Retired NY Trainer Robert Lake Passes Away

Retired trainer Robert Lake, a stalwart in New York for four decades, died Wednesday at the age of 82 at Saratoga Hospital. 

Lake settled in Saratoga Springs in 1999 after a 49-year career that began July 7, 1950, when the 17-year-old won with the first horse he saddled, Big Fly, at Pleasanton, CA. He was born Aug. 18, 1932 in San Francisco. His introduction to racing came as 7-year-old selling newspapers at the old Tanofran Racetrack. After gaining experience as a trainer in his home state, Lake moved to Chicago and then on to New York in the early 1960s. 

For most of his career, Lake operated a public stable, but for five years in the 1970s, he was the private trainer for Alfred G. Vanderbilt. Among the top runners he handled for Vanderbilt was North Sea, who won the GII Westchester H., the GIII Paumonok H., the Minuteman H. and the Jennings H. and placed in three other stakes in a span of 10 months. In the 1972 Minuteman at Liberty Bell Park in Philadelphia, he defeated that year's Preakness winner, Bee Bee Bee. 

Among the other successful horses that Lake trained were Vanderbilt's Scrimshaw, winner of the 1972 Bernard Baruch; Timber Cat, who won the Lawrence Realization in 1992; multiple stakes winner Brenda Beauty; former claimer Daisy Petal, who became a stakes winner; Bravely Bold, whom he claimed for $25,000 and developed into a graded stakes winner with earnings of $488,000; Vanderbilt's Dundee Marmalade, who won the 1974 GII Westchester, beating a field that included the Allen Jerkens-trained Prove Out. 

Robert Lake II confirmed his father's death and said he had been hospitalized for about six weeks with pneumonia. Lake, a resident of Mechanicville, NY, in recent years, is survived by his wife Diane and his son. A memorial service will be held at a later date, Lake II said. 

While Lake never saddled a Kentucky Derby starter, two young horsemen who had worked for him, Nick Zito and David Cross, trained Derby winners. Brothers Tom and Lou Albertrani also worked for Lake before becoming head trainers. 

Robert Lake II said his father consistently finished in the top 10 in the New York trainers' standings and won at a high percentage in stakes races because he was careful to place his horses where they belonged.