‘I never thought in a million years I would be training racehorses for a living’ says the Belmont Stakes-winning trainer. Find out why in this revealing interview by Amanda Duckworth
In the immediate aftermath of winning the Belmont Stakes with Arcangelo, trainer Jena Antonucci was asked what her message would be to anyone who thought a woman would never train a Triple Crown race winner.
“Never give up, and if you can't find a seat at the table, make your own table,” came the reply – and instantly w
ent viral. But in spite of what some might think, it was completely off the cuff.
“I have been asked if that quote I made was premeditated, and I tell everybody I wish I was that smart,” said Antonucci.
“It was just a culmination of a lot of noes,” she went on. “A lifetime of noes, and a lifetime of not being seen. That’s hard as a human, that’s hard as a woman, and that’s hard as someone who is growing a business where you know you are doing it the right way.
“I was filtering so fast in that moment and it was a question I didn’t expect. It had more of an ‘eff you’ tone to it in my mind! I was trying to figure out how to put a filtered bow on it, and that was my filtered bow. For all the noes you have received over the decades of building a career … well, here is your yes.”
History maker
Antonucci and Arcangelo will forever be part of horse racing history, thanks to the gray colt’s length-and-a-half victory over Forte in the Belmont. In 155 runnings of the race, Antonucci is the first woman to train the winner; on top of that, she is also the only woman to train the winner of any Triple Crown race.
Arcangelo, who is owned by Jon Ebbert’s Blue Rose Farm, is expected to make his next start in the Travers Stakes on August 26 at Saratoga.
“I am very grateful for Arcangelo,” said Antonucci, 47. “He’s just awesome. He has a bigger-than-life personality, which obviously makes it so much fun, but when he is in his mood and you can get in there and love on him, I appreciate it so much.
“You have to let him be a boy, but when you can take a hold of his chin and give him a big old kiss and rub his forehead, honestly those are the times that are most special. It is such a gift to watch a horse like that train every day and to see him thriving. But when you can just have those personal moments? That’s very important.”
Being surrounded by well-wishers following Arcangelo’s triumph is a bit different from Antonucci’s earliest memories of the horse racing industry, which were not always favorable and included being denied access to the winner’s circle at Saratoga.
“My grandparents were pretty involved with horse racing by the time I was ten, and my first exposure to the racetrack and being on the backside was with them,” Antonucci said. “I have fond memories and not-so-fond memories. As a ten-year-old, you definitely have a different point of view when you are seeing that and feeling all of that energy. That was 37 years ago, and so, the backside was definitely very different 37 years ago than it is today.”
Instead of racehorses, Antonucci was captivated by the sport horse world. She was around horses from a very early age and participated in her first horse show when she was a toddler. Her focus was on the hunter/jumpers, not the racehorses, but she would still visit her grandparents in Saratoga in the summer.
“My grandparents continued to run their horses, and I got to watch what they did but it was at an arms-length,” she said. “There is a picture of me when I was a kid, and they wouldn’t let me in the winner’s circle. It was a NYRA rule that kids weren’t allowed in the winner’s circle. So, my family stood me on the wall at Saratoga, and you can see that I was bawling because I wasn’t allowed in.
“My grandfather had very colorful language, and the first word started with ‘f’ and the second word was ‘that.’ They made it happen where I was in the picture. He shifted where they took it, so you can at least see me standing on the wall.
“You are taking all of that in as a child. I had an exposure to the Thoroughbred world and wasn’t impressed. I never thought in a million years I would be training Thoroughbred racehorses for a living as an adult.”
Sport horses to racehorses
Although Antonucci was not focused on racehorses growing up, her grandparents’ retired runners would often go to her trainers to help transition to their next careers.
Combined with the fact many of the school horses she rode were retired racehorses, Antonucci was regularly exposed to Thoroughbreds and their capabilities. As a teenager and into her 20s, she routinely helped train off-the-track Thoroughbreds for new careers.
A Florida native, Antonucci worked her way up in the show world before eventually deciding she wanted to move on to a different career.
“I had amazing opportunities, I got to ride amazing horses, and I worked for Charlie Weaver, who was an amazing trainer,” she said. “My last big show horse soirée was down in Palm Beach, and that world just wasn’t reality for me. Then I started managing a farm up in Orlando. We were pulling Thoroughbreds out of Ocala to retrain down there.
“My grandparents were pretty involved with Hartley/DeRenzo back then,” she added. “One day a vet was out there, and I told him I was thinking about wanting to work with some foals and learn all of that and take that back into the retraining process. He circled three farms in the farm directly and said, ‘Don’t go anywhere but these three. Start here!’ The first farm I went to was Padua, I got hired, and the rest is kind of history.”
Padua Stables, which was owned by Satish Sanan at the time, hired Antonucci to help with the training of young horses, and she also helped launch an in-house aftercare program.
“I had a good experience there,” she said. “I started doing vet tech work as well. I really learned a lot of my reproductive stuff doing all of that, and the niche there cycled with reproductive work, sales work, and lameness. Those were three things I had been very interested in.
“Mrs. Sanan was amazing with the retraining program,” Antonucci continued. “Her family was a huge show jumping family in Ireland, and [daughter] Nadia was wanting to ride at the time, too. Not everyone was supportive of that venture, but she was steadfast with it. The Sanans were way ahead of their time in our industry.”
Antonucci eventually went out on her own, opening her own business, Bella Inizio Farm, in Florida. In 2010, she took out her trainer’s license and won her first race on March 7, 2010 at Tampa Bay Downs with Irish Wildcat.
Focus on the future
Becoming a trainer does not mean Antonucci lost interest in the aftercare of racehorses. She has served on the board of the Florida TRAC (Florida Thoroughbred Retirement and Adoptive Care) program as well as participating in the Real Rider Cup. The brainchild of trainer Graham Motion’s wife Anita, this is a charity show-jumping competition featuring racing personalities teaming up with ex-racehorses.
“People don’t realize how much work putting on the Real Rider Cup is,” said Antonucci. “I believe in everything that Graham and Anita Motion stand for with regards to aftercare and understanding how important that is.
“Sometimes you have to step forward and do some unconventional things to help push that ball forward. Anita and Maggie Kimmitt do a ton to put that on every year. I had a blast my year – even though it was rainy and gross weather.”
Antonucci’s relationship with the Motions goes beyond aftercare and loops back into a part of the industry she is still very much involved in: working with horses who need time away from the track.
“We have a great relationship, and we actually do a lot of layups and rehabs and freshenings for Graham,” said Antonucci. “People can have a hard time figuring that out, but I am not looking to poach people’s clients. We have this huge part of our business that we have been building. It’s really fun to be able to work with other trainers and be able to send their horses back and say: ‘You are ready to roll, have fun, good luck with them.’”
Following her success in the Belmont, Antonucci has regularly been asked questions about being a woman in the sport, but her answers are the same as before Arcangelo’s history-making run.
“I think women are more heavily scrutinized, probably more than anything,” she said. “I think there are old stigmatisms and stereotypes that we don’t train them hard enough, or oh we don’t do this, oh we don’t do that. That’s cute. That’s fine. They can think that.
“Honestly, I have long said when you are evaluating everyone by a win percentage you are doing a disservice to the industry. Statistically, somebody with 20 horses cannot run enough to erase a hard-beat second.
“Say your horse runs great, but you get beat by some big horse that shows up. Now your win percentage is down even though your horse ran great. How do you possibly fairly do justice to the middle market in this industry by judging by that? I think that is an issue whether you are male or female.”
Antonucci, who also is the co-owner (alongisde Katie Miranda) of HorseOlogy, a full-cycle Thoroughbred training and ownership organization, is not looking to grow her stable exponentially off of her Classic win. Instead, she wants to focus on working with clients she enjoys.
“We don’t honestly want to have 200 horses in training,” she said. “That’s just not who we are. On the racing side, I wouldn’t see us wanting to be more than 30-35 horses. That way you can have a string somewhere, and then your better horses may travel a little bit. You can do a good job, see them all, touch them all, learn their personalities, and lean into each horse as much as possible.
“I think it is a quality over quantity thing for us. It is working with good people, and that will stay our focus. This is hard enough, so you want to work with people who appreciate what you do and how you do it.”
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