Rivelli readies for another big Arlington meet

STICKNEY, Ill. – Trainer Larry Rivelli is gearing up for his big meet of the year, Arlington, and the promising 3-year-old he trains The Tabulator is gearing up for his first start of the year.

Rivelli winters at Tampa Bay Downs and runs some horses in South Florida between November and April, but he has become the perennial leading trainer at Arlington, and even as that meet has fallen on hard times, it has become the focal point of his year.

Rivelli has 87 horses, pretty much his entire stable, settled in at Arlington right now, and The Tabulator is scheduled for a five-furlong drill there Thursday. The Tabulator returned to the work tab March 10 at Hawthorne, going three furlongs, and since then has turned in a pair of sharp half-mile breezes there.

The Tabulator hasn’t raced since finishing fifth in the Breeders’ Cup Juvenile, his first loss after wins in an Arlington maiden race, the Prairie Gold Juvenile, and the Iroquois Stakes at Churchill Downs last fall. Rivelli said The Tabulator had relatively minor surgery to remove a bone chip in his ankle following the Breeders’ Cup.

“He’s actually training better now than he ever has before,” said Rivelli.

Rivelli had hoped to bring back The Tabulator in the Pat Day Mile next month at Churchill Downs, but now it appears that the colt, by Dialed In, won’t quite be ready for that start. Instead, Rivelli will look for a lesser race around one turn to ready The Tabulator for rich races like the Ohio Derby, the Indiana Derby, or the West Virginia Derby.

Carolyn Wilson owns The Tabulator and paid $775,000 at a March sale of 2-year-olds in training for a colt now named Strong Will. Strong Will is working right along at Arlington, Rivelli said, and is part of a strong group of 2-year-olds he has stabled in Chicago for the summer.

“We have some nice Illinois homebreds, but some of these horses we’ll probably have to run out of town,” Rivelli said.

One horse penciled in for a race at Arlington is Wellabled, the 4-year-old synthetic-surface specialist who got a 109 Beyer Speed Figure in winning the Forego Stakes by seven lengths Jan. 19 at Turfway Park. Wellabled subsequently shipped to California, where he finished second by three-quarters of a length Feb. 19 in the Lost in the Fog Stakes at Golden Gate Fields. Wellabled is being pointed to the Hanshin Cup, a one-turn mile over Arlington’s Polytrack.