Jockey DeShawn Parker Gets 5,000th Victory
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Photo: Courtesy Tuesday Blankenship & Ramsey Patterson/Coady Photography
Deshawn Parker
Veteran jockey Deshawn Parker won the 5,000th race of his career May 2, when he guided heavy favorite Be Nice to victory in the third race at Mountaineer Casino, Racetrack & Resort.
Parker, 45, has been a mainstay at Mountaineer, where he is the all-time leading rider. During the last few winters, he has ventured to Sam Houston Race Park in Texas, where he has found success as well.
Be Nice, owned by Kay Reed and trained by Eric Reed, won the $12,000 starter allowance event by 4 1/4 lengths and paid $3 to win. The 4-year-old Successful Appeal filly was bred in Kentucky by John J. Greely III.
Parker, a native of Cincinnati, Ohio, began riding in 1988, and is the leading African American jockey by wins in history.
At Mountaineer alone through May 2, Parker had 27,357 mounts with 4,566 wins, 3,943 seconds, and 3,519 thirds for earnings of more than $50.2 million, according to Equinline.com statistics. He has 39 black-type wins, 19 of them at the West Virginia track.
In 2012 he was honored by the Jockeys' Guild with its Laffit Pincay Jr. Award, and has twice been a finalist for the George Woolf Award at Santa Anita Park.
Parker's father, Daryl, in 1986 became the first African American hired as a steward in the United States.