Off to an unusually soft start this year Forte may now have
snapped out of his doldrums after reining four winners on the Monticello
Raceway card of March 21.
“You know how it is,” he says,” sometimes you get the
bear and sometimes the bear gets you. True, I’m off to a slower start
than usual but things will change,. They always do. Winning four races
yesterday sure is good for my moral. Now maybe things will now continue to get
better?”
Although Forte’s 31 seasonal wins ranks him eighth on the
local leaderboard, his current UDR of .175 is far below his norm.
“I think things will pick up now that other tracks are opening
and some of the guys who have been getting the live mounts move on,” he added.
On Thursday, March 21 Forte had his best day thus far this
season. He won four races, had one second and one third place
finish in seven starts.
Forte made his first drive of the day a winning one when he
guided Joe Omboni, Jr.’s, Shando Hanover, ($3.60) to a 2:01.4 in the
third race.
Then starting in race nine Forte strung together three
consecutive victories. He scored with Ruth Ingram’s Syncro’s Z Tam ($21.40) in
2:02.1 in the ninth and then copped the 10th with Brett Smith’s
trotter Contract Hit in a time of 2:02.2. That victory put a smile on the
longshot players faces—and maybe their pocketbooks-- when Contract Hit returned
across the board mutual payoffs of $91.00, $35.20, and $12.60.
Forte’s fourth and final winner of the afternoon was behind
Dennis Lacey’s pacer, Totally Perfect ($6.40) when Forte found racing room
along the pylons in the deep stretch for a 2:01.3 victory.
With his four winners on March 21th Forte now has
3241 career driving victories.
