Rivelli winning with horses young and old
The Arlington-based trainer shipped an unraced 2-year-old named Dugout to Saratoga to start in a New York-bred maiden race on July 23. Dugout had been working strongly over Arlington’s Polytrack surface, and Larry Rivelli had hoped to run him on turf, but last Monday’s race was rained onto a wet main track. Didn’t matter – Dugout won in a gallop.
That shouldn’t have been surprising. Rivelli has been on an epic roll with 2-year-old first-time starters. During the ongoing Arlington meet, he’s entered such horses in six races and won five of them. And going back to Oct. 14 at Hawthorne, Rivelli has nine wins from 12 juvenile first-timers. In two of those races, Rivelli had multiple debuting entrants, meaning he has won nine of the last 10 baby races in which he sent out a first-timer.
“Numbers don’t lie, I guess,” Rivelli said when reached Tuesday evening at Saratoga. “I was a little surprised [Dugout] did that well on dirt. He loves the Poly. I’ll leave him at Saratoga – there are some New York-bred stakes around for him.”
The best of Rivelli’s 2-year-old winners at Arlington this summer probably is Strong Will, a Strong Mandate colt who cost owner Carolyn Wilson $775,000 at a sale of 2-year-olds in training this year and won his debut on June 17.
It was more than four years ago that the Rivelli-trained Good Bye Greg won his career debut at Arlington by more than 13 lengths – and Good Bye Greg still is winning at Arlington. Making his first start since November and racing on turf for the first time since 2015, Good Bye Greg won a July 21 grass sprint by 1 1/4 lengths. That pushed the 7-year-old’s career record to 16-10-2-1 and gave him at least one Arlington win five years in a row.
“He looks good again, especially against horses like that,” said Rivelli, who ran Good Bye Greg for a $50,000 claiming tag. “He just has so many problems. The Poly race for him didn’t go, and I thought the race last weekend would be rained off, but everything worked out. He’s just a good horse.”
