Lewises Enjoy Timber Country : Horse racing: Their colt is the second-favorite behind Afternoon Deelites in the Santa Anita Derby today.

In his sprawling second-floor office in Pomona, Bob Lewis sat at a desk with a large Timber Country badge pinned to his white shirt. On the other side of the room is a long couch, and dwarfing the couch is an illuminated, color photo of Serena’s Song that covers most of the wall. The talented filly is in high gear, all four feet off the ground, as she nears the finish line for one of her victories at Hollywood Park.

Lewis’ two distributorships sell about 200 million bottles and cans of beer a year, but fun is at the racetrack, and no owners are having more fun than Bob and Beverly Lewis, who honeymooned at the Caliente and Del Mar tracks 47 years ago. The Lewises own one-third of Timber Country, who is the second choice behind Afternoon Deelites, for today’s $700,000 Santa Anita Derby, and they own 100% of Serena’s Song, who is on a five-race winning streak that has hiked her earnings to $1.2 million.

Bob and Beverly Lewis are the envy of horse owners from Santa Anita to Suffolk Downs, because both of these 3-year-olds are headed for Churchill Downs, Timber Country to run in the Kentucky Derby on May 6, and Serena’s Song pegged for either the Derby or the Kentucky Oaks, the premier race for 3-year-old fillies, which will be run May 5. The same ownership hasn’t won both of these races in the same year since 1952, when Calumet Farm won the Derby with Hill Gail and the Oaks with Real Delight.

Wayne Lukas, who trains Timber Country and Serena’s Song, has been saying that the filly will probably run in the Oaks, and while Bob Lewis echoes that projection, he and Lukas have left the door open for Serena’s Song to run in the Derby. That decision probably won’t be made until shortly before entries for the races are taken on May 3-4.

“The Derby is the pinnacle,” Bob Lewis said a few days ago. “It’s what everybody’s here for. So in a way, it’s a perplexing problem to be involved with two horses that have a chance to win. . . . Serena’s Song is so good right now. She astonished even Wayne the way she rose to the occasion and beat the boys so easily in the Jim Beam (at Turfway Park last Saturday).”

Timber Country will run in the Lewises’ colors today, per an agreement made by the equal partners in the colt. When Timber Country runs in the Midwest, the colors of William T. Young’s Overbrook Farm are used, and for races in the east, the silks of Graham Beck’s Gainesway Farm are hauled out.

It was Lukas who bought Timber Country for $500,000 at a Keeneland yearling auction in 1993.

“I hope you can pay for him,” Beck said after the sale. Beck had hoped to get the colt for much less.

“Don’t worry,” Lukas said, “we’ll find some partners.”

They were looking for three others who would each take a 25% interest, but when they came up short, the Lewis-Beck-Young trio fell into place.

“There wasn’t anybody mad enough to join us,” Beck said, but the mad money has turned into smart money as Timber Country has won the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, an Eclipse Award and almost $1 million.

The Lewises bought Serena’s Song as a yearling for $150,000. “She’s mature enough now to run against 2-year-olds,” Lukas said at the time.

The Lewises bought four other yearlings at the same sale, spending almost $1.5 million. Starting in 1990, they’ve become important players in thoroughbred racing, and now they have 55 horses in training with six trainers in California and a few with Charles O’Brien in Ireland.

Bob Lewis, 70, has been selling beer to Santa Anita for almost 40 years. Growing up in Glendale, he remembers his parents taking him to the track as a 10-year-old the week it opened in 1934. Saturdays at the races, and dinner later at the Oak Tree Inn, were a family ritual.

“I had been involved in some small horse partnerships over the years,” Lewis said. “It was fun, but it wasn’t the same as owning horses on your own. I was the kind of minor partner who would learn that a horse had been gelded long after it happened.”

The first horses Lewis bought with his wife were disasters. One had a spinal-cord disorder and was put down six weeks after the sale. Another ran 11 times before winning.

“That didn’t dampen my enthusiasm,” Lewis said. “I’m still feeling my way. I’m still trying to learn. One thing I know is that you just can’t rely on the winner’s circle to survive. That’s why we sell some of our horses.”

He sold Tossofthecoin, who finished last for Sidney and Jenny Craig in the 1993 Kentucky Derby. This year, after the stakes-winning Valid Wager showed that he lacked the stamina to run in the Derby, he was sold back to his breeder. Last year, Lewis entered the pinhooking business, which consists of buying young horses with the idea of quickly reselling them at a profit. One of those horses, Strong Ally, was bought as a yearling for $80,000 and resold as a 2-year-old for $700,000.

“We don’t resell our culls,” Lewis said. “When we go to a yearling sale, we look at some of the horses as racing prospects and consider others as pinhooks, and then buy them accordingly.”

Lewis issues quarterly profit-and-loss statements to all of his trainers, documents that one of them jokingly calls “our report cards.” While the Lewises, who met as undergraduates at the University of Oregon, have been spending millions on horses, they also have launched what has become the Robert and Beverly Lewis Family Cancer Care Center at the Pomona Valley Medical Center. The Lewises pledged the first $5 million for an $11-million project.

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Horse Racing Notes

Our Gatsby could advance to the Kentucky Derby with a victory today in the $300,000 Remington Park Derby. Others running are the Santa Anita-based Capote’s Promise, Only Cash, Dazzling Falls, Huge Gator, Fuzzy Me and Spiritbound. Trainer Richard Mandella, who will be busy with Afternoon Deelites in the Santa Anita Derby, sent his son, Gary, to Oklahoma to saddle Capote’s Promise. . . . Capote’s Promise was one of the seven late nominees for the Triple Crown races. Also nominated, at $6,000 apiece, were Mystery Storm, probable favorite for the $500,000 Arkansas Derby at Oaklawn Park on April 22, and Treasurer, who has been racing in Dubai.

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Santa Anita Derby

Post positions, with jockeys and the opening lines, for today’s $700,000 Santa Anita Derby:

PP Horse Jockey Odds 1. Lake George Delahoussaye 15 2. In Character Nakatani 10 3. Afternoon Deelites Desormeaux 8-5 4. Larry The Legend Stevens 5 5. Fandarel Dancer F.Valenzuela 20 6. Jumron Almeida 15 7. Petionville Antley 6 8. Timber Country Day 2

* Post time: About 2:20 p.m.

* Weights: 122 pounds