Monty Arrossa out to defend his crown in the race named after his father Pete

CYPRESS >> This afteoon, back home at the fairgrounds track his dad so loved, Monty Arrossa will attempt to defend the championship his horse won last year in the very race named after his late father.

And he’ll do so — in a sport where titles are frequently decided by nothing longer than a horse’s nose — nearly 800 miles away, at Los Alamitos Race Course, roughly a 12-hour drive from Jerome, Idaho.

“Dad would have wanted me to be here,” Arrossa says. “This would have been huge in my dad’s book. He would have loved this.”

Pete Arrossa died in March of 2015. For Father’s Day 2016, Monty is giving his dad the most precious of ties — two races of supreme significance, running neck-and-neck and finishing in a dead heat of remembrance and tribute.

A few hours after the conclusion of the Pete Arrossa Memorial, Monty will saddle Fire Fast Corona here in the Ed Burke Million Futurity, this son vying for the exact sort of crown his father always assured him he could win.

But that’s what our dads are for, right, to give us, as sons, a reason to dream and every reason to believe in those dreams? Even after he’s gone? In fact, especially after he’s gone?

“My dad was the push behind me,” says Arrossa, a lifelong horseman who has been training full-time for three years. “He always told me, ‘You can do it. If you go down there (to Los Alamitos) and work hard, you can make this happen.’ He was the one who drove me.”

So, while Arrossa’s mother, Lisa, and sister, Jamie, represent the family today in Jerome, Pete’s son will be trying to fulfill his father’s remarkably optimistic forecast in the largest race of his career.

To understand how big of an opportunity the Ed Burke is for Arrossa, consider that his richest victory yet came in a $300,000 race in Iowa. The Ed Burke has a purse of $1.1 million.

“We’ve joked that, back home, $100,000 is a huge futurity,” Arrossa says. “The fact this is $1 million more than that is just incredible.”

Yeah, this is a big deal, a really big deal for a guy from Shoshone, Idaho, a guy whose high school had 99 students — and that’s including seventh and eighth grades — and whose graduating class numbered 19.

Back then, all Arrossa wanted to do was train horses, while his parents preached the importance of pursuing an education.

It was in junior high that Arrossa’s father made him decide between playing basketball and working with horses because of the time commitment both required.

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“When you’re that age, that’s a horrible choice to have to make,” Arrossa says. “I chose horses, of course. Looking back, that was the best choice. It was really a no-brainer. That was my passion.”

Raised on a small horse farm – that’s a small farm with horses, not a farm with small horses – Arrossa leaed to rope and rodeo. He followed his father’s path into chariot racing, training and driving the two-horsed buggies to world championships in 2000 and 2001.

Along the way, he eaed a degree in education and a master’s in human resource training from Idaho State, eventually working for the labor department and in private business.

Arrossa never wavered, however, in his desire to be around horses, even when that proximity reached its most extreme moment.

About 10 years ago, while preparing for a race, Arrossa made the mistake of reaching for a horse’s tail that was about to become entangled.

The colt reacted in a way that suggested he had been spooked, by which I mean the kick cost Arrossa 13 of his teeth and his entire consciousness.

He remembers the surgeon holding his left hand and telling him: “I’m going to put you back together. It’s going to be OK.”

For a while, all of Arrossa’s meals had to first pass through a blender. He lost 40 pounds. The scar on his chin is still visible.

When he was released from the hospital, the first place he visited was his ba. Just three weeks after the accident, Arrossa was driving chariots again.

“This is definitely my passion,” he says, unnecessarily. “Whatever you do, you’re in the people business. I love horse people. And I love horses. In the darkest times of my life, I’ve always been able to tu to horses. They’re always happy to see me in the moing.”

That’s why he’s willing to wake up every day at 3 a.m., day after day after day, for so long now that Arrossa can’t remember a day when he slept past that time.

He remains as driven as he was back when he was 18 and guiding his first horse ever to a stakes victory.

Arrossa now has 10 horses at Los Alamitos and another 34 back in Jerome, where his operation is based.

Today, the focus will be on Fire Fast Corona and Time For Jesse Lee, the colt trying to repeat in the Pete Arrossa Memorial.

“Dad loved the races at Jerome,” Arrossa says. “It’s my hometown. Part of my heart will definitely be there.”

Meanwhile, the rest of Monty Arrossa will be here, right where his father always told him he could be.