Trainer O'Connell gets career win No. 2,000

Kathleen O’Connell won the 2,000th race of her training career on Wednesday, when first-time starter Wishful Quality fought back along the inside to win in a photo at Delaware Park, returning $53.80. The milestone was reached in the sixth race, a maiden special weight for 2-year-old fillies.

O’Connell won the first race of her career June 16, 1981, at Hazel Park, according to Daily Racing Form records.

Wishful Quality jumped out to the lead soon after the start Wednesday and put up fractions of 22.25 seconds for the opening quarter and 45.53 for the half-mile. In the stretch, she was challenged by 1-2 favorite Our Super Freak and came back along the inside for a head win under jockey Hector Rafael Diaz Jr.

Wishful Quality covered the six furlongs on a fast track in 1:10.44. O’Connell trains the daughter of Exclusive Quality for breeder and owner Charles Runion.

O’Connell keeps divisions of her stable at Gulfstream Park West and Monmouth Park, which closed Sunday. She picked up career win 1,999 on Sunday at Gulfstream Park with Christmas Magic.

O’Connell said last week that reaching the milestone would be meaningful on several levels.

“It’s a lot of personal satisfaction,” she said. “It’s a huge milestone for anybody, let alone the time and period I [started out]. There weren’t too many women on the track.”

O’Connell is the daughter of a Detroit police officer, and she grew up eight miles from Detroit Race Course. She started her career as a hotwalker at that track. O’Connell has since trained the earners of more than $36 million, among them Lady Shipman, second by a neck in the 2015 Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint; Stormy Embrace, the Grade 2 Princess Rooney winner at Gulfstream Park; and Ivanvinalot, a Grade 2 winner and the dam of champion Songbird.

O’Connell’s list of stakes winners also includes millionaire Blazing Sword, winner of the Grade 2 Washington Park Handicap in 2000 at Arlington; Watch Me Go, winner of the Grade 2 Tampa Bay Derby in 2011; and Scandalous Act, who swept a division of the Florida Sire Stakes series in 2013.