Original Article w/ Photos – http://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 “a real horseman,” Linda Rice is an anomaly. Barely topping 5 feet, Ms. Rice has shoulder length blond hair and sharp features that could make her a Ralph Lauren model. The first female horse trainer to top the standings at a major racetrack, she’s tough and she speaks at a no­nonsense clip.

“People thought I was the flavor of the month, but now I’m at the top of the pack,” Ms. Rice, 51, said recently while sitting in her office at Linda Rice Racing at Belmont Park, where she has worked for 20 years. Several large flatscreen monitors on the wall behind her were showing races, and across the gravel drive, 50 horses were munching on hay in a tidy, mustard­yellow barn. In an overwhelmingly male sport, Ms. Rice may be the most prominent female trainer in horse racing. In February, she joined with Sheila Rosenblum, a colorful New York socialite, to put together Triumphant Trio, an all­female horse­racing syndicate. In this popular ownership structure, investors pay a buy­in price to jointly own thoroughbreds.

“Horse racing isn’t just about pretty hats,” Ms. Rice said. “It’s hard work. We are buying high­caliber horses with strong pedigrees. We want to win the Derby, the Preakness and the Belmont.” Triumphant Trio was created with a $3.5 million budget and three partners. It is the second all­female syndicate the women have created, one of just a few in the country. The partners own eight horses, including a colt sired by Pioneerof the Nile, who also sired the Triple Crown­hopeful American Pharoah, who will race in the Belmont Stakes next weekend. Ms. Rice is a third­generation trainer whose great­grandfather drove horses for fire trucks in her native Wisconsin. When she was still a child, her family moved to Hershey, Pa., and by age 13 she was breaking and training thoroughbreds at her father’s horse farm. In 1991, Ms. Rice came to New York

to establish a career, and slowly began winning races and gaining clients, including the former New York Yankees owner George Steinbrenner and, more recently, Barry K. Schwartz, a founder of Calvin Klein.

In 2009, Ms. Rice took the top honors at Saratoga Race Course, awarded to trainers with the most first­place finishes. It was the first time a woman had won a major training title, and since then, Ms. Rice has won three more titles and amassed more than 1,200 wins, and her horses have earned more than $40 million. She is ranked 17th in the country by earnings, according to Equibase, which tracks horse­racing statistics.

Unlike Ms. Rice, Ms. Rosenblum discovered her passion for thoroughbred racing only recently. In 2010, her husband, Daniel, from whom she is now separated, offered to buy her a dressage horse. “But I really wanted a racehorse,” she said. “They are so elegant, powerful and exciting.” A former ballerina and model, with long dark hair and light blue eyes, Ms. Rosenblum is voluble and prone to dramatic gestures. She has been known to pick her way across the dirt tracks to the winner’s circle wearing a lemonyellow dress and pointy­toed heels.

“I’m the workhorse, she’s the show horse,” Ms. Rice said of their partnership. “Sheila stands out in the crowd. Frankly, everyone jokes we need more glamour in horse racing, and she’s good for the game.” When Ms. Rosenblum met Ms. Rice three years ago, she owned a small number of horses that were boarded in Kentucky, and none of them had ever won a race. Ms. Rosenblum wanted to move the horses closer to New York, where she lives with her two teenage children in a duplex on Park Avenue, which was featured in Architectural Digest, and in a home in Southampton. “I was interviewing New York trainers,” Ms. Rosenblum said. “I didn’t think I wanted a female trainer. I like having men around, and I thought I would mesh better with a male trainer.” But she decided to give Ms. Rice a try anyway, and returning to the car after their initial meeting, she had made up her mind. “I just said to myself, ‘Yup, she’s the one.’ I decided to go against everything I thought and give a female a chance.”

Since she hired Ms. Rice as her trainer, Ms. Rosenblum’s efforts at the racetrack have begun to pay off. Under her guidance, Ms. Rosenblum bought La Verdad, a 5­year­old filly that has been consistently winning races, including the Vagrancy Handicap at Belmont on May 16 and the Distaff Handicap at Aqueduct in April; the horse’s career earnings are approaching $1 million.

“Before La Verdad, I had never won races,” she said. “There is something about the exhilaration of being in the winner’s circle, that adrenaline rush of standing with the jockey and the trainer.” The rush of winning got Ms. Rosenblum thinking. “I said to myself, ‘There must be other women who would like this too,’ ” she recalled. “ ‘Maybe their kids are older now, or they just love racing or are looking for some camaraderie.’ ”

So last April, Ms. Rosenblum assembled her first women’s syndicate, Lady Sheila Stable Two. It had a $100,000 buy­in, and eight friends and acquaintances soon joined, including Jill Zarin, best known for appearing on the show “Real Housewives of New York,” and Dorothy Herman, the president of the real estate firm Douglas Elliman. “I love horses, but I’ve never been into horse racing,” Ms. Zarin said. “None of us are there to pay our mortgages. You have to go into this with your expendable income. Just for fun.” The group recently traveled to Saratoga to see Ms. Rice win an award. “Sheila got us this beautiful luxury S.U.V., and she brought caviar and Dom Pérignon,” Ms. Zarin said. “Then she put us up in a hotel for the night. It was a blast.”

All­ female syndicates are starting to appear around the country, although they are still fairly rare. Perhaps the best known, StarLadies Racing, was created in 2013. “We are all women owners and we only buy fillies, so it’s like a sorority,” said Laurie Wolf, who started the group with Barbara Lucarelli. The women and their husbands manage Starlight Racing, a successful syndicate that has had horses run in the Kentucky Derby, Preakness and Belmont Stakes. Buy­ins start at roughly $60,000 for StarLadies and $185,000 for Starlight, which translates into a 5 percent ownership stake. “There are actually a lot of women in this business, but the industry still has a male face,” Ms. Wolf added.  “A bigger and bigger percentage of our partners are women,” said Terry Finley, the founder of West Point Thoroughbreds, a large syndicate with 500 partners, about 25 percent of whom are women, he estimated. The syndicate, whose horse Commanding Curve finished a close second in the 2014 Kentucky Derby, offers entry­level buy­ins of $15,000 to $25,000.  Triumphant Trio has a much higher buy­in of $500,000, and just three partners. Syndicates can be structured in different ways, and while West Point, for instance, allows investors to buy a partial ownership in a single horse, at Triumphant Trio the partners jointly own all their horses. In addition to Ms. Rosenblum, who is the managing partner, and Ms. Rice, Triumphant Trio’s partners include Iris Smith, a longtime horse­racing fan who lives in Beverly Hills and TriBeCa, and who is also a partner in Ms. Rosenblum’s first syndicate.

While Triumphant Trio has a high buy­in price, it also made headlines recently when it spent $840,000 for the still­unnamed half brother of American Pharoah. “That really took them to a whole new level,” said Dan Metzger, the president of the Thoroughbred Owners and Breeders Association. It’s all part of Triumphant Trio’s lofty aspirations. “Horse racing can be a crooked, strange business,” Ms. Rosenblum said. “But I left home at 15 to study ballet. I’ve been beaten up a little bit in my life and understand the school of hard knocks. We are ready to take this on.”