Geroux makes rapid ascent in second Fair Grounds season

Back in early December, jockey Florent Geroux was fresh off the biggest win of his riding career, a victory in the Breeders’ Cup Sprint aboard Work All Week. But if the high-profile victory was supposed to provide an immediate boost to his business at Fair Grounds, Geroux wasn’t feeling it.

Yet now, almost 3 1/2 months into the Fair Grounds meet, Geroux is making hay. He sits third in the standings in terms of both wins and earnings, his 59 victories through Sunday already 29 more winners than he rode during the entire 2013-14 Fair Grounds meet, his first, when Geroux couldn’t even crack the top 10 in the standings. He has five stakes wins at this meet – three on the Feb. 21 card alone – second-best among the local colony, and is the top Fair Grounds rider in turf races, with 31 wins to leading jock James Graham’s 29. Geroux is treating bettors right, too, with a $2.01 return on investment at this meet.

Geroux’s start to the year is his best in seven full seasons riding in the U.S., and that after a career year in 2014, his $5.8 million in purse earnings more than $2.5 million greater than his next-best season. His decision to break away from the Chicago circuit and move his tack to New Orleans in 2013 didn’t bear immediate fruit, but it is paying off now.

“I think sometimes it takes a little while to prove what you can do on horses at a new track,” said Geroux, 28. “I think they want to not just see you doing it, but doing it for them. Last year at Fair Grounds, people would give me the possibility, but they didn’t know me very well. ‘Who is this guy?’ This year, people already knowing me and coming off a strong year helped a lot.”

Geroux, whose agent is the former racing secretary Doug Bredar, has gotten into a wide swath of successful barns at Fair Grounds, and while he has not ridden a lot for trainer Larry Jones, he did pick up one very important mount early in the meet – I’m a Chatterbox. Jones said recently that he thought from the start that Geroux might fit the relatively diminutive filly, and their partnership, indeed, quickly blossomed. Geroux rode I’m a Chatterbox to a front-running victory in the Silverbulletday Stakes in January and to a come-from-behind score in the Feb. 21 Rachel Alexandra Stakes. He will have the mount in the Fair Grounds Oaks, and if all goes well, in the Kentucky Oaks, too.

Yet Geroux, who began race-riding in France at 17 and was taken under the wing of trainer Patrick Biancone when he emigrated to the U.S., has no immediate plans to try to use his strong recent run to move to a bigger circuit. His wife and two young children reside in Chicago – Geroux visits on dark days almost every week – and he said he will return to Arlington despite the present gloomy state of the Chicago circuit.

“That’s where my wife is from, I have a house, and I’m going back this year because I don’t want to move everyone around,” said Geroux. “I’m going to think about what I’m going to do at the end of the year and next year for sure. I love Chicago, but I have to see what happens there.”

Geroux is humble and hungry – and smart. He has steadily improved his performance over the last several years and still seems to be getting better. If, when the time is right, he wants to reach for more, he will not be aiming too high.