EAST RUTHERFORD, N.J. – With all of the travelling he has done this year to find spots to accommodate a stable that consists mostly of grass and synthetic horses, trainer Jorge Duarte, Jr., concedes he’s “a little tired.”

But the 41-year-old is doing more than accumulating frequent flyer miles. He’s also having one of the better years of his career.

Duarte will look to add to that during Friday’s Monmouth at Meadowlands meet when he sends out Light de Night and Best Girl Magic, with the latter going in the featured $36,000 allowance at five furlongs on the all-turf, six-race card.

Duarte and Peter Synnefias are currently tied for leading trainer honors with two wins apiece at the boutique meet that runs through Oct. 16. Duarte has two wins and a second from his three starters so far at the North Jersey track.

“It has been a lot of travel for me for sure. I’ve been to a lot of different tracks this year but I like it,” said Duarte, the private trainer for Colts Neck Stables. “We’re just trying to chase purse money and find the right spots. We have a lot of turf horses and a lot of tracks offer quite a bit of turf racing, so we kind of follow it.

“The roster of horses kind of steers us where we need to go. When you have as many turf horses as we have you have to go to places that run a lot of turf and stay on the turf.”

Overall, Duarte’s 2026 journey has seen him start a horse at 12 different tracks after spending the winter based at Turfway Park and the summer at Colonial Downs. Colts Neck Stables was the leading owner at the Colonial Downs meet with eight wins.

Overall, Duarte has 24 wins from 105 starters, having already surpassed last year’s win total of 19. He appears headed for at least the second-best year of his career.

“It means a lot because we don’t have as many horses and don’t have as many starts as we usually do,” he said. “In 2019 we had 195 starts, but we had a lot more horses then compared to this year (35 overall).

“In the big picture it seems like things have been a pretty good for us this year.”

After transitioning to being the private trainer for Colts Neck Stables in 2017 and 2018, when he an Alan Goldberg both oversaw divisions, Duarte started full-time on his own in 2019.

He has 185 career wins from 1,044 starters. But for the first time since 2019 he was not a major presence at Monmouth Park, with two wins from just seven starters. In 2025 he started 28 horses at Monmouth Park.

“The game changes year by year so you have to adapt,” he said. “The horses just didn’t fit as well at Monmouth this year. We had to follow the turf racing.”

Light de Night, who goes in the second race on Friday, comes in off a win against $10,000 maiden claimers on Sept. 25 at the Meadowlands.

Best Girl Magic will take on nine other fillies and mares in her first start since April 17 at Laurel.

“She was one of our Turfway horses,” Duarte said. “She had an opposite schedule and needed a little freshening. We’re binging her back and hoping to use this as a starting point.”

For Duarte, his travelling for the year may not be done, either. He is looking at potentially starting a horse or two in Florida – he has yet to race at Tampa or Gulfstream this year – and is also strongly considering a move to Belmont Park, which now has a synthetic surface that many turf horses find to be an easier transition.

“We’re still undecided about going back to Turfway for the winter or going to New York,” he said.

He will also look to start more horses during the Monmouth at Meadowlands week.

“We don’t have anything for Saturday, but we’ll have some horses for the following weekend,” said Duarte. “We’ll be shooting away there.”