Linda Rice

Born in Wisconsin, Linda Rice is a third-generation thoroughbred trainer who grew up in the business. She was active in the breaking, training and development of young horses for her father Clyde Rice even during the two years she attended Penn State. An exercise rider and assistant trainer for many years, her passion for racing led her to training thoroughbreds full time in 1987 when she was 23 years old.
In no small sense, Rice was born to the breed as her entire family has been active in the thoroughbred industry. Her brother Kent was the leading apprentice jockey in the U.S. in 1979, riding 311 winners. Brothers Wayne and Bryan are integral to the family's considerable success in both the sales ring and in readying young horses for the races. The Rice family moved to Pennsylvania in the early 1970s where Clyde Rice became a leading trainer at Penn National. The elder Rice also became friends with now Hall of Fame horseman D. Wayne Lukas and Linda remembers watching Secretariat win the 1973 Kentucky Derby and race into legend on a black and white TV.

Linda cites two women, both now in the National Museum of Racing's Hall of Fame, as inspiring her career. They are Janet Elliot, the first female trainer to be inducted into the Hall of Fame in 2009 after years of competing in the upper echelon of steeplechase racing in America, and jockey Julie Krone, still the only woman to win a Triple Crown race as she guided Colonial Affair to a win in the 1993 Belmont Stakes. Krone heads the list of the five female jockeys who have won 2,000 races with 3,704 and is by far the leader in purse money won of the quintet.

"My Dad gave me a thorough education in how to prepare two year olds for the races," Rice says. "I got to ride, groom, break and train. When your whole family is in the business you learn to work as a team and I still emphasize that in my barn today."

Recent accomplishments for the hard-working Rice were sharing leading trainer title with Todd Pletcher for the 2011 Belmont Park spring/summer meet and officially recording her 1,000th win as a trainer at the same time with Sextant, owned by her father, on getaway day of the Belmont Park meet. She also garnered top training honors in Aqueduct's 2011 spring meet while tying with trainer David Jacobson. In a profession dominated by men, Rice has excelled on her own terms and was named to the 2010 list of "Women of Influence" by the "Thoroughbred Times," joining achievers such as Penny Chenery, owner of Secretariat; Diana Pikulski, Executive Director of the Thoroughbred Retirement Foundation; and Marylou Whitney, the doyenne of Saratoga.

Rice saddled her first winner on June 3, 1987, at now-shuttered Garden State Park in Contraboss. When the rest of her family moved to Florida that same year, she took over her father's stable at Penn National, moved on to the New Jersey and Florida circuits in 1990, and hit the Big Apple a year later.

Her first stakes winner was Ready Jet Go, an also-ran behind Play the King in the 1988 Breeders' Cup Sprint at Churchill Downs.

It didn't take long for Rice to develop her first big horse as a trainer as the gelding Double Booked, a former $20,000 claimer on the dirt, turned a nifty quadruple "Double" on the turf in 1991, taking Pimlico's gr. IIIT Early Times Dixie Handicap, Monmouth's gr. III T Red Bank Handicap, Rockingham Park's gr. IIIT New Hampshire Sweepstakes Handicap, and Saratoga's gr. IIT Bernard Baruch Handicap. Double Booked, a grandson of the great Northern Dancer through his sire Mari's Book, was Rice's first graded-stakes winner and defeated the likes of Opening Verse, Great Normand, Izvestia, Fourstardave, and Who's to Pay in the process. Double Booked retired with $835,000 in earnings. The gelding established course records at Pimlico and Laurel.

In 1995, Rice sent a pair of juveniles to victory in Belmont Park's spring graded stakes fixtures for fillies and colts, the Astoria and the Tremont, respectively. Zee Lady annexed the Astoria while Rosie O'Greta became the first filly to ever win the Tremont, a race first run at New York's Gravesend Park in 1887.

Rice turned more heads with the accomplishments of a pair of juveniles at Saratoga, her favorite racetrack to be in the winner's circle. Rice currently maintains homes in both Saratoga Springs and in Floral Park, New York, a few furlongs from Belmont Park's backstretch. Things Change annexed the Adirondack-Spinaway double in 1998. Owner Carl Bowling's City Zip, one of her personal favorites of the many horses she has trained, was close on the heels of Things Change as the two-year-old colt swept the Spa's trio of graded stakes races for colts and geldings in 2000. Only Regret (1914), Campfire (1916), and Dehere (1993) had previously won the Saratoga Special, Sanford and the Hopeful during the upstate New York marquee meet. Remember, fillies and mares can run in races limited to colts and geldings but the boys have to race against boys. The filly Regret went on to take the 1915 Kentucky Derby and help establish the race as a national treasure so City Zip is in good company. City Zip finished in a dead-heat in the gr. I Hopeful with D. Wayne Lukas' Yonaguska, a $1.95 million two-year-old in training purchase. Finishing third in the 2000 Hopeful was subsequent Breeders' Cup Juvenile winner Macho Uno. City Zip, a half-brother to 2004 Horse of the Year Ghostzapper, has since made his mark as both a top general stallion and a superb sire of grass runners at Lane's End Farm in Kentucky. Rice was presented with the Fourstardave Award for Outstanding Achievement at Saratoga in 2000 by the New York Turf Writers Association.

The formidable filly Tenski provided Rice with one her proudest achievements as a trainer as she became the first woman in the history of prestigious Keeneland to saddle a gr. I winner when Tenski won the Queen Elizabeth II Challenge Cup in 1998 on the grass. Tenski took seven of 11 starts and earned $524,000 in her career while also being named Maryland-bred Horse of the Year for 1998. In one of the most visually impressive races of the 1998 Saratoga meeting, the leggy Tenski galloped a full field to an open-lengths win in a division of Saratoga's gr. IIIT Lake George.

Things Change was an apt name for Rice's first gr. I winner as the versatile trainer has proven to have an "A" game in a number of facets of the thoroughbred business. She hits the weanling, yearling or two-year-old sales with an eye toward athletic individuals at modest prices that she can develop. She leans toward sprinters feeling they can provide a quicker return on investment for owners. Canadian Ballet, a $10,000 daughter of City Zip, is a case in point as the speedy miss sports purse earnings of over $500,000. The filly made it to the Breeders' Cup Turf Sprint in both 2009 and 2010. Heady stuff for owners Obviously NY Stable, one of whose owners was selling tip sheets at Saratoga just after college. Mother Russia, a $21,000 weanling purchase by Rice, and another runner in Rice's barn owned by Obviously NY Stable, has won six stakes and $475,000. The imposing statue Mother Russia with her sword raised aloft was built in 1967 to pay tribute to the Russian victory over the Germans at Stalingrad, the turning point in WWII. It is the tallest in the world and holds a place in Russian hearts similar to our Statue of Liberty. Perhaps they use "Budem zdorovny," or "Let's stay healthy" at Russian racetracks. Mother Russia is a clever name for a filly out of former Saratoga track record holder Mayakovsky, who was himself named after the romantic Russian poet.

Things Change was purchased by Rice for $80,000 from Whitehall Farm, now one of the clients she trains for.

Rice sent out six straight winners at the 2007 Saratoga meet, a remarkable feat at the venerable track and a harbinger of what was to come for the trainer.

When Saratoga began carding five-and-a-half furlong turf sprints half a dozen years ago, Rice was the first trainer to truly excel in the tricky features. Multiple Spa stakes winner Awakino Cat, the consummate horse for the course whom Rice co-owns with FEQ Stable, was four for five in turf sprints during the '09 through '10 Saratoga meets. He took the '09 Troy Stakes from the disadvantageous inside post under a superb ride from jockey Alan Garcia and was a remarkable third in the '11 Troy behind Bridgetown, one of the division leaders, despite leaping at the break and spotting the field at least five lengths. The "All Linda-Rice" superfecta in the 2008 Mechanicville Stakes at Saratoga came back Ahvee's Destiny-Canadian Ballet-Silver Timber-Karakorum Elektra. Her 23 for 93 record in these turf dashes over the '08 through '10 Spa meets translates to a 25 percent strike rate.

Leading area handicapper Mark Cusano from the Schenectady Gazette, has dubbed the trainer "Queen of the Turf Sprints" at Saratoga and in the interview with Cusano that is linked to this website, Rice explains her well-thought out approach to Saratoga turf sprints.

But you can't win the Saratoga training title, as Rice did in 2009, with turf sprinters alone. Rice became the first woman ever to be the meet's leading trainer in the long history of Saratoga and she defeated the powerhouse barn of Todd Pletcher 20 to 19 while sending out 75 starters. In comparison, Pletcher saddled 135 runners at Saratoga in 2009. She followed up her historic 2009 Saratoga meet by sending out another 20 winners at the upstate track in 2010. Over the 2008 through 2010 Saratoga meets Rice won 12 claiming races, 10 maiden special weights races, 10 allowance races, and 10 stakes races. Versatile indeed. During the same period she was seven for 27 with runners who had last raced within two weeks and a sizzling eight for 22 at Saratoga with runners returning from layoffs of 90 days or longer.

Rice regards 2009 Horse of the Year Rachel Alexandra's win over males in the gr. I Woodward as the most exciting race she's ever seen. There was plenty of historic precedent in this race as Rachel Alexandra became the first three-year-old filly to beat older males in a grade I main track race around two turns in the history of American racing.

Linda enjoys films, playing the piano, and working out in the gym she designed for her Floral Park home. She takes pride in interior decorating and her dining room houses a baby grand piano.

Rice has trained thoroughbreds for the late George Steinbrenner of Kinsman Stable and is a Yankees fan. She has served as a board member of the New York Thoroughbred Horesmen's Association and on the Backstretch Committee of the New York Racing Association.

One goal for the Linda is winning the Travers Stakes, the "Mid-Summer Derby" at Saratoga.