6-for-6: Rivelli enjoys the ride with undefeated filly

When Vince Foglia bought an Ohio-bred 2-year-old in training for $385,000 in April 2022, people “thought we were nuts,” said trainer Larry Rivelli.

“Usually they're right, but it ended up working out,” Rivelli told Horse Racing Nation on Monday.

And their acumen proved itself when the filly, Back to Ohio, won all five of her starts last year. Of those, four were in stakes for Ohio-breds, and one came in open company in the black-type Presque Isle Debutante.

One factor in her favor, Rivelli said, was that she was sired by Midshipman, winner of the 2008 Breeders’ Cup Juvenile.

Back to Ohio was given time off after her 2022 campaign. There weren’t any suitable races for 2-year-old, Ohio-bred fillies, Rivelli said, “so I figured that was the time to do it.”

She returned July 11 with a win in a Thistledown allowance, but the plan was to bring her back sooner.

“I missed a race because I was getting ready to get back in the swing of things and then she got sick. So I had to back off on her,” Rivelli said. “So I missed the first one. And then we ended up running in this race, this Ohio-bred allowance race that popped up on the extras, and now we're going to knock out the rest of the Ohio-bred 3-year-old races for the rest of the year if we can.”

Now, Back to Ohio is pointed to the Tomboy Stakes at Belterra, where she’ll try turf for the first time and will go 1 1/16 miles, a distance she has run once, in her last start of 2022. Three of her wins have come on dirt, three on synthetic.

As for what’s after that, Rivelli couldn’t speculate. “She's just a horse you've got to find spots for. She's a real nice filly. At some point we'll have to find out if she can hang with open-company horses.

"But this is why you buy a breed or a horse like this for this kind of money, so you can knock out the races that you're supposed to knock out while you can because we all know that nothing lasts forever," said Rivelli, who trained 2023 Kentucky Derby runner-up Two Phil's before he was retired in June because of an injury. "They don't stay sound forever. Someday we'll be breeding her to somebody, but hopefully for now we can keep being successful racing her.”

As you might expect of an undefeated filly, she’s a pleasure to have in the barn, Rivelli said.

“She's a sweetheart horse. Honestly, she doesn't do anything wrong. She puts her head between her chest, puts head down, gallops around there nice. You can do whatever you want with her. She's very, very classy. She's been like that since we bought her.”