Martinez can start week with a multi-win day

Between 1991 and 2015, a Fonner Park horseplayer could, for the most part, overlook horses sent out by trainer Kelli Martinez. During that span her runners at Fonner made 1,273 starts and won 81 races, a 6 percent strike rate. There were leaner seasons, too, like 2014 and 2015, when the stable won four races from 127 starters.

But Martinez, a Nebraska native whose longtime husband, Armando, is the operation’s main jockey, started a major Fonner turnaround in 2015, when she won 14 races. She had no Fonner runners in 2017 but ranked near the top of the standings in 2018 and 2019 and comes into Monday’s racing action tied with Isai Gonzalez for leading trainer with 19 wins.

Martinez has reached that total with just 55 starters, a 34 percent strike rate that has yielded a $2.12 return on investment. In fact, blindly playing Martinez-trained horses at any track was a good idea during all of 2019, when her ROI came back a robust $2.22.

Martinez has at least one runner in four of the nine races on the Monday card at Fonner (first post 4 p.m. Central) and could easily come up with multiple winners.

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In race 2, a $5,000 nonwinners-of-two claimer, she has 5-2 morning-line favorite Dreaming Type, who won a maiden race two starts ago before getting walloped last out in a Fonner race at this level. The maiden win, however, came in a one-turn race over a half-mile, same as Monday’s configuration, where the last-start flop took place in a two-turn, six-furlong start. The pick to win this race, however, is the Marisa Black-trained It Never Happened, who had a wide draw last time in a race he needed following a layoff and ran well enough at his 2019 peak to contend.

In race 7, a $2,500 claimer with conditions, Martinez sends out Trask, who would be a very appealing play at his 6-1 morning-line odds but figures to go postward considerably shorter than that. Trask hasn’t started since Dec. 6, when he showed a distaste for the Polytrack at Turfway Park, but sports an encouraging Fonner work pattern suggesting he can capitalize on what appears to be a meaningful class edge over this group.

Race 8 is the day’s feature, an entry-level allowance carded at six furlongs in which Martinez sends out Chickes Done, a horse with another morning-line, 4-1, that might not reflect post-time odds. Chickes Done needed 13 tries to win a maiden race but when she finally did so last out it came in her first Fonner start. Chickes Done appeared to relish the compact Fonner oval, disputing the pace before drawing away to a four-length victory, and with more than three weeks to recover from that effort, Chickes Done can win right back.

In race 9, an open $5,000 claimer, Martinez is two-handed with Choir Director and Theboyfromjersey. The latter makes his first start since September, while the former is the riding assignment of the trainer’s husband – surely a tell regarding which of the pair is more highly regarded in this spot.