O’Connell nearing milestone

Women on the racetrack? Not so much when Kathleen O’Connell came onto the scene at the now-extinct Detroit Race Course.

“My first license was as a hotwalker and pony boy,” she recalled. “It wasn’t even girl!”

Times have changed, and O’Connell ranks high among the women who have risen to prominence in racing. She’s trained such notable stakes winners as 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 a candidate for the Breeders’ Cup Filly and Mare Sprint; and Ivanvinalot, a Grade 2 winner and the dam of champion Songbird.

O’Connell now is nearing a milestone of 2,000 career Thoroughbred training wins in North America. She had 1,998 heading into the races Saturday.

“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 a native of Detroit who made her own path to racing. Her father was a police officer in Detroit, and they lived eight miles from Detroit Race Course.

“I had always been drawn to horses even though I grew up in the city,” O’Connell said. “I was active in 4-H, active with show horses.

O’Connell’s first win as a trainer came on June 16, 1981, at Hazel Park, according to Daily Racing Form records. She won a career-high 107 races in 2009 and reached a career-best mark in stable earnings in 2015 with $2.7 million. O’Connell trainees have earned more than $36 million and won more than 70 stakes. Top runners for the barn have included 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.

O’Connell has divisions of her stable at Gulfstream Park West and Monmouth Park. She will be active Sunday at Gulfstream with Christmas Magic in the fourth race, an optional $16,000 claiming turf route for fillies and mares bred in Florida, and Awesome Clue in the seventh, a maiden-claiming sprint.

Claiming Crown staying put

Gulfstream Park will host the Claiming Crown through 2021, according to a Thursday announcement. The three-year agreement that begins in 2019 provides for the $1.1 million event to be held during the track’s championship meet. This year’s Claiming Crown is set for Dec. 1 at Gulfstream.

The Claiming Crown features nine divisional races for claiming horses, with the centerpiece the $200,000 Jewel. Gulfstream first hosted the Claiming Crown in 2013 and has seen handle on the card increase from $8.8 million to a record $11.1 million in 2017.

◗ Deputy Czar will be out to back up a big maiden score when he meets winners for the first time Sunday in the featured 10th race, an optional $16,000 claiming route for 3-year-olds and up that carries first-level allowance conditions. Deputy Czar was a 9 1/2-length maiden special weight winner, and the Beyer Speed Figure of 82 that he earned is the best last-race number in the field Sunday.