Jockey Club Gold Cup S.

Trainer Uriah St. Lewis continued to believe that Discreet Lover was capable of a Grade 1 victory no matter how many also-ran finishes the barn favorite piled up this season. He knew what he was talking about.

St. Lewis displayed a handful of winning tickets after his 45-1 longshot secured a seemingly impossible Grade 1 score by winning the $750,000 Jockey Club Gold Cup by a neck against Thunder Snow on Saturday at Belmont Park.

“We are right where we want to be. It was great,” said St. Lewis. He had bet $100 across the board on the outsider he loved. The winner paid $93 for a $2 wager.

Discreet Lover snapped a six-race losing streak in upsetting prohibitive favorite Diversify, a front-runner who succumbed to the blistering fractions he set with Mendelssohn in hot pursuit. Thunder Snow got up for second with Mendelssohn finishing third.

Diversify, the defending Gold Cup champion, blazed the opening quarter of a mile in 22.72, the half in 45.64 and went a sizzling 1:09.13 for three-quarters of a mile. Not surprisingly, he wilted in the stretch beneath jockey Irad Ortiz Jr.

Discreet Lover had finished third to Diversify in the Grade 2 Suburban and the Grade 1 Whitney. He came in a distant 12^th to Yoshida in his previous start, the Woodward Stakes on Sept. 1 at Saratoga Race Course.

St. Lewis was emphatic in his instructions to Manuel Franco, the horse’s regular rider, telling him, “Take back, make one run.” He believes Franco stayed too close to the pace in the Woodward and paid a steep price.

Uriah St. Lewis Jr., an understudy to his father, said he refused his parents’ invitation to join them for lunch at Belmont Park because he wanted to be sure he was doing everything possible to have Discreet Lover ready for a race that carried an expense-paid automatic berth in the $6 million Breeders’ Cup Classic.

“I’ve been feeling it the last few weeks that he was going to get his chance to win a Grade 1,” the son said, “and today was the day.”

Ortiz Jr. said Mendelssohn, in rocketing from the starting gate to briefly lead, prompted Diversify to go faster than desired. “The track was fast and I had to go harder than usual because Mendelssohn was very quick out of there and I needed to make the lead,” he said. “I had to use a lot to make the lead. We just went a little fast.” Diversify, considered a prime Classic contender before this, fell back to fifth.

St. Lewis welcomed the automatic entry into the Classic and said he will use the next few weeks to decide if he will enter that season-culminating race on Nov. 3 at Churchill Downs. “Everything is paid for, so we don’t have to worry,” he said.

His son emphasized that they also will seriously consider the Clark Handicap at Churchill Downs and the Cigar Mile at Aqueduct since both would give their horse more time to recover from the Gold Cup. He noted that the Pegasus World Cup Invitational also is very much on their radar for the new year.

“It’s definitely under consideration,” said St. Lewis Jr., “but it’s not a given.”