New York (CMC):

Rajiv Maragh collected a pair of midweek wins and the young Jamaican rider has now moved up to joint second in Aqueduct jockeys' championship standings.

Maragh, 23, had a win on Wednesday and scored another victory Thursday to boost his tally of wins for the new season to five.

Only two-time United States champion jockey, Ramon Dominguez, with 11 victories, has recorded more successes than Maragh in the season which started on January 1.

Easy win

Maragh easily won Wednes-day's US$21,000 sixth race over a mile with the 5-to-2 favourite Lexington Ave.

The three-year-old colt stalked the leaders down the backstretch, shot to the front approaching the final turn nd accelerated rapidly to win by nine lengths in one minute 41.96 seconds.

On Thursday, Maragh used the 2-5 favourite Seventh Street to win the US$48,000 third race over a mile.

Seventh Street led the field and won by four and a half lengths, clocking 1:37.17 in victory under Maragh, who won the Ruthless Stakes on Sunday with the filly Justwhistledixie.

Leading jockey

Maragh, who finished joint champion on 26 wins with Alan Garcia at the Aqueduct Fall Meet that ended on December 31, had finished 2008 as the leading Caribbean jockey on the North American -USA/Canada - racing circuit.

Maragh won 214 races in 2008 to finish number 24 in wins on the list of all riders on the continent.

He led Barbadian Patrick Husbands (181), Jamaican Shaun Bridgmohan (174), Trinidad and Tobago's Oswald Pereira (156) and Barbadian Quincy Welch (155) as the prolific Caribbean jockeys on the in the US and Canada.