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On a Roll, Rigney Racing Seeks First Breeders’ Cup Win

The GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies Turf looks like a tough spot for Xigera (Nyquist). She's 8-1 in the morning line, drew the 13 post, is facing a strong group of European challengers and her only win came in a maiden race. But she's not out of this, not as hot as her stable is.

In their ninth year in the sport and after an inauspicious start, Richard and Tammy Rigney's Rigney Racing is enjoying a dream season. With seven wins, they were the leading owner at the spring meet at Churchill Downs. They followed that up with six winners at Saratoga from just 13 starters. In September, they teamed up with private trainer Phil Bauer to win the GIII Locust Grove S. at Churchill Downs with Played Hard (Into Mischief).

“It's our ninth year together with Phil and we have been continually trying to progress to compete at the top level on a consistent basis,” Richard Rigney said. “We feel like we have kind of arrived.”

Rigney is a successful businessman who owns Clarendon Flavor Engineering, a Louisville-based beverage company that makes flavors for distilled spirits. He wanted a new challenge and chose to get involved in racing, but it didn't go well at the start. In its first four years in operation, Rigney Racing won just 17 races.

But he vowed to keep plugging away.

“You have to be really resilient to be in this industry,” he said “If you have a problem with being knocked down and you can't get back up you should get out of this business. We have long-term goals, goals to compete in the Oaks and the Derby. Having a bad year is not going to slow us down. Instead, we'll look at what we can do better each year.”

Looking back, he can see where he went wrong. Like many who have come before him, he thought that success in another business meant he could do just as well in horse racing.

“This is where I made my mistake,” said Rigney, who estimates he has 60 horses. “I own my own business. It seemed to me, I'm killing it here, I can do the same in another business and it will be no problem. Phil and I decided we'd do it together, just the two of us. We started picking out horses together and we weren't so good at it.”

Rigney was smart enough to know he had to try something different. He hired bloodstock agent John Moynihan to select horses for him at the sales and the results were immediate.

“This has been a long time coming for the Rigneys,” Bauer said. “He's put a good team together and that starts at the sales. John Moynihan buying our horses has made a world of difference for us. We're dealing with athletes that can compete at this level and we just try to stay out of the way.”

After winning the title at Churchill, the Rigneys and Bauer weren't that optimistic about Saratoga. They had a number of horses that needed a break and decided to send only a small string to Saratoga.

“Saratoga was huge,” Rigney said. “We thought it was time to give some of our horses a break and just take the right horses up to Saratoga, so we picked out who we'd send there. Phil had an amazing run. It was unreal. You just don't win six races at Saratoga with 13 starters. It was a great time for us and Phil got a lot of recognition, which was nice to see.”

Xigera, named for one of the Rigney's vacation spots, a safari lodge in Botswana, broke her maiden on Aug. 28 at Saratoga in a mile-and-a-sixteenth grass race. Bauer wanted to keep her on the turf but was told she might not get in the GII Jessamine S., so opted instead to try the filly on the dirt in the GI Alcibiades S. She finished fourth but was bothered late and placed third through disqualification.

“I was really pleased with way she ran,” Bauer said. “My initial reaction was maybe I didn't have her tight enough for a dirt effort. She bounced out really well and we're excited moving forward.”

Rigney has had three other horses he owned in partnerships compete in the Breeders' Cup, including Dream Empress (Bernstein), who finished in 2008 GI Breeders' Cup Juvenile Fillies. Xigera will be the first for Rigney Racing. While he said he'd be happy if Xigera were simply to run well, he sees having a horse in the Breeders' Cup as an accomplishment in itself, a sign that his stable is headed in the right direction.

“We have some good quality horses and, hopefully, they will keep coming our way and we can keep participating in events like the Breeders' Cup” Rigney said. “That's what it's all about. We decided that we're all in.”

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Thursday Insights: 3-Year-Old Curlin Half To Midnight Bourbon, Girvin Debuts At Churchill

Sponsored by Alex Nichols Agency

10th-CD, $120K, Msw, 3yo/up, 1m, 5:35 p.m.

A $500,000 Keeneland September yearling out of the 2020 Stonestreet Thoroughbreds consignment, CAWKAB (Curlin) was purchased by Shadwell Stables and makes a belated debut out of the Brad Cox barn. A 3-year-old son of Catch the Moon (Malibu Moon), Cawkab is a half-brother to four graded-stakes winners including the late GSW & MGISP Midnight Bourbon (Tiznow), GISW & up-and-coming freshman sire Girvin (Tale of Ekati), GSW Cocked and Loaded (Colonel John), and GSW Pirate's Punch (Shanghai Bobby). His 2-year-old half-brother, Weyhill Road (Quality Road), was himself a $1.6m Keeneland September yearling, nearly topping the sale, and recently debuted fourth in maiden special weight company at Keeneland. TJCIS PPS

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Juan Leyva in Full Flight for Breeders’ Cup

LEXINGTON, KY – Juan Leyva has a first-class 'Flight' for this year's Championships.

The assistant trainer to John Sadler and former Breeders' Cup winning-jockey is the regular morning partner of unbeaten sensation and 3-5 Classic morning-line favorite Flightline (Tapit). The highest-rated racehorse in the world has won his first five starts by an astounding combined margin of 62 3/4 lengths, led by a jaw-dropping 19 1/4-length win while making his two-turn debut in the GI Pacific Classic at Del Mar.

Getting the monster that is Flightline to harness some of that brilliant early speed, however, has been another story.

“With him, it's always like, 'How do you ride a hurricane?'” Sadler said in these pages ahead of Flightline's spectacular GI Met Mile win at Belmont Park in June. “Juan's been working with him and getting him to relax.”

Well, how exactly does Leyva do it?

“In the beginning, he was always very keen to do more than what was wanted from him,” Leyva said. “It's just been a work in progress with him every day trying to get him to settle down. If it were up to him, he'd go out there and just breeze every day.”

Longtime Sadler client and Flightline co-owner Kosta Hronis echoes those same sentiments.

“He wanted to go full blast and run as hard as he could all of the time,” said Hronis, who campaigns Flightline along with Siena Farm, breeder Summer Wind Equine, West Point Thoroughbreds and Woodford Racing.

“I was watching the Pacific Classic replay on TVG and they were showing a Flightline work earlier in the year where he's just dragging Juan around the racetrack. Juan looks like he has both feet on the brakes. But then you see his last workout before the Pacific Classic and he's turned Flightline into such a relaxed and professional horse to where he's push-button now. It's a blessing that Juan is getting some recognition for what he's done. Not only for Flightline, but for the barn in general. He's done a great job.”

With a $1-million pricetag as a Fasig-Tipton Saratoga yearling and a growing reputation that he could back it up coming off the farm–albeit a bit belatedly after suffering a nasty wound to his hind end as a youngster–the expectations were always sky high for Flightline upon joining the Sadler barn in December of his 2-year-old season.

“The first day that I sat on him, I thought, 'Wow, what an amazing animal,'” Leyva said. “Just the way he moves is so different from other horses. And I've been at this for quite a while now, so I draw from experience of being on some good horses in the past. And he was just something that I had never experienced.”

Born in Mexico and raised in Riverside, California, Leyva, like so many, was introduced to the sport by his father. The 38-year-old didn't immediately envision racing as a potential career path though.

“I liked horses and I liked riding them, but I didn't think that I would be doing what I'm doing now,” Leyva said. “When I was very young, my dad had some Quarter Horses and he would match race them. In those kind of races, you put up your own money. He didn't really trust the jockeys, so he told me, 'You're gonna be the jockey.'”

He continued, “I did it to please him, but when I won my first match race, it was just such an exhilarating feeling of joy and triumph that the bug just bit me. Once I got old enough, I quit school and focused all my energy on the horses.”

Still just in his late teenage years, Leyva began making the rounds on the backstretch at Santa Anita and was eager to show off his handywork from riding in the match races for his old man.

“My agent takes me to John's barn to work a horse,” Leyva said. “And me being a young kid, I wanted to show John that I could switch sticks–hit right, hit left. So, that's exactly what I did.”

As you can imagine, this did not go over well with the boss.

“I come back and John says, 'What the heck were you doing! We don't hit our horses in the mornings!' Leyva said. “And at that point, I thought I blew my chance at Santa Anita.”

He didn't. Sadler gave Leyva another chance the following morning–he kept the stick in his back pocket this time, thankfully–and a friendship was beginning to take shape. Leyva launched his career as a jockey in 2000, and, before relocating to South Florida, Sadler offered him a job to work as an assistant. He declined. At least for the time being.

“I wanted to ride races, I wanted to pursue my dream,” Leyva said. “I left, but through it all, we always stayed in contact. He always checked up on me.”

Leyva celebrated his biggest victory aboard 20-1 Musical Romance–ironically over the Sadler-trained Switch–in the 2011 GI Breeders' Cup Filly & Mare Sprint at Churchill Downs. He previously experienced the thrill of riding on the first Saturday in May in Louisville, piloting Storm in May to an unplaced finish in the 2007 GI Kentucky Derby. “I thought I had reached the top with Musical Romance, but I don't think I had even seen it until now with this horse [Flightline],” Leyva said.

Sadler once again “checked up” on Leyva a year or two following his victory at the Championships. He wasn't ready to hang up the reins just yet though.

“At the time, I still had some business and I was doing OK,” Leyva said. “I told him that I didn't want to quit riding yet. I was still enjoying it.”

Battling weight issues and suffering from a decline in business following the retirement of Musical Romance and Storm in May's trainer Bill Kaplan, Leyva decided to call it quits in 2017. In all, Leyva won 803 races for a total of $22,942,868 in earnings. Trainer David Fawkes was the first to offer him a job as an assistant in South Florida, but Leyva had other ideas.

“After talking it over with my wife, I called John and said, 'I'm ready to come home,'” Leyva said.

Immediately thrown into the deep end, Leyva was put in charge of Sadler's 20-horse string at Los Alamitos. Not exactly what he had in mind when agreeing to return to the West Coast to serve as his assistant.

“I basically got a crash course in being a trainer,” Leyva said. “I went from riding races the past week to having 20 horses and trying to manage a set list, riders and grooms, etc. Little by little, I started doing my thing. But I didn't come to California to be at Los Al. I came to California to learn how to train horses from John.”

Fast forward six months and school was officially in session at the 'Great Race Place.'

“When he brought me to Santa Anita, it was like going from elementary school to high school–now you're in with the big dogs,” Leyva said with a laugh.

Leyva rode champion Accelerate (Lookin At Lucky) ahead of his win in the 2018 GI Breeders' Cup Classic, which emphatically put an end to Sadler's well-documented 0-for-44 winless mark at the Championships. Leyva also began working with Sadler-trained standouts such as Hronis Racing's MGSW Catalina Cruiser (Union Rags) and Woodford Racing's MGSW and GI Breeders' Cup Mile runner-up Catapult (Kitten's Joy).

“I was very lucky that from the beginning when I went to Santa Anita, John had a lot of nice horses,” Leyva said. “I was able to work alongside them and really recognize what it takes to get to those kind of big races.

“Once I got to Santa Anita, that's where I really started soaking everything in that John was doing. And the great thing about John is that when we're doing something with the horses, he always takes time to explain to me why we're doing things. He's a very good teacher.”

As Flightline puts his unblemished record on the line in Saturday's $6-million centerpiece at Keeneland, Hronis summed it up best.

“Juan's been a great student of John's,” Hronis said. “And Flightline has been a great student of Juan's.”

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Spendthrift Unveils B. Wayne Hughes Visitors Center

Lexington, KY – Spendthrift Farm opened the doors to its new B. Wayne Hughes Visitors Center on Tuesday, Nov. 1 as part of the lead-up to the Breeders' Cup World Championships.

Named in honor of the farm's late founder, the 7,000 square-foot, two story facility will serve as the home for Spendthrift's tourism. The building is located between the farm's stallion complex and main office and features a trophy room, which showcases Spendthrift's collection of trophies, artifacts and racing memorabilia, as well as a gift shop.

Spendthrift owners Eric and Tammy Gustavson led the grand opening and credited Tammy's father Hughes for his vision behind the facility.

“He loved this farm, he loved the horse industry, and he grew to love the idea of tourism,” Eric Gustavson said. “He recognized its value and its ability to draw in fans and potential owners. He was always trying to grow the game. Tammy and I are honored to name the visitors center after him and to have this be a small part of Wayne's legacy and his impact on our industry.”

During the ribbon-cutting ceremony, the Gustavsons were joined by VisitLex President Mary Quinn Ramer and Lexington Mayor Linda Gorton.

“In the Thoroughbred business, Spendthrift has made history over and over again,” said Gorton. “Some of the best have roamed these fields…Today we're dedicating this beautiful new visitors center, a place that will welcome tourists. It is places like this that make Lexington special and unique. This reminds us how important it is to protect our Bluegrass countryside.”

Senator Damon Thayer and Congressman Andy Barr were also present for the event.

The newly-unveiled Malibu Moon memorial statue stands in front of the visitors center and portrays the farm's foundation sire facing his old paddock. Read more about the making of the bronze sculpture from the artist himself, Douwe Blumberg, here.

“Malibu Moon was vitally important to this farm,” Gustavson said. “Wayne had a tendency to speak very simply, and very simply he said that Malibu Moon started Spendthrift Farm. And it's true. We were a fledgling farm and Malibu Moon was a perennial leading sire. He put us on the map and gave us legitimacy. It was the start of something that became what we are now.”

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