Moments after the greatest accomplishment of her career, Jena Antonucci fought through tears.
“They say there’s no crying in baseball,” the 47-year-old horse trainer began. “They’ve never said it about horse racing.”
With Arcangelo’s victory in the 1.5-mile 2023 Belmont Stakes — the third jewel of horse racing’s Triple Crown — on Saturday evening in Elmont, Antonucci became the first-ever female trainer to win a Triple Crown race.
The three-year-old, who was purchased by Jon Ebbert and Blue Rose Farm for just $35,000 as a yearling, ran the race of his life, defeating favored Forte by 1.5 lengths in 2:29.23 with Tapit Trice finishing third.
Consider that an incredible return on investment. The $1.5 million purse that came with the Belmont Stakes win was the cherry on top of a brilliant three-race run in which Arcangelo has won each of them to reward Ebbert for sticking with Antonucci, who began training horses in 2010 and had sent less than 2,000 horses to the post in her first 13 years.
“Just overcoming the adversities. You go through growing and you go through a career and you take it on the chin and you fight for that spot,” Antonucci said. “And you feel you have to prove your worth and horses don’t care. They don’t care who you are, they know who you are… I’m immensely grateful. I cannot say that enough.
“A lot of stars have aligned. This crazy guy [Ebbert] gave the girls a chance. And there’s a lot of credit to that man right there. Because his phone rang and rang. ‘Move the horse or we’ll buy the horse.’ Give [training duties] to the guys. No offense to them. I love them all. They’re good to me. I can go up and say hi to any one of them. But he gave a girl a chance.”
Antonucci was just the 11th female trainer to have a horse at the Belmont Stakes and the last to do so since Kathy Ritvo in 2011 with Mucho Macho Man, who finished in seventh.
Kingpost, who was trained by Dianne Carpenter, previously had the best finish by a female trainer when he finished second in 1988.
“She just has the best team. She is an amazing person,” Ebbert said of Antonucci. “She will try her best for each owner. In bigger barns, I don’t think it’s the same.
S”he’s just detail-oriented. She’s very trustworthy. She’s so personable. We’re friends… Most trainers I had in the past. You know, we haven’t had a personal relationship.”
