Trainer Doug O'Neill wins 3,000th race

ARCADIA, Calif. – It was fitting that trainer Doug O’Neill reached his 3,000th Thoroughbred win in North America in Sunday’s eighth race at Santa Anita with a colt owned and bred by Paul and Zillah Reddam.

O’Neill, 57, has won two Kentucky Derbys for the Reddams – with I’ll Have Another in 2012 and Nyquist in 2016.

“I’m so glad we were able to get our 3,000th for them,” O’Neill said in the winner’s circle.

O’Neill, among California’s leading trainers in recent decades, began Sunday with 2,998 wins after Mining District won an allowance race on Saturday. His 2,999th and 3,000th wins occurred in maiden races for California-bred 2-year-olds with Pavlovian and Hero Or Zero, colts by Pavel. The Reddams also bred and own Pavlovian.

In between their wins in the sixth and eighth races, the O’Neill-trained Origami finished sixth in the seventh race.

After a brief ceremony in the winner’s circle following Hero Or Zero’s win, O’Neill hugged Leandro Mora, his assistant since 2001.

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Speaking of the milestone, O’Neill said, “It’s a testament to the great people I work with and the great horses.”

O’Neill nominated his two Kentucky Derby winners as well as the retired geldings Lava Man and Sky Jack as stable all-stars.

Lava Man was claimed for $50,000 in 2004, and went on to earn more than $5.1 million and win 13 stakes, including seven Grade 1 races. Lava Man later was a stable pony for O’Neill before being retired to Old Friends retirement farm. Sky Jack was a five-time stakes winner, including the Grade 1 Hollywood Gold Cup at Hollywood Park in 2001.

O’Neill began the racing week at Santa Anita on Thursday with 12 entrants spread across the final four days of the track’s spring meeting. He predicted three wins from the group. Hero Or Zero was his last starter of the week.

For the entirety of his career, O’Neill reached his 3,000th Thoroughbred winner on March 14 when Blue Fowler won an allowance race at Santa Anita. O’Neill has won 12 races in Dubai, most recently the Group 2 Godolphin Mile with Raging Torrent in April, and has one winner in Japan, in 2003.

More recently on the national scene, the O’Neill-trained Raging Torrent won the Grade 1 Metropolitan Mile Handicap at Saratoga on June 7 and is rated as a leading contender for the Breeders’ Cup Dirt Mile at Del Mar on Nov. 1.

O’Neill has won five Breeders’ Cup races in his career, the most recent of which was Nyquist in the 2015 Juvenile at Keeneland.

O’Neill has trained five champions – Stevie Wonderboy, 2005 2-year-old male; Thor’s Echo, 2006 sprinter; Maryfield, 2007 female sprinter; I’ll Have Another, 2012 3-year-old male; and Nyquist, 2015 2-year-old male.

The win by Hero Or Zero came 31 years and two weeks since Sir Cutter Slew gave O’Neill his first career win at Golden Gate Fields in June 1994.

Hero Or Zero and Pavlovian are likely to return in stakes at Del Mar this summer.

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