OZONE PARK, N.Y. – Linda Rice won nine races at Aqueduct last week, increasing her total number of wins in 2025 to a personal-best 174, surpassing her previous one-year high of 167 set in 2024.
Rice has tallied 157 of those wins at New York Racing Association tracks – Aqueduct and Saratoga. With 14 cards left to be run on this circuit this year, Rice is on schedule to finish 2025 as the leading trainer in wins as she has 38 more than Chad Brown, who ranks second.
Rice, who owns many of the horses she claims, also is going to be the leading owner as she enters the final stretch with 55 wins, a dozen ahead of Seth Klarman’s Klaravich Stables.
Rice’s purse earnings for 2025 are $9,084,426, about $1.4 million shy of her personal best of $10,432,723 set in 2023.
“It’s been a very good year, I still haven’t met the numbers of my best year, being 2023,” Rice said. “Last year maybe was a dip from that, so I’m glad we’re trending back in the right direction.”
While reaching 200 training wins for the year is unlikely, it’s not impossible. Rice does have the opportunity to set a personal record for most wins at NYRA – she won 164 races in 2023 – as racing resumes Friday with a nine-race card.
Rice has 11 horses entered in six races Friday, including the undefeated New York-bred filly With the Angels, who makes just her second start of the year in an open-company second-level allowance/optional $75,000 claiming race at 6 1/2 furlongs. Rice also has All Class entered in this race.
With the Angels, a 3-year-old daughter of Omaha Beach, went 4 for 4 as a 2-year-old and won three New York-bred stakes to earn statebred championship honors in the juvenile filly division. With the Angels, who suffered from a subepiglottic ulcer that took more than six months to heal, didn’t make it back to the races until October when she won a first-level allowance by 2 1/2 lengths.
“I see her moving forward, I don’t know that I want to throw her to the deep end of the pool just yet,” Rice said. “It took her a while to where I wanted to lead her over there. It was a slow process getting her back to the races, but I see improvement from race one going into her second race.”
All Class, a 5-year-old daughter of Kantharos, drops back into allowance company – and gets back on Lasix – following a seventh-place finish behind R Disaster in the Grade 2 Gallant Bloom Stakes at the Belmont at the Big A meeting on Sept. 27. Prior to that, All Class finished second to R Disaster in a similar race as this over a sloppy track at Saratoga.
Cupid’s Heart, another New York-bred taking on open company, also has proven to be a more effective runner on Lasix than without the anti-bleeding medication.
Twirling Beauty makes her first start for trainer David Duggan after having previously raced for Ray Handal and Robert Falcone Jr. Twirling Beauty is back on dirt – a surface she won a first-level allowance over at Monmouth Park in June.
Rice has several chances to record her fourth multiple-win day from five cards on Friday.
In race 2, she sends out Adventurist and Fever Night in a $30,000 claiming race for horses who never won two races. The race is at 1 1/8 miles, a distance at which Adventurist won a maiden $20,000 claiming race at Saratoga by six lengths in July. On Nov. 12, Adventurist finished second, beaten a neck, in this condition going one mile.
Fever Night, is dropping down from a $100,000 claiming race at Saratoga in July in which he finished fourth.
Rice eyes graded stakes win
Perhaps the only negative for Rice this year is that she has not won a graded stakes race. In fact, her last such victory came in May 2024 when Joey Freshwater won the Grade 3 Runhappy at the Belmont at the Big A meet.
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The Runhappy has been rebranded as the Elite Power and will be run Dec. 6. Rice has four nominated to the $250,000 race and is planning to run El Grande O.
El Grande O, a New York-bred son of Take Charge Indy, is coming off a head victory in a multi-conditioned allowance/optional $100,000 claiming race in which he beat Acoustic Ave – also trained by Rice and also nominated to the Elite Power.
“I thought it was a great effort, he really dug in in the stretch and managed to get up, I was pretty impressed with that race,” Rice said.
Though El Grande O had early success going seven furlongs or a mile, Rice said “my gut tells me he’s a better closing sprinter. You have to give him credit for how well he ran at longer distances.”
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