Ivan Fallunovalot easing back into job
Ivan Fallunovalot is back in training. The stakes-winning sprinter was on the track for the first time since April on Tuesday at Lone Star Park, according to trainer Tom Howard.
Ivan Fallunovalot missed the Grade 3, $400,000 Count Fleet Sprint Handicap in April at Oaklawn due to a soft-tissue injury to his left hind leg. He rehabbed at an Arkansas farm and shipped to Lone Star on June 2.
Howard said the horse walked the shed row under tack upon his arrival at Lone Star but on Tuesday went out for a one-mile jog on the main track.
“Really, I should have taken him two,” joked Howard. “His attitude hasn’t changed. He’s come back, and he thinks he runs the show.”
Howard said in about 30 days, he will have a feel for when Ivan Fallunovalot might return to the races. The horse made his last start March 11 and was second to Whitmore in the $125,000 Hot Springs Stakes at Oaklawn.
"He's doing real good," said Howard.
Ivan Fallunovalot is a Grade 3 winner and an earner of more than $800,000 who races for Lewis Matthews Jr. He is part of a six-horse stable Howard brought in June 2, with the group also including Oaklawn stakes winner Will Munnings. More runners will join the barn this fall when Howard sets up shop at Remington Park.
Ivan Fallunovalot won Remington’s richest race for sprinters, the $150,000 David M. Vance, last September. The race will be renewed Sept. 24. Earlier in his career, Ivan Fallunovalot ran a troubled ninth in the 2015 Breeders’ Cup Sprint.
Ivan Fallunovalot will be honored as the Texas Thoroughbred Association’s older horse of 2016 during a Saturday night banquet at Lone Star. He won all four of his starts last year, including the Grade 3 De Francis Memorial Dash at Laurel. Ivan Fallunovalot was the Texas-bred of the Year in 2015.
