Merton won the seventh race with See You Smile($5.20) in
1:57.4 and then copped the ninth with Bitter Sweet($3.20) in 2:00.2
Merton’s hat trick victory came in the 11th race when he guided
Betterthanlynx ($2.80) to a 1:59.3 triumph for the pacer’s third win in a
row. See You Smile’s victory was also his third consecutive while
Bitter Sweet triumph was his second in a row.
All three of Merton’s winners are trained by Pete Pellegrino
who has been on fire since coming to the Mighty M from Florida in early April.
Pellegrino has won 24 of 50 races here and carries an whopping .571 training
percentage. The vast majority of Pellegrino’s winners were driven by Greg
Merton and those wins, along with others he has catch-driven to victory
have bolstered Merton’s numbers. Currently his 78 driving victories rank him a
solid fourth on the local leaderboard trailing top gun Jimmy Taggart, Jr. by 27
wins.
Only a small part of Pellegrino’s stable competes at
the Mighty M but the ones that do have made thus far been very successful.
Pellegrino also has horses that compete at Yonkers Raceway, the
Meadowlands, Pocono Downs and Freehold Raceway.
“Every horse that I’ve driven for Pete was ready to win and
thankfully many of them have. I’m just glad that I’m Pete’s driver of
choice here at Monticello,” Merton said.
