During 2024, Cherie DeVaux’s sixth full year as a trainer, she nearly doubled her stable earnings from 2023, going from $5 million and change to more than $10 million. DeVaux is likely on track for an even better 2025. Daily Racing Form found nine Fair Grounds-based horses worth talking about in a Sunday telephone interview with DeVaux, and that doesn’t include the three she ran in Sunday stakes at Oaklawn, where Justique won the Carousel. Through Feb. 23, DeVaux was third-leading trainer at the Fair Grounds meeting with 18 winners, though her 63 starters are 15 fewer than Brad Cox, who has 23 wins, and 48 fewer than Joe Sharp, who has 27. DeVaux’s horses have won 13 of the 26 maiden special weight races they’ve entered at the meet. By comparison, Cox, also loaded with talented maidens, has five maiden special weight wins. :: Access the most trusted data and information in horse racing! DRF Past Performances and Picks are available now. The horse of note who won this past weekend in New Orleans was Montalcino, a 4-year-old with three wins from four races. His lone loss came by a head to the tough older sprinter Miles Ahead in the Nov. 28 Thanksgiving Classic. Saturday, Montalcino toyed with second-level allowance foes, winning by 5 1/2 lengths while geared down. He clocked 1:08.97 for six furlongs on a fast track and earned a 100 Beyer Speed Figure, down from 103 in the Thanksgiving Classic. “He ran faster than I hoped, but he ran really well,” DeVaux said. “It was just a prep to get him to the Commonwealth [Stakes] at Keeneland.” DeVaux’s lone stakes winner at the meet, Taking Candy, is on track to race in the $300,000 Muniz Memorial after capturing the Fair Grounds Stakes last month. Rebel Red, third last out in the Grade 2 Red Smith, also will start in the Muniz for DeVaux. She Feels Pretty, winner of two Grade 1 middle-distance turf races to cap her 3-year-old campaign, will join DeVaux’s string at Keeneland in March. Vahva, winner of the Grade 1 Derby City Distaff in May, is already there and posted her first work of the year Sunday. If all goes well, Vahva will return to racing in May. DeVaux has a second 4-year-old dirt horse who’s even more lightly raced than Montalcino. Seaport Lane, for lack of a suitable maiden race, won his debut Jan. 30 in a first-level allowance, earning a 91 Beyer. While he’s eligible to run back in allowance company, Reagan’s Wit will make his stakes debut March 8 in the $125,000 Columbia at Tampa Bay. Second in his August debut, Reagan’s Wit, a 3-year-old grass horse, made his second start Jan. 20 and won a Fair Grounds maiden by eight lengths. “Last year, he was really narrow. It took him time to grow into himself, but now he’s filled out and looks great,” DeVaux said. On the Feb. 15 Risen Star card, DeVaux won two dirt sprint maiden races with first timers, the colt Retribution and the filly Ahavah. Ahavah is Vahva’s 3-year-old sister, and DeVaux will consider stretching her out to a route. Many of DeVaux’s young horses this winter have routed their Fair Grounds foes, and she has gotten glowing reports on the crop of 2-year-olds soon to enter her stable. Last year’s breakout doesn’t seem like a peak. :: Want to learn more about handicapping and wagering? Check out DRF's Handicapping 101 and Wagering 101 pages.