 Alan Garcia rides Awakino Cat to a win in the Troy stakes The Saratogian
First Published: 19 August 2010
Awakino Cat and Alan Garcia take a narrow victory over Our Friend Harvey and Jose Lezcano the Troy Stakes Wednesday. Ed Burke 8/18/10 Troy mayor Harry Tutunjian joins jockey Alan Garcia and trainer Linda Rice in the winners' circle after Awakino Cat took the Troy Stakes Wednesday. Ed Burke 8/18/10 SARATOGA SPRINGS — Last year, Awakino Cat was one of the horses who helped propel Linda Rice to the Saratoga training title with a victory in the Troy Stakes. Trailblazing woman trainer Linda Rice returns after historic Saratoga performance in 2009 Article From NY Daily News
First Published: 23 July 2010
 Trainer Linda Rice wins two races on the final Saturday of the 2009 Saratoga meeting, edging six-time Saratoga winner Todd Pletcher, 20-19, who manages just one win in the final three days. SARATOGA SPRINGS - Last summer was one Linda Rice will never forget. That was when she became the first woman trainer to win a major race meeting, edging out six-time Saratoga winner Todd Pletcher 20-19. Now, as the Spa opens for the 142nd time Friday, everyone is asking if she can do it again. "We set the bar pretty high last year, so I just hope we have a good season, a good meet and win enough races that when it's all said and done we feel like we had a good season," Rice said. "As far as winning or defending the title, well, frankly, it took 140 years for a woman to finally win a training title at Saratoga so it's pretty unlikely to happen two years in a row." The odds were also against her last year as Pletcher saddled 135 starters to Rice's 75. Rice won the first race of the '09 meet with Good Prospect, and then had another winner on the second day when Awakino Cat won the $70,000 Quick Call Stakes. "We won the first race of the meet last year so that was fun," Rice said. "It started well. At the midway point we were one up but I still had my doubts because he had the numbers, but we held on. I was surprised." The two were tied with three days of racing left. Rice won two races on the final Saturday of the meeting, while Pletcher won one. Neither trainer won a race during the final two days, giving Rice the victory. "It's a great honor," said Rice, who will have a stable of 55 horses this year. "I've been watching Todd for 10 years. He's a great trainer. It was exciting to me to compete with someone of his stature." Pletcher won his first Saratoga title in 1998 before winning five in a row from 2002-06. "Hopefully we'll have a good meet," said Pletcher, whose stable includes Kentucky Derby winner Super Saver and Met Mile winner Quality Road. "Our horses have been running well all year. The negative to that is they lose some of their conditions and the competition gets tougher." Pletcher will have the edge on Rice again in terms of numbers as he has approximately 200 horses at Saratoga and Belmont. This afternoon he will send out six runners to Rice's two, including Stopspendingmaria in the featured $100,000 Grade III Schuylerville Stakes. Rice will send out Dunvegan in the fourth race and hopefully J J's Prophet in the sixth, but he's on the also-eligible list and would need a scratch to get into the race. "I'm certainly going to try," Rice said of winning another title. "(Pletcher's) the favorite. No question but we're going to keep him honest. We'll make him work for it." Linda Rice - A Racehorse Trainer Making Her Mark on The Big Stage Article From Trainer Magazine
First Published: 21 July 2010 - Issue Number: 17
If you win the training title at Saratoga, people will notice you. Linda Rice, catapulted into national recognition when she became the first woman to achieve this coveted honor in 2009, has been turning the heads of those in the know for many years now.
When you get tired of getting beat by her every day, then you call her up!,” affirms longtime New York-based owner Chester Broman, who has sent horses to Rice for about four years. New Yorkers, in particular, have been aware of her since she took City Zip through a sweep of all of Saratoga’s graded stakes for juveniles, topped off by the Hopeful Stakes (G1), in 2000. As the leading trainer of New York-breds, she supports racing in the state year-round. “I enjoy racing in New York,” Rice says. “It’s my favorite place to race, and New York is home. I’m a fan of dirt racing. Frankly, for winter racing, I think New York is maintained as good as any I’ve seen. I might try to move more of my turf horses to synthetics in the future, but I don’t want to race on synthetic year-round.” She has 36 stalls at Belmont, which is the limit, and 35 at Saratoga – mostly two-year-olds – and divides her time between the two tracks. The second division is stabled at Palm Meadows and moves to Saratoga after racing at Gulfstream Park and Tampa Bay Downs. She rarely ships, so when she does, bettors take notice. “I ship for stakes,” she says, and will travel often to Keeneland, where she won the Grade 1 Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup Stakes with Tenski in 1998, but is loyal to what the Northeast offers. Saratoga is where she really shines. Six-time Saratoga champion Todd Pletcher respectfully acknowledged her defeat of him in the close race for the 2009 title, saying, “She did a good job. She deserves it.” Rice adds her own mark to the historic Saratoga venue with regularity. She trained the first four finishers in the 2008 Mechanicville Stakes, and won six races in a row in 2007. Hall of Fame trainer D. Wayne Lukas, who grew up with her father, Clyde Rice, has been familiar with her family and with Rice’s ability her whole life. “They are excellent horse people and excellent family people, and they are underestimated,” he said emphatically. Growing up in Hershey, Pennsylvania, where her father was leading trainer with a stable of 100 horses, she did the breaking and riding for him as assistant and exercise rider, and followed him to the sales. In all aspects, she helped him manage his business, and she learned from one of the most astute horsemen around. “I bought Family Style from Clyde as a two-year-old before she started racing,” Lukas recalls. “He picked her out. I developed her into a champion, but he gave me something to work with. “She developed a good eye for a horse, but she has the bloodlines for it. Her father has a VERY good eye, and her brother Bryan does, too. I still send yearlings to Bryan to break. Linda inherited the role of trainer in the family and has done very well.” She went to college to further her education, but never had any intention of leaving the horse business. Her chosen major, computer science, helped her modernize the business side of training. “My father had an incredible work ethic,” she remembers. “He is talented with young horses, and a very good teacher of young horses; he understood them. But I think the most important thing I learned from him was how to run a business. I learned never to operate beyond what your business can sustain, how to make good decisions for my help, my owners, and my horses. I’ve learned a lot since then on my own, too.” She graduated and at age 23 took out her own trainer’s license, working in New Jersey for three years before going to New York in 1991. Among the things she learned was that she could not do it all, so she gave up riding as her stable grew. She is wistful about it, having spent 20 years in the saddle, but her innate realism told her she was not serving her barn well if she was missing the training of some horses while on the back of another. “The advantage of being a rider is you can instruct other riders,” she notes. “I was good with young horses, having spent all those years breaking them. So having been a rider, I can see if a horse is cheating the rider, or the rider is cheating the horse. Or maybe the horse has sore shins and can be afraid because of that.” All of Rice’s wins at the 2009 Saratoga meeting were on the turf, leading many to forget her achievements with City Zip on the dirt and to classify her as a turf specialist, but her success with turf horses has mainly been a function of her sales budget. And with her forte being young horses, the sales remain a key element to her success. “I’m shopping for athletes,” she says pointedly. “At a young age, in my father’s price range at that time, we didn’t get much pedigree. We went for a good athlete first. More pedigree is more expensive. Dirt horses are the fashionable ones, and if we went for off-the-wall pedigrees, they were often turf horses. “Additionally, the bulk of races written are six furlongs and under. So I’ve been buying horses for that distance to get owners to the winner’s circle quickly and frequently, and make a name for myself. So, I’ve been winning with turf sprinters.” She fills her own stable when she buys at the sales, never pinhooking, although she shops for weanlings, yearlings, and two-year-olds for clients. “I look at conformation first – well-balanced, well-muscled, good bone, how it tracks,” she explains. “I think motion is very important. Pedigree is important in weanlings and yearlings, but by the time they are two-year-olds, I get to add racetrack performance. I’m buying to race, even weanlings.” Her ability to find talent where others have overlooked it has led to some spectacular coups. She purchased Mother Russia, by Mayakovsky, as a weanling for $21,000 in 2006, and the New York-bred has won six stakes and earned nearly $475,000. Graded stakes-placed Canadian Ballet, by City Zip, was bought out of a field as a weanling, a method she practices frequently. The five-year-old mare has won or placed in nine stakes, and has earned more than $500,000. Rice looks at weanlings on her own but has a team help her at two-year-old sales and inspects yearlings with Pat Hoppel, who often breaks them for her, and her brother Bryan, who once worked for Lukas. “I do have biases towards some stallions,” she admits of her personal preferences. “If you have one bad experience with a stallion, you can give it another chance, but two bad experiences, I stay away from that stallion after that. “I like to buy out of a young mare with a strong second dam. That is really based on budget. If the first dam is too strong, then the price is likely to be out of my budget range. I buy weanlings from $25-75,000, yearlings from $50-150,000, and two-year-olds from $50-250,000.” In spring of 2010, Rice gained James and Vincent Pippo’s Whitehall Stable as a client, which also retains Seth Benzel as a trainer. Rice recently purchased two at Timonium for Whitehall – a Freud filly (out of Flirt With Fame, by Trench Digger) from Niall Brennan for $100,000, and an Awesome Again colt (out of Exact, by Twining) from Timber Creek for $85,000. Barry and Sherry Eisaman break horses for Whitehall, and Rice has a long and fruitful relationship with them. Over the years, she has purchased eight horses from them, including Grade 1 winners Things Change for $80,000 and Lucifer’s Stone for $150,000. Rice herself sends horses for breaking to Eisaman, among others – longtime clients to her father’s Indian Prairie, others to Hoppel and his family, or to Niall Brennan – so the relationship with Whitehall is a natural fit. “I’d seen them advertising in Saratoga for a couple of years, and I’d also seen James and his son Vincent at the sales,” she says. “After I won the title, I saw them at a sale and they congratulated me, and then we got to talking, and they asked me to train for them.” While some trainers actively promote themselves, Rice attracts her clients by her hard work. She lets her accomplishments speak for themselves, and thus has garnered knowledgeable owners with a strong love for the sport itself, a passion they share with their trainer. “She’s a student of the game, and is very intelligent,” Broman says. “I like the way she trains the type of horses I have. I own New York-breds, and I like speed horses. She seems to get good results from that type.” Avram Friedberg, who has retained Rice for four years and owns part of a dozen horses, laughs when asked how he found her. “Hiring Linda was a total freak of nature,” he recalls. “I saw a TV commercial in the fall of 2005 for a limited partnership that used Linda as its trainer. I ended up not becoming part of the partnership, but I talked to Linda directly at the OBS June sale of 2006, and asked her to buy some horses for me at another sale. She called me and said she didn’t get anything. I said, ‘What do you mean, you said you looked at all these horses for me?’ She said, ‘I liked them, but they went beyond a price that I thought was fair.’ “I couldn’t believe a trainer with an open checkbook didn’t buy anything! I trust her. So that’s why I bought Ahvee’s Destiny [privately] even though he was beyond my budget. I believed her when she said he’d be worth it, and she’s been right.” Ahvee’s Destiny was on top of the superfecta of Rice-trained horses in the 2008 Mechanicville. The six-year-old Rizzi mare holds the course record at Meadowlands for five furlongs, and has earned more than $350,000. “She’s a hard worker, and dedicated, and that’s an attractive quality in a man or a woman,” Friedberg says. “I’ve seen her at Saratoga, dealing with every horse, checking legs, making sure that each one gets what they need.” Rice appreciates the clients who understand that dedication, who get that being a trainer means a lot of sacrifices, with early hours, seven days a week, no weekends off. She is at the barn all day, and while the horses come first, her communication with owners is one of her top priorities. “I would like clients to say about me that I’m straightforward, easy to work for, and have their best interests in mind,” she says, noting she’s not the type to party with after the races. “I’m at the barn all day. I’m going great until about 7:00pm; then I’m done!” After that, with her limited time she makes her beloved New York a central part of her life. Her competitive nature and keen eye for talented performance are revealed in her other interests – skiing, a passion for the Yankees, and attending shows in the City. She notices the comparison to racing in the marketing of these other activities. “I’d like to see horse racing marketed like baseball or football, on a national scale,” she says. “I’d like to see the same passion for racing in New York as for the Yankees. It’s what I love so much about Saratoga. Everyone knows who won the feature, and what it paid.” Rice’s love for the sport gives her an optimistic outlook on the difficulties facing racing – New York’s problems in particular – but she is realistic about the toll these difficulties take on the horses and, in the larger picture, on racing itself. “The economy has been a difficult situation, and it’s been hard on horse racing,” she says. “The hardest part is that it means owners and trainers are less likely to give horses time. Trainers feel more pressure, and the horses don’t get the vacations they need. It’s not good for the sport.” Meanwhile, her goals include winning the Kentucky Derby, and on a more personal level, the Travers and the Belmont Stakes. “Last year was my best year,” she noted of her forward trajectory. “Every trainer would like a barn full of quality horses. For me, I’d like to expand beyond grass horses and have a two-turn dirt horse.” Now that she is on the national radar, watch for Rice to fulfill these dreams, too. Article From Daily Racing Form
Posted: Wednesday, July 21, 2010 6:40 PM
Rice set to fire best shot in Spa title defenseBy David GreningSARATOGA SPRINGS, N.Y. - Everywhere Linda Rice goes, everybody wants to know one thing - can she do it again? In 2009, Rice became the first female to win a trainer's title at Saratoga - or any other top-level racetrack for that matter - when she beat the Goliath that is Todd Pletcher, 20-19. With the 142nd Saratoga meet set to begin Friday, Rice tries to remain practical when asked whether she can repeat. "It took 140 years for a woman to win a training title at Saratoga. What's the likelihood of it happening again this year?" Rice said earlier this week. "Just take a look at the logistics of it -- it's pretty unlikely. That doesn't mean we're not going to try hard, and we're going to try and win as many races as we can, which we always do every year that we're there." Rice, 46, won the 2009 Saratoga title despite starting 60 fewer runners than Pletcher, who was compromised by a severe case of seconditis. Pletcher's 28 second-place finishes were more than double Bill Mott's 12, which was the next-highest figure. With 50 horses in her care, Rice had roughly one-quarter the number of Pletcher's mammoth operation. It was either Rice or Pletcher atop the standings the last 25 days of the 2009 meet, with neither ever being more than two in front of the other. Rice won the first race of the meet while Pletcher didn't win until day five. The two entered the final three days tied at 18 wins apiece. On day 34 -- better remembered as the day Rachel Alexandra beat males in the Grade 1 Woodward -- Rice won two races to take the lead for good. Neither trainer won a race the final two days. "As we got closer and closer I thought obviously there was a chance -- not probable -- but a chance," Rice said. As the meet wound down, Rice's quest for the title drew a groundswell of support, with many fans -- and horsemen -- rooting for her. "If I had been on the outside looking in, I probably would have been rooting for her too," admitted Pletcher, who has won six Saratoga titles, including five straight, from 2002 to 2006. All of Rice's 20 victories came in races carded for the turf, but two of those races were run on the main track because of wet weather. Though she has developed a reputation as a turf-sprint specialist, Rice won nine turf races at 5 1/2 furlongs or shorter last summer and nine grass races at a mile or farther. "My father was great with young horses," said Rice, whose father is the retired trainer Clyde Rice. "I've always done well with young horses. The turf thing kind of came along later in my career. Maybe I do have a little bit of a niche with turf-sprint horses, but probably just grass horses in general. I pretty much thought that was pretty much a function of what I ended up to train." Success at Saratoga is nothing new for Rice. In 1998, she won her first Grade 1 race when Things Change captured the Spinaway. Things Change also won that year's Adirondack. In 2000, City Zip swept the trio of stakes for juvenile colts -- the Sanford, Saratoga Special and Hopeful. In 2007, Rice finished in a four-way tie for second in the trainer's standings with 13 wins. Though she won "only" nine races at Saratoga in 2008, she did saddle the first four finishers of the Mechanicville Stakes. It became known as the Rice superfecta. Rice was hoping to parlay her Saratoga success into some better business opportunities. While she did pick up a few new owners, Rice still craves the type of client who can give her the financial backing to be more of a factor at auction. "As a horse trainer, you'd like to go to a horse sale and buy the ones you want instead of watching them all walk away," said Rice, who recalled being the underbidder to a Pletcher client on a filly who became champion turf horse Wait a While. "I guess my goal would be that I'd have more strength at the auction and put [myself] in a position to buy horses that will win classic races." As for this meet, Rice figures again to be a factor, especially bringing back many of the horses who won here last year. Awakino Cat, Mother Russia, and Ahvee's Destiny, all multiple winners over the turf course here, are expected to surface at the meeting, as is Canadian Ballet, who won a stakes here last year. Among her new clients are Richlyn Farm, which has the promising 2-year-old filly Town Flirt, and Whitehall Stable, a partnership that has 2-year-olds with Rice including Quick to Strike, a son of freshman sire Henny Hughes who cost $250,000 at auction, and Exact Again, a son of Awesome Again who sold for $85,000. "A lot of people are expecting an awful lot, but realistically I just hope we go there and have a good meet, the horses run well and we win our share of races, have good racing luck and try not to embarrass myself," Rice said. Article From Thoroughbred Times
Posted: Wednesday, June 30, 2010 11:53 AM
Trainer Linda Rice started training on her own at age 23 in 1987 and accumulated a long list of achievements by the time she became the first female to win a meet title at a major racetrack in the U.S. in 2009. A steady career arc flowed into a seminal highlight as she led the standings at Saratoga Race Course in 2009 with 20 wins. Rice was an appropriate pioneer, since she had been thriving for years at the Spa. One of Rice’s first major victories came with Double Booked in the 1991 Bernard Baruch Handicap (G2) at Saratoga, and she notched her first Grade 1 win there in the ’98 Spinaway Stakes (G1) with Things Change. In 2000, Rice won each of Saratoga’s three major races for two-year-olds with City Zip. The daughter of former trainer Clyde Rice, Rice was born in Wisconsin and grew up in Pennsylvania. She studied computer science for two years at Penn State University but kept her hand in racing, working for her father whenever she could. Eventually, she had enough of the classroom. “I never really left the racetrack,” she said. “My heart was in the racing, and that’s what I ended up doing.” Date of birth: March 7, 1964
Posted: Wednesday, June 30, 2010 3:08 PM
THOROUGHBRED TIMES profiles
'Women of Influence'
The Thoroughbred industry’s most prominent women are profiled in the inaugural THOROUGHBRED TIMES “Women of Influence” feature that appears in the July 3 issue of the weekly industry magazine. The group for the inaugural feature was determined by a vote of the TIMES editors and writers following widespread polling of industry participants yielded nearly 100 nominations. The final group represents all segments of racing, including breeders, owners, trainers, auction industry professionals, executives, and others. The group also consists of many individuals considered top ambassadors not only for women in the industry but also for U.S. racing at large—women such as Penny Chenery, Alice Chandler, Josephine Abercrombie, Virginia Kraft Payson, and Marylou Whitney. The complete group is listed below. 2010 Thoroughbred Times “Women of Influence” Josephine Abercrombie (Pin Oak Stud) |
© 2010 Linda Rice Racing. ALL RIGHTS RESERVED.