 101 wins behind King Leatherbury and 116 from Jack Van Berg who trail only Steve Asmussen (10,595), Dale Baird (9,445) and Jerry Hollendorfer (7,771). So, he is going to be fourth in the all-time standings eventually.
If Ness, who has been training for 25 years now, keeps winning at his present pace over the next decade, he is going to zoom into the all-time top five.
That both Lake and Ness are stabled at Parx at the same time and have put up these historic numbers over a significant period of time is providential. Each racing day, you can find them at their same table in the Horsemens’ Lounge, a short walk to the paddock and the winner’s circle, separated by the partition that divides the lounge, but connected forever by their historic runs at Parx and every other track where they have trained or do train horses.
