Happy Tenth Stable

Owner: Tom Lamont | Born: January 13, 1947 |

Birthplace: New York, NY | Residence: Clearwater, FL

First Win: Little Hero, Garden State Park, 1985 | Tampa Trainer: Tony Wilson

Before becoming a racehorse owner, Tom Lamont considered investing in a professional baseball team or being part of a syndicate managing prize fighters. But pleasant memories of going to Monmouth Park as a youngster with his parents led him to join a harness-racing partnership in 1976. About 8 years later, he switched to Thoroughbreds, teaming with successful trainer John J. Tammaro, III. One of Tammaro’s assistants was an upand-coming conditioner named Tony Wilson, who has now trained for Happy Tenth Stable for more than 20 years. Happy Tenth finished fourth in last year’s Oldsmar standings with 10 victories. Lamont has about eight horses at Tampa Bay Downs this season with Wilson. Leslielyn Hardesty trains a couple of horses for Happy Tenth, and the owner also keeps seven or so at Parx Racing in Pennsylvania with the father-and-son duo of Alfredo Velazquez and Daniel Velazquez. Lamont, who worked for almost 40 years as a financial journalist and editor of the newsletter division for the publication Institutional Investor, has a relatively simple philosophy when it comes to running a stable: “Find people you trust and let them do their job.” Lamont’s best horse may have been the Tammaro-trained Cactus Charlie, who in 2017 at Tampa Bay Downs wrapped up a career in which he earned more than $300,000 and placed in seven stakes. Lamont’s only stakes winner was Deliburnsky, trained by Wilson to back-to-back stakes victories in 2011 as a 2-year-old. Lamont and his wife Kathy have been married 41 years, and he named his stable Happy Tenth because he met Kathy on the 10th of April in 1979.