PARX RACING HALL OF FAME ADDS THREE

Parx Racing Hall of Fame
New Parx Racing Hall of Fame inductees Robert “Butch” Reid, Patricia Farro, and Jim Malone (standing in for Eugene Euster). Photo by Bill Denver/EQUI-PHOTO..

Three trainers were inducted into the Parx Racing Hall of Fame October 12 on a day when Rock On Luke dominated the featured $100,000 Michael P. Ballezzi Appreciation Mile Stakes.

The three entrants into the track’s hall are Robert “Butch” Reid, Jr., Patricia Farro, and Eugene Euster.

Reid has won more than 800 races while generating over $28 million in purse earnings in his training career, which began in 1985. His top trainees have included last year’s Breeders’ Cup Juvenile Fillies winner Vequist, Grade 1 winner Poseidon’s Warrior, and Afleet Again, who won the Grade 2 Breeders’ Cup Marathon in 2011.

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Reid earned his first victory in 1985, in just his second start, when Rock Lives won a claiming race at the Meadowlands. His trainees have won at least $1 million in each of the last 13 years.

Farro, who won her first race in 1995, has gone on to visit the winner’s circle more than 1,900 times over the years, generating more than $47 million in purse earnings.

Farro’s top trainees include the multiple stakes winner Royal Currier and the graded stakes-placed Bold Thunder. Her runners earned more than $2 million annually for nine consecutive years, from 2011 through 2019, with her top year coming in 2015, when her trainees won 167 races and earned more than $5.2 million.

Euster, whose training career ended in 1988, was best known as the trainer for most of her career of national Hall of Famer My Juliet. My Juliet earned the Eclipse Award as champion sprinter in 1976, a year when she won two graded events and bested the boys in the Grade 2 Vosburgh.

The following year My Juliet again beat the boys, this time in the Grade 2 Michigan Mile and One Eighth Handicap. My Juliet was named to the national Hall of Fame in 2019.

Euster was represented by former longtime assistant Jim Malone.

In the featured Ballezzi Appreciation Stakes, Rock On Luke went right to the front and drew away to win by over five lengths in 1:37.16 for a flat mile under jockey Paco Lopez.

Rock On Luke, a four-year-old Conveyance gelding, is trained by Regina Brennan for owner Jennifer Truehart. He earned his fifth career win, first in stakes company, from 15 starts and pushed his bankroll to $257,260.

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