CHICAGO - Trainer Mike Reavis did his best Ty Cobb impression during opening week of the National Jockey Club at Hawthorne race meet, hitting everything in sight.

Friday's opener was a slow day for Reavis, but Saturday he won two races. On Sunday came a breather, and then the Reavis barn really started cracking. Reavis sent out three winners Monday, another three on Tuesday. Five days into the meet, he was batting a cool .500, with eight wins from 16 starters.

No other trainer, including well-stocked Frank Kirby, has more than two victories.

Assiniboia Downs in Winnipeg, which opened for training Tuesday under cold and snowy conditions, will run 30 stakes at its 2005 meeting, which begins May 1.

Heading the stakes program, which is worth a total of $1.25 million, is the Manitoba Lotteries Derby. The purse for the race had been cut to $75,000 last year, but has been restored to $100,000.

The Manitoba Lotteries Derby, a 1 1/8-mile race for 3-year-olds, will be featured on the Aug. 1 card that also includes three $40,000 races, the Winnipeg Futurity, Jack Hardy, and Wheat City.

Timber Jones, who in her two-turn debut won a division of the $125,000 Texas Stallion Stakes for 3-year-old fillies at Sam Houston Race Park on Feb. 19, will continue racing two turns for now, said trainer Steve Asmussen.

Timber Jones is being pointed for the $40,000 Sam Houston Oaks at one mile on March 12.

"I want to keep her stretched out up to the next Stallion Stakes," said Asmussen.

The next race in the Texas Stallion Stakes series is the $125,000 Got Koko division for 3-year-old fillies on April 30. The 1 1/16-mile race will be run at Lone Star Park.

The race for the trainer title at Beulah Park has often been hotly contested in the past several years, but not this spring.

About halfway through the meeting, which ends here on Kentucky Derby Day, May 7, Reid Gross is well on his way to his first local training title. Through Tuesday, Gross held a 32-12 advantage over Rodney Faulkner. Mike Nance is third in the standings, winning with 10 of his 20 starters at the meet. Faulkner's father, Joe, who led the standings here in the fall, is tied for ninth with five wins.

Sooner Be Dancin' needed nine starts to win her maiden. Since finding her groove, however, Sooner Be Dancin' has been nearly unstoppable.

A 4-year-old filly trained by Flint Stites, Sooner Be Dancin' ($7.60) won her third in a row and fourth in her last five starts when she scored by 2 1/2 lengths in a two-other-than allowance last Saturday night at Charles Town.

The early leaders in the jockey and trainer standings are a perfect reversal of last year's leaders as Curtis Kimes, in his second year of riding at Fonner Park, had a riding triple Saturday and boosted his lead over Perry Compton to 18-12 after three weekends. Compton was forced to take off his mounts Saturday and Sunday due to the flu. R.D. Williams posted triples on Friday and Sunday to move into third with nine wins.

Fasig-Tipton Texas has cataloged 263 juveniles to its 2-year-olds in training sale at Lone Star Park on April 5. The workout show is scheduled for April 3.

Among the offerings are a filly by Tale of the Cat, the sire of the world-record $5.2 million juvenile sold earlier this week at Fasig-Tipton's sale at Calder Race Course in Miami. Also making up the catalog are nine colts and six fillies by Texas's leading sire, Valid Expectations.

Lone Star's backstretch will begin filling with the 2-year-olds March 24, and the track will open for their training March 25.

Thistledown-based trainer Jeff Radosevich continued his hot hand at Mountaineer when he saddled the winners of races 7, 8, and 9 on last Saturday night's program.

Radosevich, who now leads the trainer standings with 10 wins in 31 starts, scored with a pair of horses making their first starts in 2 1/2 months, Chelsey's Dyna Sea ($18.80) and Weanling Got Big ($11.40), along with Proud Tears ($3.20), who won for the fourth time in a row in a $30,000 claiming race.

After starting off the season ice-cold, Jorge Tipa has turned into one of the hottest jockeys on the grounds at Penn National.

Since going 1 for 27 to begin 2005, Tipa has won with 11 of his last 28 mounts to climb to eighth place in the jockey standings, with 12 wins in 55 starts.

Tipa has done particularly well riding for trainer Bruce Kravets, going 5 for 17 with a $3.01 return on investment.

Apprentice rider Kate M. Repp continues to make the most of limited opportunities.

Last Sunday, Repp accounted for a $454 daily double in races 8 and 9, when she coaxed 6-year-old gelding El Frio ($81.20) to a half-length victory in a first-level allowance sprint and scored by three-quarters of a length with the maiden claimer Jack's Birthday ($9.20).

Since arriving from northern California, Repp is 4 for 9 with a $13.62 return on investment.