Greg Wright, Jr. drove his 2,000th career winner Friday at The Meadows when he piloted 44-1 long shot Pinnochio to victory in the fourth race. Wright got a fast start on the next 2,000 by scoring with Tis Himself three races later.

Wright, 38, a native of Windsor, Ontario, drove his first winner as a teenager at Hiawatha Horse Park. He got hooked on horses through his father, Greg Wright, one of the leading horseman at the Meadowlands in the track’s early years and still an active and successful trainer at The Meadows.

“We had 30 or 40 horses on the farm in Ontario,” Wright said. “I remember Dad flying back and forth all the time between the farm and the Meadowlands.”

The younger Wright was graduated from Amherstburg High School and was regarded as a third baseman with potential, but baseball wasn’t in his future.

“When I was little, I had a few scouts looking at me,” he said. “The University of Michigan wanted me for baseball, but school was not my first priority. That was horses.”

Wright, who resides in Hickory, Pennsylvania with his six-year-old daughter Alyssa, trains a 15-horse stable at The Meadows and plans to focus more on that aspect of his career.

“I was just catch driving before,” he said, “but there are so many drivers out here now that you’re on a horse this week, off next week. I’d rather concentrate on my own stable and see where that takes me.”

(The Meadows)