HARNESS RACING

Harness trainer Carl Porcelli is riding a big wave with a pair of trotters he conditions for Indiana owner Jon Lewis. Lewis' 2-year-old colt, Intimidator, will be sent to East Rutherford, N.J., on Thursday to vie in the $650,000 Breeders Crown Freshman Trot eliminations Friday night.

Flamewalker, a 4-year-old, has earned $147,640 since Lewis, a resident of Yorktown, Ind., purchased him on Feb. 20 of this year.

Porcelli, 56, has been training horses for Lewis for nine years, and said these two are the best Lewis has owned.

Lewis, 52, manufactures and markets hyperbaric oxygen chambers, and has owned racehorses since the mid-1980s. He purchased Intimidator on Aug. 16.

"I went to Canada to look at Intimidator with no real intentions of buying him, but when I trained him, I really liked him," Porcelli said. "He's super fast for a 2-year-old trotter, and he was staked to the Breeders Crown.

"With Flamewalker, it was a question of seeing him race. At Balmoral one night he put in a great race, coming from dead last to first and most trotters don't do that. It was a very impressive performance."

Porcelli, who stables horses at Odds On Acres in Crete, Maywood Park and White Birch Farm in New Jersey, has been training and racing horses since the late 1960s. The Chicago native has conditioned 462 winners to $3,441,188 in career earnings.

Until a few years ago, Porcelli was also driving horses at the Chicago ovals.

"It's a young man's game," Porcelli said. "You have to know when it's time to stop and let the younger guys take over the reins. But you can train horses forever."

Porcelli has had his share of winners. From 1977 through 1998 he scored 1,005 victories worth $5,464,146 steering Standardbreds.

"I give Jon a lot of credit," Porcelli said. "He spends a lot of money, buying horses on his own, without partners. It takes a lot of courage in this day and age to do that because in horse racing, there's never a sure thing."