Trainer Mike Reavis sends out 2,000th career winner

Longtime Chicago-circuit trainer Mike Reavis won his 2,000th race Saturday with a pair of victories at Hawthorne Race Course.

Saint Alexius won the opener to give Reavis win 1,999, and McKinli’sbabyblues came right back in race 2 for the milestone score.

Carlos Marquez Jr., Reavis’s first-call rider for several years now, was aboard both horses.

Reavis, 72, is a Vietnam veteran whose uncle, Willis Reavis, trained in California. Reavis had his first runners in 1977 and by 1984 had bumped his seasonal win total to a robust 86. He mastered the claiming game and churned out a steady diet of 20-percent seasons on good volume through the late 80s, all of the 1990s, and first decade of the 2000s.

It took Reavis 10,231 starts to hit Saturday’s mark, and his stable has career earnings of more than $29 million.