For decades the spirit of Saratoga Race Course was reflected in its grande dame, Marylou Whitney.
The beloved owner, philanthropist, and socialite is credited with rallying the support that saved the historic racetrack in the early 1970s when its future was cloudy and its popularity bore no resemblance to the blockbuster meet it has become.
Until her death in 2019, and even after, it was impossible to think about Saratoga without linking it to the iconic woman known to all as Marylou.
Nowadays, though, the most prominent women at the Spa are competing on the track. As women have more frequently risen to the top of the industry as owners and executives, the ladder of success on the racetrack has been even harder and steeper to climb.
Until this year.
The sport’s most popular meet has become a showcase for the distinctive skills and talent women bring to their jobs as trainers and riders. In the Aug. 26 highlight of the meet, the $1.25 million Travers Stakes (G1), trainer Jena Antonucci, who shattered one glass ceiling in June when she captured the Belmont Stakes (G1) with Arcangelo and became the first female trainer to win a Triple Crown race, will attempt a similar feat.
Should Arcangelo, the 5-2 second choice, reprise his winning effort of 11 weeks ago, Antonucci could become the first woman to saddle the winner of the 154-year-old Travers since 1938 when Mary Hirsch, the first woman in the country to be licensed as a trainer, captured it with Thanksgiving.
Jena Antonucci during training hours Aug. 25 at Saratoga Race Course
“People like (jockeys) Rosie Napravnik and Julie Krone opened the door and now Jena and others are paving the way. It’s becoming more of a level playing field for women,” trainer Keri Brion said. “I am friends with Jena and at a friend level it was incredible to watch her win the Belmont and what she has done for the sport is also great. Everyone works hard in this sport, be it a man or a woman, but women have always had to work that little bit harder to prove ourselves. It’s always been a thing for us, but thankfully as people see Jena’s success in the Triple Crown it’s getting easier and we’re finally breaking through.”
Then there’s trainer Linda Rice, whose work in claiming and allowance races allowed her to come into the meet off a stretch of four-straight New York Racing Association training titles, a feat one might expect from Eclipse Award-winning trainers like Chad Brown with a large stable of top-class runners on both turf and dirt. At a Saratoga meet geared more for the barns of trainers like Brown and Todd Pletcher, who have won a combined 19 Spa crowns, Rice won the meet’s first race and stayed on top of the standings until Day 22 when Brown passed her.
Even after that, Rice continued to rack up wins and with eight racing days left is second with 26 wins, four behind Brown, winner of the last four Spa titles. With those 26 victories, Rice has already surpassed her 2009 total of 20 when she edged Pletcher by one win at Saratoga to become the first female to win a training title at the Spa.
“It’s great to see a female like Linda Rice dominate,” Brion said. “We’re good. We can do the same job as the guys.”
The meet has also featured the fine work of jockey Katie Davis, who won here for the first time in her 10-year career and now has six wins; Brion, a four-time grade 1 winner, who earned a second in the grade 1 steeplechase Jonathan Sheppard Handicap (NSA-G1) Aug. 23; and trainer Melanie Giddings, who had the New York State-bred Maple Leaf Mel on the verge of becoming a grade 1 winner until the brilliant 3-year-old filly suffered a fatal injury in the final yards of the Test Stakes (G1).
“It was a heartbreaking story but that horse brought Melanie into a spotlight and made her well-known as a very good trainer and hopefully she’ll get more horses,” said Jaime Roth, who heads her family’s LNJ Foxwoods operation that owns Travers starter Scotland (12-1). “How she handled it shows her strength and a lot of women have that.”
For anyone watching and wagering on what is unfolding at Saratoga this summer, overlooking the women can be a costly mistake.
“It’s taken quite a few generations but there are a lot of women that are involved in racing and they are doing great things,” Rice said. “I’ve been coming to Saratoga for three decades and it’s vastly different. I think it’s much more acceptable to see women in key roles at the racetrack. People are much more open-minded about using women be it as trainers, riders, jockeys.”
The Ocala-based Antonucci gained instant and lasting fame when Arcangelo posted a 1 1/2-length victory in the June 10 Belmont Stakes and finally added a women’s name to what had been exclusively a men’s club until that afternoon. Video of her emphatic and impassioned rooting for the son of Arrogate in the stretch captured the scene in a compelling manner but Antonucci will tell you many years of long, hard work went into that moment of success and unbridled joy.
“I don’t think any of this is an anomaly,” Antonucci said. “It’s nice to see it come together for those that want to read it and see it, but for us who live it and do it and claw and fight every day, it’s not a surprise.”
While Arcangelo’s win put Antonucci in the spotlight, her success touched the hearts of every female racetrack worker who understood the importance of the victory for all of them.
“I started crying when Jena won,” Davis said. “I was screaming at the television. I had tears in my eyes watching her because I know how hard it is for a woman in this industry. But we’re definitely turning heads now. Since I came to New York I did nothing but support women, like fighting the coupling rule (a discontinued New York rule that coupled husband and wife jockeys in the same race). It seems like things are changing and women are being recognized for being equal with the guys. In my case, I may not be as strong as the guys but it’s about connecting with the horse, being in tune and patient with your horse.”
Katie Davis in the paddock Aug. 24 at Saratoga Race Course
Rice was also among those wearing a wide smile over Arcangelo’s victory.
“Just watching Jena’s emotions, that was what racing is all about,” she said.
Roth spent her youth competing against boys on athletic fields and was thrilled with the breakthrough victory in the final leg of the Triple Crown.
“I was a very talented athlete and played with boys to find better competition,” Roth said. “Seeing Rachel Alexandra beat the boys was my impetus for getting involved in the sport, so seeing women succeed in this sport at any level is wonderful. I can’t think of something better than that.”
Antonucci says she has been overwhelmed by the positive response to her Triple Crown heroics but doesn’t want her accomplishments viewed simply for her gender.
“There’s been a lot of very positive comments and a lot of well-wishes and I just appreciate that people are choosing to be positive and showing the better side of humanity,” she said. “I don’t view my life and career through that optic as a woman. I think we just tell our story a little different from our barn; how we put things out there online for people to touch and feel and see it through our eyes.”
Antonucci’s landmark victory came after 13 years of training in which she has never won more than 24 races in a single year. It was a long process, but she never doubted her abilities and worked tirelessly to find owners like Blue Rose Farm’s Jon Ebbert to give her a chance to work with a horse as talented as Arcangelo.
“Women don’t get the recognition they should but they are starting to get there. They are on the way up,” Ebbert said. “Jena’s story has touched so many people and it’s great for the sport.”
Once Arcangelo posted an impressive maiden win in March, Ebbert’s phone began buzzing with offers to buy all or part of the ridgling and he would not have been the first owner to cash in on lucrative offers. But he placed his faith in Antonucci and his horse and was rewarded with a Triple Crown victory that turned a $35,000 buy into a 3-year-old worth millions.
“There was a feel-good personal connection. She made me feel comfortable about putting this horse in her hands,” Ebbert said. “I was worried with a horse like this. It’s tough not to worry with a horse like this. But I trusted Jena and that’s the story.”
Rice has been one of the top trainers in New York for much more than a decade, but she has reached new heights in the past year, reeling off consecutive training titles at the Aqueduct Racetrack fall, winter, and spring meets and then the Belmont Park spring/summer meet.
“I really look up to Linda,” Davis said. “I see how dedicated she is and how she loves the sport. She knows her horses. She is dedicated to her horses as if they are her babies.”
With 114 wins this year (through Aug. 25) and earnings of $6.8 million she is chasing her career-best total of wins (166 in 2017) and is a cinch to surpass her top earnings ($7.2 million in 2019).
“For me personally it’s been a great year. We had a nice win with the Belmont training title and we’re in the thick of it here at Saratoga,” Rice said. “It’s Saratoga and it’s a tough place to win races.”
Rice’s recent success has been largely tied to her prowess at making a slew of claims in New York and Kentucky and reaping quick dividends from those purchases.
“I’m always looking for avenues that work for me. Over the years I was becoming more and more frustrated with the yearling and 2-year-old sales. All those big syndicates are there and they go with a $25 million pocketbook and that became frustrating,” Rice said. “So I looked for something different through claiming. I’m always looking for a good place for my business and will try something new. I think so many people are afraid to be wrong in this sport.”
Linda Rice outside her barn Aug. 24 at Saratoga Race Course
Success has come with problems as well for Rice. In 2021, she received a three-year suspension for improperly receiving information from a racing office employee, but she appealed to a New York state court and received a stay to continue training. In June, a state appeals court ruled on the matter and overturned the New York State Gaming Commission ban, calling it “so disproportionate to the offense and shockingly unfair as to constitute an abuse of discretion as a matter of law.”
She also had two medication violations in January, including one in a Jan. 21 race that could result in an upcoming suspension once a split-sample is returned.
“Training in New York is not easy. There are a lot of regulations, more so than other states, and you can’t expect to have success without trials and tribulations. It doesn’t come easy,” Rice said. “It doesn’t matter if you had a medication positive or a therapeutic medication positive, a track labor fight, no matter. It’s part of the business and part of the job.”
Rice said she was greatly appreciative of the support she has received from her array of owners.
“Despite what I’ve been through, my clients have stuck with me and that’s made me happy,” she said. “Their support has allowed me to win four titles in a row.”
Perhaps it is fitting that 50 years after Penny Chenery’s handling of Meadow Stable and Triple Crown winner Secretariat made her a cherished symbol of the women’s movement in America that females in racing are reaching new heights in the main arena of racing.
“We have had women in important leadership position in racing for a long time with women like Barbara Banke (Stonestreet Stable), Gretchen Jackson (Lael Farm), and Charlotte Weber (Live Oak Plantation) but it’s expanded to the racetrack now,” said John Hendrickson, president of the National Museum of Racing and Hall of Fame and Whitney’s widower. “It’s so great to see, especially the way women are supporting each other.”
Hendrickson also knows of one other person who would have been reveling in what’s happening at the Spa among the distaff side of the sport.
“Marylou would have loved it,” he said.
