Turf Paradise sees Scott Stevens ride 4,000th Thoroughbred winner

Scott Stevens guided home favored Summer Nights ($4.60) in Friday’s fourth race at Turf Paradise to register his 4,000th career Thoroughbred winner.

Stevens now has 4,157 winners for all breeds. He recorded his overall 4,000th winner for all breeds at Canterbury Downs on Aug. 9, 2009.

In the five-furlong turf race for $16,000 claiming fillies and mares, Stevens put the 5-year-old mare right on the lead and steadily increased his margin, eventually winning by seven7 lengths for owner/trainer Miguel Silva.

Stevens’s continued success is even more remarkable considering that just last July he was involved in a spill at Canterbury that left him in critical condition after puncturing both lungs and fracturing multiple ribs, vertebrae, and his collarbone. He also suffered significant injuries in a spill at Turf Paradise back in 2002, breaking his pelvis in six places.

He began riding in 1976 in Idaho and has been a fixture in Arizona. Stevens has won six riding titles at Turf Paradise, all in the 1990s, including five in a row. He has also ridden extensively at Assiniboia Downs in Manitoba and Canterbury in Minnesota. He won three consecutive riding titles at Canterbury in the early 1990s.

Stevens, 50, is also the older brother of Hall of Fame jockey Gary Stevens.