Daily Racing Form<\/em>by the time she nine.<\/p>\n\u201cIt served me well,\u201d she said earlier this summer, sitting in the office of her barn at Belmont Park, getting ready to pack up for the move to Saratoga.<\/p>\n
She and her brothers worked at her father\u2019s barn before and after school, with no distinctions, she said, in the work they were asked to do. Alongside them, she fed horses, built fences, and bailed hay, at the cost, she said with a laugh, of more domestic skills.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not the best cook in the world,\u201d she admitted.<\/p>\n
An accomplished rider, she considered becoming a jockey\u2013\u201cI couldn\u2019t imagine,\u201d she said, \u201cwhy you\u2019d want to train horses unless you got to get on them every day\u201d\u2013but her parents had other ideas, requiring that she go to college.<\/p>\n
So off she went to Penn State to study computer science, but, perhaps to the dismay of her parents, her years at university didn\u2019t deter her, and at 23, she began training horses on her own, exercising her own horses until about 15 years ago, when her stable became so successful that she needed that time to manage her business.<\/p>\n
At first, she trained a few horses for her father and some of his clients, working at Mid-Atlantic tracks before moving to New York in 1992. Her first big break came when a client shipped her some horses from Chicago, including one called Double Booked, who in Rice\u2019s barn won multiple graded stakes, including the 1991 Bernard Baruch Handicap at Saratoga.<\/p>\n
In recent years, Rice has been called \u201cthe queen of the turf sprints,\u201d the result, she said, of a strategic decision about how to get to the winner\u2019s circle.<\/p>\n
\u201cAs a young trainer, particularly a young female trainer,\u201d she said, \u201cmy job was to win races, any kind of races. To talk about winning the Triple Crown races or the Florida Derby or the Travers\u2014that was not something that I needed to be reaching for. I just needed to reach for the winner\u2019s circle and the fastest way to get there with the few clients that I had. It didn\u2019t matter what distance the horses ran or what surface they ran on.<\/p>\n
\u201cI found a little niche there in that I could identify horses that would like the grass, and I was around a lot of the 2-year-old in training sales with my family when I was growing up. I found horses that were sprinters and that liked the turf, and I also found also that you could find some untapped resources with inexpensive horses that had never been tried on the grass.<\/p>\n
\u201cI found I had a knack for it. It allowed me to get horses to the winner\u2019s circle so that I could get my foot in the door and develop the rest of my clientele after that.\u201d<\/p>\n
It also allowed her to pull off one of the more remarkable accomplishments in horse racing on August 18, 2008, when her horses finished 1-2-3-4 in the Mechanicville Stakes at Saratoga. The Linda Rice superfecta paid $3,490 for a $2 wager.<\/p>\n
As the Saratoga meeting heads towards closing day on Labor Day, Rice admits that it hasn\u2019t been quite the meet she\u2019d hoped for. In addition to her five wins, her horses have finished second in 11 races and third in 10 others. Her record for the year is 60-55-53 from 315 starters, with purse earnings of $2,625,000.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve had a great year so far, and every once in a while, you have to grin and bear it that you\u2019re going to end up on the wrong side of every photo finish,\u201d she said, \u201cand I\u2019ve had that kind of a meet.\u201d<\/p>\n
As a member of the New York Thoroughbred Horsemen\u2019s Association, Rice serves on several committees and chairs the organization\u2019s scholarship committee, which offers financial awards to backstretch employees and their direct dependents for undergraduate study.<\/p>\n
\u201cI grew up in the business and it gives me satisfaction to help take care of the horses or try and help people find a better position,\u201d she said. \u201cI\u2019ve watched kids do remarkable things.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also works on behalf of her horses whose racing careers are nearing an end, keeping an electronic file of inquiries from people who are looking for horses.<\/p>\n
\u201cWhen I have a horse that needs a home,\u201d she said, \u201cI try to figure out what\u2019s the best direction for them. Could it be re-trained? Is it a horse that could be a stallion or a broodmare? The ones that just need a home are a little harder to place, but we have several places we work with.\u201d<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019ve gone through my entire life working with horses,\u201d she continued. \u201cI love the animals and when they\u2019re not racing any longer, I want to make sure they have a good home.\u201d<\/p>\n
As one of few women in a sport still dominated by men, Rice pointed out that women have traditionally been perceived to excel in working with horses, in nurturing them and handling them. She has, she believes, played a role in demonstrating that they can handle the business side as well, managing a stable of 50 to 60 horses and both an office and a barn staff. \u00a0Still, she acknowledges the challenges she\u2019s faced.<\/p>\n
\u201cNo doubt, it was harder for me,\u201d she said, harder than it would have been for a man to get started. \u201cBottom line, it was tough. When I was 17 years old and I told my father I was going to be a horse trainer, he said it would be a lot easier if I were one of his sons, and I can\u2019t say that that didn\u2019t hold true.\u201d<\/p>\n
But, she pointed out with a smile, there are benefits, too.<\/p>\n
\u201cPeople never confuse me with my male counterparts, and maybe that\u2019s helpful, too.\u201d<\/p>\n
She also thinks that the perception of women in the sport is changing, and she hopes that she has contributed to that.<\/p>\n
\u201cI like to think that my being in New York and winning training titles has made it a little easier for the women that are coming up,\u201d she said.<\/p>\n
So even in a summer in which she\u2019d have liked a few more of those second-place finishes to be wins, she\u2019s still appreciative of what she\u2019s accomplished and what the sport has given her.<\/p>\n
\u201cI\u2019m not going to complain,\u201d she said, sitting outside Saratoga\u2019s racing office with a week left in the meet. \u201cI\u2019ve been blessed with such great, great memories of racing.\u201d<\/p>\n
Original Article –\u00a0http:\/\/www.forbes.com\/sites\/teresagenaro\/2013\/08\/29\/thoroughbred-trainer-linda-rice-a-groundbreaker-for-women-in-racing\/3\/<\/a><\/p>\n","protected":false},"excerpt":{"rendered":"Article By\u00a0Teresa Genaro\u00a0(Forbes Magazine) On July 17 at the annual preview of the Saratoga race meeting at the National Museum of Racing, trainer Linda Rice was asked if there were any horses she was looking forward to running. \u201cPalace,\u201d she… <\/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-321","post","type-post","status-publish","format-standard","hentry","category-recent-news"],"_links":{"self":[{"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321","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=321"}],"version-history":[{"count":1,"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions"}],"predecessor-version":[{"id":322,"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/posts\/321\/revisions\/322"}],"wp:attachment":[{"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/media?parent=321"}],"wp:term":[{"taxonomy":"category","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/categories?post=321"},{"taxonomy":"post_tag","embeddable":true,"href":"http:\/\/lindarice.com\/index.php\/wp-json\/wp\/v2\/tags?post=321"}],"curies":[{"name":"wp","href":"https:\/\/api.w.org\/{rel}","templated":true}]}}
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