10-for-10 Silent Rule is aimed for summer return to racing

John Hoctel will load up the horse trailer again this week. It has become a ritual that takes him away from his wife, Linda, and on the road a thousand miles between their horse farm in Williston, Fla., and the racing stables of the Midwest.

“I actually run back and forth to Ohio every three weeks,” Hoctel said last week. “I pretty much hit the same gas station. It’s a grind. I go through Kentucky and hit all the Buc-ees.”

This week the destination is Youngstown, Ohio. This trip will not be so routine, because Hoctel will deliver precious cargo to Mahoning Valley.

Flashback: Silent Rule wins her 10th in a row.

“I actually think my wife (Carol) is trying to come in town early enough to be here when she gets here Wednesday or Thursday,” trainer Jay Bernardini said.

There is only one “she” who it could be. Silent Rule is going back home.

Carrying a 10-for-10 record built mostly on state-bred sprint stakes in Ohio, Silent Rule is the winningest active, undefeated Thoroughbred in the country. The 5-year-old mare who is owned by Hoctel will be shipped back to Bernardini with the plan to race her again this summer.

That was not automatic when Silent Rule was shut down in September. Saying she was “not 100% sound” with an inflamed knee, Bernardini thought retirement might be next. Hoctel concurred. But they left the door open for a comeback.

“We’ve had her looked at by the top two vets down here that we could find,” Hoctel told Horse Racing Nation. “We re-examined her (Wednesday), and I am taking her back to the racetrack.”

But not to racing, per se. That will take a while. And not to any particular target in a condition book.

“Oh, no, no, no,” said Bernardini, whose summer training base is at Mountaineer in West Virginia. “There’s a lot of hurdles long before that. Like she did last year, she’ll start and stay in the Ohio program at the beginning, anyway. They run their stakes all summer and don’t end the Ohio things until I think late November.”

Bernardini did pencil in a very tentative timetable for Silent Rule’s first start since she won the Best of Ohio Honey Jay Stakes on Aug. 14 at Thistledown.

“It would take 60-90 days, something like that,” he said. “Depending on her fitness. Those races are at Thistledown (near Cleveland) and Belterra Park (in Cincinnati).”

Both Hoctel and Bernardini always have been laser-focused on the knee that Silent Rule cracked ever so slightly three years ago before she made her racing debut.

“She’s 100%,” Hoctel said. “One vet said you couldn’t even see that there was a hairline fracture.”

Even so, Bernardini wants to make triply sure. As he always has with Silent Rule, he will take his time training her back into racing shape.

“John has been exercising her lightly down there,” Bernardini said. “We’re approaching it like she told us she was going to be OK physically to try this again. Now each stage of her training will be with the same intention. If she’s not 100,000% percent, I will not go to the next step.”

Instead of racing, that next step could have been her sale to a new owner who would turn Silent Rule into a broodmare. Hoctel made it known that he did not want her racing for anyone else once he let her go. He would not confirm the best offer he got since last summer or who might have made it.

Hoctel finally turned down those dollars he would have gotten for the daughter of Street Boss out of Candy Ride mare Modern Lady. Instead he will watch his pride and joy try to extend her winning streak.

“They were like, well, if she can race again, and I don’t see why she can’t, why take the money now?” Bernardini said. “That money is not going away. I think John and Linda are really excited about racing.”

“I’m either real happy about it,” Hoctel said, “or I’m an idiot for turning down a large offer.”

Hoctel and Bernardini always have laid out modest goals for Silent Rule. They have mentioned graded stakes at Monmouth Park and even made passing references to the Breeders’ Cup. But Silent Rule has found success staying in her home state, winning four stakes in Ohio company and a total of $355,456 in earnings. That comfort zone beckons again in 2026.

“That’s still kind of the intention,” Bernardini said. “But again we have to do work first, a first race first and then try and keep the streak going.”

An undefeated record carries built-in pressure, a fact that Silent Rule’s connections continue to address.

“That’s what John always asks,” Bernardini said laughing. “I say wait a minute. I’m a Red Sox fan. It was what, 86? How many years was (the championship drought)? And then it was the Yankees, and we were down 3-0 (in 2004), and we came back. I don’t look at it like that. It’s a pleasure. The fact that (the Hoctels) are so trusting of us to put her in my hands, that’s enough pressure in itself, honestly.”

Bernardini said he never got to see Silent Rule off when Hoctel collected her last summer from Mountaineer to take her those 1,000 miles back to Florida.

“The morning John took her, we were busy training,” Bernardini said. “He kind of loaded her on the van and hauled her himself. He said, ‘Jay, I wanted to get her out of there, because I knew you were going to be sad.’ So it’ll be fun when she returns.”