Midlantic-based trainer Cal Lynch celebrated the 1000th victory of his training career when Mosler Time took out the Saturday finale at Laurel Park.
The 4-year-old gelding covered six furlongs on the main track in 1:12.25 in the claiming event for 3-, 4- and 5-year-old maidens and comes one day after Forest Boyce marked 1000 wins in the saddle at Laurel.
“I'm delighted for everybody that's helped get to this point. It's all about the team,” he said. “A thousand winners, a lot of people helped get there. A lot of owners and horses in 30-odd years of doing this. It's my name on there but it's because everybody did their part. We're delighted.”
Lynch, 49, came to the U.S. in 1996 from Northern Ireland at the age of 19 after gaining experience training off his father's farm. His younger brother, former English apprentice champion Feargal, rides on the Maryland circuit.
According to Equibase statistics, Lynch's first training win came with Aneissa Chocolate Apr. 11, 1997, at old Garden State Park in New Jersey, winning his first stakes with Holiest Punch in the 2001 Bold Josh Handicap at The Meadowlands. He spent 12 years based at Parx before relocating to Maryland in 2016.
Lynch has won the first of his three graded-stakes with Javerre (Outflanker) in the 2013 GIII General George S. at Laurel. The other two came in the 2017 GIII Jerome S. and GIII Withers S. with El Areeb, who missed the Triple Crown series after suffering a knee fracture after running third in the Gotham.
“We're not done yet,” Lynch added. “I'll [look back] that when we're sitting on a beach in Florida in like 20 more years. Right now, we'll enjoy today. I just got back from the barn doing the feed. We'll be back out there tomorrow morning and the day I don't want to do that, that's the day I'll start looking back. We have a lot of really nice young horses coming in and a good barn full of horses here. I'm very, very lucky to be able to do this every day.”
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