{"id":1150,"date":"2015-05-29T12:15:07","date_gmt":"2015-05-29T12:15:07","guid":{"rendered":"http:\/\/www.linda-rice.com\/?p=1150"},"modified":"2016-07-09T13:06:31","modified_gmt":"2016-07-09T13:06:31","slug":"the-women-who-bought-american-pharaohs-half-brother","status":"publish","type":"post","link":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/the-women-who-bought-american-pharaohs-half-brother\/","title":{"rendered":"The Women Who Bought American Pharaoh’s Half Brother"},"content":{"rendered":"

Original Article w\/ Photos –\u00a0http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/05\/31\/nyregion\/all-female-partners-rare-in-horse-racing-aim-for-the-top.html<\/a><\/p>\n

For an industry in which the ultimate compliment is being \u201ca real horseman,\u201d\u00a0Linda Rice is an anomaly. Barely topping 5 feet, Ms. Rice has shoulder length\u00a0blond hair and sharp features that could make her a Ralph Lauren model. The\u00a0first female horse trainer to top the standings at a major racetrack, she\u2019s tough\u00a0and she speaks at a no\u00adnonsense clip.<\/p>\n

\u201cPeople thought I was the flavor of the month, but now I\u2019m at the top of\u00a0the pack,\u201d Ms. Rice, 51, said recently while sitting in her office at Linda Rice\u00a0Racing at Belmont Park, where she has worked for 20 years. Several large flatscreen\u00a0monitors on the wall behind her were showing races, and across the\u00a0gravel drive, 50 horses were munching on hay in a tidy, mustard\u00adyellow barn.\u00a0In an overwhelmingly male sport, Ms. Rice may be the most prominent\u00a0female trainer in horse racing. In February, she joined with Sheila Rosenblum,\u00a0a colorful New York socialite, to put together Triumphant Trio, an all\u00adfemale\u00a0horse\u00adracing syndicate. In this popular ownership structure, investors pay a\u00a0buy\u00adin price to jointly own thoroughbreds.<\/p>\n

\u201cHorse racing isn\u2019t just about pretty hats,\u201d Ms. Rice said. \u201cIt\u2019s hard work.\u00a0We are buying high\u00adcaliber horses with strong pedigrees. We want to win the\u00a0Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont.\u201d\u00a0Triumphant Trio was created with a $3.5 million budget and three\u00a0partners. It is the second all\u00adfemale syndicate the women have created, one of\u00a0just a few in the country. The partners own eight horses, including a colt sired\u00a0by Pioneerof the Nile, who also sired the Triple Crown\u00adhopeful American\u00a0Pharoah, who will race in the Belmont Stakes next weekend.\u00a0Ms. Rice is a third\u00adgeneration trainer whose great\u00adgrandfather drove\u00a0horses for fire trucks in her native Wisconsin. When she was still a child, her\u00a0family moved to Hershey, Pa., and by age 13 she was breaking and training\u00a0thoroughbreds at her father\u2019s horse farm. In 1991, Ms. Rice came to New York<\/p>\n

to establish a career, and slowly began winning races and gaining clients,\u00a0including the former New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and, more\u00a0recently, Barry K. Schwartz, a founder of Calvin Klein.<\/p>\n

In 2009, Ms. Rice took the top honors at Saratoga Race Course, awarded\u00a0to trainers with the most first\u00adplace finishes. It was the first time a woman had\u00a0won a major training title, and since then, Ms. Rice has won three more titles\u00a0and amassed more than 1,200 wins, and her horses have earned more than\u00a0$40 million. She is ranked 17th in the country by earnings, according to\u00a0Equibase, which tracks horse\u00adracing statistics.<\/p>\n

Unlike Ms. Rice, Ms. Rosenblum discovered her passion for thoroughbred\u00a0racing only recently. In 2010, her husband, Daniel, from whom she is now\u00a0separated, offered to buy her a dressage horse. \u201cBut I really wanted a\u00a0racehorse,\u201d she said. \u201cThey are so elegant, powerful and exciting.\u201d\u00a0A former ballerina and model, with long dark hair and light blue eyes, Ms.\u00a0Rosenblum is voluble and prone to dramatic gestures. She has been known to\u00a0pick her way across the dirt tracks to the winner\u2019s circle wearing a lemonyellow\u00a0dress and pointy\u00adtoed heels.<\/p>\n

\u201cI\u2019m the workhorse, she\u2019s the show horse,\u201d Ms. Rice said of their\u00a0partnership. \u201cSheila stands out in the crowd. Frankly, everyone jokes we need\u00a0more glamour in horse racing, and she\u2019s good for the game.\u201d\u00a0When Ms. Rosenblum met Ms. Rice three years ago, she owned a small\u00a0number of horses that were boarded in Kentucky, and none of them had ever\u00a0won a race. Ms. Rosenblum wanted to move the horses closer to New York,\u00a0where she lives with her two teenage children in a duplex on Park Avenue,\u00a0which was featured in Architectural Digest, and in a home in Southampton.\u00a0\u201cI was interviewing New York trainers,\u201d Ms. Rosenblum said. \u201cI didn\u2019t\u00a0think I wanted a female trainer. I like having men around, and I thought I\u00a0would mesh better with a male trainer.\u201d But she decided to give Ms. Rice a try\u00a0anyway, and returning to the car after their initial meeting, she had made up\u00a0her mind. \u201cI just said to myself, \u2018Yup, she\u2019s the one.\u2019 I decided to go against\u00a0everything I thought and give a female a chance.\u201d<\/p>\n

Since she hired Ms. Rice as her trainer, Ms. Rosenblum\u2019s efforts at the\u00a0racetrack have begun to pay off. Under her guidance, Ms. Rosenblum bought\u00a0La Verdad, a 5\u00adyear\u00adold filly that has been consistently winning races,\u00a0including the Vagrancy Handicap at Belmont on May 16 and the Distaff\u00a0Handicap at Aqueduct in April\u037e the horse\u2019s career earnings are approaching $1\u00a0million.<\/p>\n

\u201cBefore La Verdad, I had never won races,\u201d she said. \u201cThere is something\u00a0about the exhilaration of being in the winner\u2019s circle, that adrenaline rush of\u00a0standing with the jockey and the trainer.\u201d\u00a0The rush of winning got Ms. Rosenblum thinking. \u201cI said to myself, \u2018There\u00a0must be other women who would like this too,\u2019 \u201d she recalled. \u201c \u2018Maybe their\u00a0kids are older now, or they just love racing or are looking for some\u00a0camaraderie.\u2019 \u201d<\/p>\n

So last April, Ms. Rosenblum assembled her first women\u2019s syndicate, Lady\u00a0Sheila Stable Two. It had a $100,000 buy\u00adin, and eight friends and\u00a0acquaintances soon joined, including Jill Zarin, best known for appearing on\u00a0the show \u201cReal Housewives of New York,\u201d and Dorothy Herman, the president\u00a0of the real estate firm Douglas Elliman.\u00a0\u201cI love horses, but I\u2019ve never been into horse racing,\u201d Ms. Zarin said.\u00a0\u201cNone of us are there to pay our mortgages. You have to go into this with your\u00a0expendable income. Just for fun.\u201d\u00a0The group recently traveled to Saratoga to see Ms. Rice win an award.\u00a0\u201cSheila got us this beautiful luxury S.U.V., and she brought caviar and Dom\u00a0P\u00e9rignon,\u201d Ms. Zarin said. \u201cThen she put us up in a hotel for the night. It was a\u00a0blast.\u201d<\/p>\n

All\u00ad female syndicates are starting to appear around the country, although\u00a0they are still fairly rare. Perhaps the best known, StarLadies Racing, was\u00a0created in 2013. \u201cWe are all women owners and we only buy fillies, so it\u2019s like a\u00a0sorority,\u201d said Laurie Wolf, who started the group with Barbara Lucarelli. The\u00a0women and their husbands manage Starlight Racing, a successful syndicate\u00a0that has had horses run in the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes.\u00a0Buy\u00adins start at roughly $60,000 for StarLadies and $185,000 for Starlight,\u00a0which translates into a 5 percent ownership stake. \u201cThere are actually a lot of\u00a0women in this business, but the industry still has a male face,\u201d Ms. Wolf added. \u00a0\u201cA bigger and bigger percentage of our partners are women,\u201d said Terry\u00a0Finley, the founder of West Point Thoroughbreds, a large syndicate with 500\u00a0partners, about 25 percent of whom are women, he estimated. The syndicate,\u00a0whose horse Commanding Curve finished a close second in the 2014 Kentucky\u00a0Derby, offers entry\u00adlevel buy\u00adins of $15,000 to $25,000. \u00a0Triumphant Trio has a much higher buy\u00adin of $500,000, and just three\u00a0partners. Syndicates can be structured in different ways, and while West Point,\u00a0for instance, allows investors to buy a partial ownership in a single horse, at\u00a0Triumphant Trio the partners jointly own all their horses. In addition to Ms.\u00a0Rosenblum, who is the managing partner, and Ms. Rice, Triumphant Trio\u2019s\u00a0partners include Iris Smith, a longtime horse\u00adracing fan who lives in Beverly\u00a0Hills and TriBeCa, and who is also a partner in Ms. Rosenblum\u2019s first\u00a0syndicate.<\/p>\n

While Triumphant Trio has a high buy\u00adin price, it also made headlines\u00a0recently when it spent $840,000 for the still\u00adunnamed half brother of\u00a0American Pharoah. \u201cThat really took them to a whole new level,\u201d said Dan\u00a0Metzger, the president of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association.\u00a0It\u2019s all part of Triumphant Trio\u2019s lofty aspirations. \u201cHorse racing can be a\u00a0crooked, strange business,\u201d Ms. Rosenblum said. \u201cBut I left home at 15 to study\u00a0ballet. I\u2019ve been beaten up a little bit in my life and understand the school of\u00a0hard knocks. We are ready to take this on.\u201d<\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"

Original Article w\/ Photos –\u00a0http:\/\/www.nytimes.com\/2015\/05\/31\/nyregion\/all-female-partners-rare-in-horse-racing-aim-for-the-top.html For an industry in which the ultimate compliment is being \u201ca real horseman,\u201d\u00a0Linda Rice is an anomaly. Barely topping 5 feet, Ms. Rice has shoulder length\u00a0blond hair and sharp features that could make her a… <\/p>\n","protected":false},"author":1,"featured_media":0,"comment_status":"closed","ping_status":"closed","sticky":false,"template":"","format":"standard","meta":{"footnotes":""},"categories":[4],"tags":[],"class_list":["post-1150","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recent-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150","targetHints":{"allow":["GET"]}}],"collection":[{"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts"}],"about":[{"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/types\/post"}],"author":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/users\/1"}],"replies":[{"embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/comments?post=1150"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":1151,"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/1150\/revisions\/1151"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=1150"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=1150"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=1150"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}