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| Michael Forte (Geri Schwarz Photo) |
Mike Forte reined a pair of winners on the Thursday card of December 8th at Monticello Raceway and with those two driving victories Forte moves closer to 3000 career wins.
His first triumph was behind Lewis Miller’s trotter, Wayfarer, in a time of 2:05.2 and then he came back to win eighth race with Brian Walker and Brian Kleinberg’s 3-year –old old trotter, Absolutely Certain in 2:05.Those victories gave Forte 148 at the current meeting which ranks him fifth on the leaderboard, but more importantly he now is just 15 wins from a personal milestone of 3000 driving victories.
Forte, 53, began driving in the late 1970’s and spent his early career racing in metropolitan New York. Although he raced sparingly at the Mighty M in those days he became a regular here in 2005 and has accumulated nearly 1150 wins since then. Forte averaged nearly 170 winners per year over that seven year stretch at Monticello Raceway and had it not been for a serious racing accident he sustained during the 2007 campaign which laid him up for several months Forte certainly would have added to the74 driving victories he ended- up accumulating that season
