Gonzalez earns his 1,000th win - or 1,001st

Nick Gonzalez was feted for his 1,000th career victory after sending out Boca Pass to capture the eighth race at Fort Erie on Monday.

But, through a twist of fate, Gonzalez retroactively added another winner to his total on Monday and already had reached that milestone.

Gonzalez had sent out Klondike Jane to finish second in the last race of the 2009 Fort Erie meeting but the first-place finisher, Back to You, subsequently came up with a positive test.

That situation was finally resolved over the past few days and a ruling issued which disqualified Back to You and made Klondike Jane the winner.

The information was processed by Equibase, which provides Daily Racing Form's statistics, sometime on Monday.

The offshoot is that Boca Pass actually was the 1,001st winner for Gonzalez and, as far as history books go, his 1,000th will have come at Woodbine last Sunday with Michael's Bad Boy.

"We knew in the back of our minds that this could happen," said Gonzalez, who no longer trains Klondike Jane but had been aware that a ruling was near and reacted with great amusement to the news of his "phantom" winner.

Gonzalez, 58, saddled his first winner in 1976 and maintains strings both at Fort Erie and at Woodbine with the help of his wife and assistant, Martha Gonzalez.

Team Gonzalez has a serious candidate for this year's July 4 Queen's Plate in Big Red Mike, an upset winner of the Plate Trial.