Streaking Monte Man fresh for Heitai Stakes
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Trainer Ron Faucheux and owner Brian Ivery attended races at Saratoga during summer 2017 and noticed a horse named Monte Man. What they liked especially was the “La” in his past performances, the abbreviation denoting Louisiana-bred status.
Faucheux trains year-round in Louisiana, and Ivery, who races as Ivery Sisters Racing, keeps a couple horses with him to complement his stable in the Northeast. On Oct. 17, 2017, Monte Man ran for a $25,000 tag at Belmont, and Ivery and Faucheux reached out and claimed him. And that has worked out very, very well.
Monte Man won first- and second-level Louisiana-bred allowance races last season at Fair Grounds, then went on to win four Louisiana-bred sprint stakes worth about $315,000 combined through the rest of the winter, spring, and summer. He’s 6 for 6 since the claim and figures to be favored Saturday at Fair Grounds in the $50,000 Heitai Stakes. If he runs to form, he should be favored again next month in the $100,000 Louisiana Champions Day Sprint.
“He’s just kind of blossomed in our program, continued to get better through the first couple of races for us, and gotten to a point where he can compete with the best in his division down here,” Faucheux said. “If we could win this one and Champions Day and go undefeated for the year, that’d be pretty neat.”
Faucheux has 33 horses at Fair Grounds and is batting .270 in the win column this season, a bounce-back year after his stable dropped off some in 2017. At its peak, Faucheux’s stable numbered 55 and in 2014, his fifth full year as a trainer, he won 80 races. This season’s total is 39 and counting, but Faucheux appears to have stabilized his operation now.
“We stay in Louisiana the year round. The summer months have really changed a lot and gotten slow,” he said.
It was for lack of appealing options that Monte Man was kept to just one race, an Aug. 4 win, since May, and he enters the Fair Grounds meet a fresh horse. Post 1 in a seven-horse field is not ideal, and jockey Gabriel Saez will have to work out a trip, but Monte Man has put together this win streak through a variety of circumstances.
Divine Bean, a lightly raced 3-year-old with upside, might make the lead from post 2 with 6-year-old warrior Jockamo’s Song not far behind. Jockamo’s Song and another veteran of the division, 6-year-old Grande Basin, don’t seem to have quite the spark they might have 18 months ago, while Win Lion Win needs turf for his best performance and Greeley Went West has failed to develop. Cheers to Berti might have a touch of longshot upside, but all in all, seven in a row looks likely for Monte Man, an excellent claim.
