“Nothing’s easy with this horse,” trainer Ben Feliciano said Saturday of Discreet Ops.

Not easy, perhaps, but the rewards are worth it.

Making her first start in nearly five months, the talented – though star-crossed – daughter of Army Mule registered her first stakes win in the $75,000 Shine Again for fillies and mares that had never won a stake at Timonium Saturday.  In so doing, she had to overcome not only the long layoff but also a pair of objections after a tightly run race that saw the top three stacked up within a head of each other for the first half-mile.

Discreet Ops, with Carlos Lopez up, was the outside of the trio, and as the field rounded the far turn, things got a little tight for Happy Clouds, the innermost runner, and she dropped back before regrouping to run on.

Happy Clouds’s rider, Denis Araujo, filed an objection against David Cora and Chapa, who were the meat of the sandwich. Cora, in turn, filed an objection against the winner.

In the end, both claims were denied. It was one of three races on the day that ended with an objection on the second day of live racing at the Big T, one of which was allowed.

The four-year-old Discreet Ops, owned by Chip Reed, won her career debut in November of her two-year-old season, 2023.

She didn’t race for some five months following that win but returned the following April to win an allowance race before finishing a solid third – behind the multiple graded winner Mystic Lake, who won the Pink Ribbon Friday at Charles Town – in the Grade 3 Miss Preakness at Pimlico.

More stakes outings followed, topped by a near-miss runner-up try in the Safely Kept at Laurel in November of 2024. But following a second-level allowance win this past March, she went to the sidelines again – until today.

“She was cutting herself in the back, and we had to give her time off for that after the first race,” Feliciano said. “Then the second race, she did the same damn thing.”

Once they took care of that problem, setbacks of one kind or another cropped up.

“So like I said: nothing’s easy,” the trainer said.

Feliciano had her raring to go today, however. She raced on the pace while widest throughout and drew away at the end to win by 4 ½ lengths in 1:19.52 for 6 ½ furlongs.

“She doesn’t need a while lot,” the trainer said. “You could give her five, six months off, and you could breeze her three times, and she’s ready to go.”

Chapa, the even-money post time favorite, held second, a nose ahead of Happy Clouds in third. Ginger Girl rounded out the field, and while I’m a Cutie Pie and Touisset were scratched.

Discreet Ops now has four wins from 13 starts to go with earnings of just over $200,000. She paid $6.20 to win and topped an exacta that returned $5.40 for a one-dollar wager.