Ivan Fallunovalot brings funny name, big talent to Count Fleet Sprint

The horse with one of the best names on the backstretch is also one of the best horses at Oaklawn. Ivan Fallunovalot – pronounced “I’ve been falling off a lot” – is the highweight Thursday in the Grade 3, $300,000 Count Fleet Sprint Handicap. He brings three straight triple-digit Beyer Speed Figures into the race, including a 108 for a January allowance score and a 105 for a win in the $100,000 King Cotton Stakes in February.

“We claimed him last year hoping he would become a good horse,” Lewis Matthews Jr. said of the horse haltered for $25,000 last spring at Oaklawn. “I’m probably more amazed than anyone else. To me, it’s like being in a movie. It’s like a dream story. It gets better all the time.”

Matthews wanted to learn more about Ivan Fallunovalot and called the gelding’s breeder, Eileen H. Hartis, who also bred Grade 1 winner Got Koko.

“I said, ‘I have to ask you a question,’ ” Matthews recalled, “and she said, ‘The name?’ ”

Matthews said he was told the name came up as a joke in conversation one day. “She asked her husband, ‘Have you read the Russians have started coming to Keeneland to the sales to try to improve their racing stock?’ ” Her husband answered yes but seemed preoccupied. In an attempt to get his full attention, Matthews said a witty Hartis came back with, “Did you hear that the top jockey in Russia is Ivan Fallunovalot?”

Hartis’s clever name has been part of the fun Matthews has had with the best horse he’s raced in 11 years of ownership. Other notable runners campaigned by the 52-year-old native of Pine Bluff, Ark., include Commander Buck and Ain’t He a Pistol, a $5,000 claim turned stakes winner. Matthews owns a business that develops finance departments for automobile dealerships, and his biggest client is fellow Arkansas-based racehorse owner Frank Fletcher.

Ivan Fallunovalot will be based at Lone Star Park after Oaklawn, said trainer Tom Howard.