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Jockey Russell Baze, 49, recorded his 10,000th career victory Friday, February 1 at Golden Gate Fields. The milestone win came by the slimmest of margins, as Baze, the winningest jockey in North American racing history, won the third race of the day aboard Two Step Cat, who prevailed in a three-horse photo finish.<\/p>\n
Battling gamely along the rail, Two Step Cat won the one-mile race for $4,000 claimers by a nostril. \u201cI was surprised they put my number up,\u201d said Baze. \u201cI thought Brite Oakie was in front of me. I got a seriously good nod (of noses).\u201d<\/p>\n
Two Step Cat is trained by Armando Lage, who believed Baze made all the difference in his horse winning the photo. \u201cThat\u2019s why Russell is so good. He never gives up,\u201d said Lage. \u201cAnd, he\u2019ll ride a $4,000 claimer as hard as a stakes horse, because he just wants to win races.\u201d<\/p>\n
Baze finished the afternoon with 10,002 victories, as he teamed up with Lage again to win the sixth race with Royal Wager, and then captured the seventh race aboard Hawaiian Afleet, a mount he picked up from another jockey.<\/p>\n
Although pleased to have surpassed the 10,000-win mark, Baze doesn\u2019t plan to rest on his laurels. \u201cMilestones are a way of marking progress, and I think I still have a lot of milestones in front of me,\u201d he said.<\/p>\n
Friday\u2019s victory was the second landmark win for Baze in the past 14 months. On Dec. 2, 2006 at Bay Meadows, he overtook Laffit Pincay, Jr. as North America\u2019s all-time win leader, when he posted career win 9,531.<\/p>\n
Baze, who was inducted into the Racing Hall of Fame in 1999, was honored with a special Eclipse Award in 1995 for being the first jockey ever to win 400 or more races in a year for four consecutive years. He has also led the nation in victories eight times \u2013 in 2005 (375 wins), 2002 (431), 2000 (412), 1996 (415), 1995 (448), 1994 (415), 1993 (410), and 1992 (433).<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"
Jockey Russell Baze, 49, recorded his 10,000th career victory Friday, February 1 at Golden Gate…<\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":2,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"open","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[2],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-395","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-racing"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/users\/2"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcomments&post=395"}],"version-history":[{"count":0,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=\/wp\/v2\/posts\/395\/revisions"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fmedia&parent=395"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Fcategories&post=395"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"https:\/\/www.sallyharrison.com\/index.php?rest_route=%2Fwp%2Fv2%2Ftags&post=395"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}