Trainer Butch Reid notches 1,000th win
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Longtime Mid-Atlantic trainer Butch Reid won his 1,000th race on Monday when 4-year-old filly Jeanne Marie fired fresh off a layoff to win a $42,000 allowance at Parx Racing. Reid celebrated the milestone achievement with friends and family in a packed winner's circle after the race.
"You're never sure, but we were fortunate enough to have a big crowd show up that day and she got the job done," Reid said.
After winning his 998th and 999th races in stakes at Laurel Park, Reid said that he was trying not to think about chasing the milestone. He thought it would lead to a drought, but the fates were with him either way. Jeanne Marie came through for him nine days after 7-year-old gelding Fore Harp won the $100,000 King T. Leatherbury.
In 5,883 starts, Reid’s horses have earned $41,133,028 to go along with his 1,000 wins. In that four-digit total, 19 victories came in graded stakes races, including three Grade 1 events. He was inducted into the Parx Racing Hall of Fame in 2021.
Milestones can be an opportunity to look back on one's achievements. But when Reid gave a review of his career, he didn't start with Vequist, winner of the 2020 Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies, or Poseidon's Warrior, upset winner of the 2012 Grade 1 Vanderbilt, or Groscar, his first graded stakes winner in 1990. Instead, he went back to the very beginning.
The 68-year-old trainer got his start at Meadowlands Racetrack in 1985. His first official race as a trainer was a victory on Oct. 25 that year, when newly claimed 6-year-old gelding Colonel Cole won a $17,000 allowance for Arthur J. Berg, owner of Tresvant Stable.
Nearly three weeks later, Reid won his second career start when his older brother, trainer and 2013 Parx Racing Hall of Fame inductee Mark J. Reid, sent him the 5-year-old horse Rock Lives. Also owned by Tresvant Stable, the live runner won on first asking for the younger Reid in a $12,500-$10,500 claiming race.
"He was just a very neat horse," Reid said. "I remember him like it was yesterday."
For Reid, looking back evoked memories of a different industry too. Celebrating with his older brother and his wife, Virginia, in the winner's circle Monday made the trainer think of his family in those early days.
When he was starting out, Reid chased racing up and down the East Coast like a carnival performer. There were long nights and constant relocations. His brother gave him a leg up when he could. His wife was his top exercise rider, then a co-owner. His daughter, Whitney, changed schools every year. It was a family entirely dedicated to the racing business.
Reid still has plenty to offer in the racing business; his 1,000th victory merely the most recent of countless career markers. But for a brief moment this week, he and his loved ones were taken back through decades of memories. A flood of historic victories came pouring back through the stable when Jeanne Marie crossed the wire first on Monday. What was left behind for the trainer was gratitude for the people and horses who stood by him along the way.
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