Duc Dorleans Set To Head North

Quebec’s most accomplished equine snowbird will soon be heading home.

Five-year-old pacer Duc Dorleans will make the final start of his lucrative winter campaign at Pompano Park in the seventh race on Saturday night.

So far, the Shanghai Phil gelding has collected more than $50,000 in Florida. He’s been a dominant force in the open class all winter. At one point, he won it four weeks running.

"He’ll go to the Meadowlands next for a month, then to Toronto," said co-owner Jacques Dupont. "We’ve actually staked him a bit this year, not to the biggest events, but to the ones where the top ones usually don’t go. He's a good traveller. He`s raced at about a dozen tracks over the years."

Duc Dorleans proved he could compete at a high level at three, when he won a $200,000 Ontario Sires Stakes Super Final at Mohawk, and again at four, when he was the surprising runner-up to Sunfire Blue Chip in the $200,000 Prix d’Ete at Hippodrome 3R in Trois-Rivières.

"He’s had some sickness problems, including when he was a weanling, so we went easy on him early on. Stephane Brosseau (his regular driver at two and three) drove him like he owned him. It really helped him, bravened him up. And he's a horse who always seemed to get good for the big races, when it counted," Dupont said. "For a while, it didn’t look like we’d even qualify for the Prix d’Ete (on earnings), but others stayed home and we made it in. At the half, he was eighth and I didn`t think he`d even get a cheque, but things opened up and he closed inside. Before the big race in Ontario, he’d been having a problem with allergies but we got it straightened out, squeaked into the race and then got a perfect trip from Sylvain Filion."

To date, Duc Dorleans has earned more than $450,000. He’s the best horse to come along in four decades for Dupont, a former full-time trainer who had to find another line of work after Hippodrome de Montreal closed. He now works as a dispatcher for a firm that trucks contaminated dirt.

Duc Dorleans is a homebred. His dam, Legende Dorleans, won the $300,000 Coupe des Eleveurs final for three-year-old pacing fillies for Dupont in 2002.

"What`s most impressive about this horse is his big heart. He always tries. I own him with Claude Levesque, who’s been a friend for 20 years," said Dupont (no relation to Donald Dupont, who trained and drove Duc Dorleans for them this winter in Florida).

They also have his full sister, called Shanghai Dorleans, a yearling in 2015. They`ll be happy if she can earn her way. "My daughter`s already told me we`ll never have another (like Duc)," Dupont said.

(A Trot Insider Exclusive by Paul Delean)