Top Md. trainer Brittany Russell’s star continues to rise

It was six years ago next month when Brittany Russell saddled her first horse as a trainer on her own. It was in her home state Maryland, where a 4-year-old maiden filly named Oh My held on to win in the slop at Laurel Park.

Yes, the former assistant to Brad Cox, Jimmy Jerkens, Ron Moquett and the late Hall of Famer Jonathan Sheppard was victorious in her very first race.

As she prepared to send allowance winner Regalo into Saturday’s Jerome Stakes to collect some qualifying points for Kentucky Derby 2024, Russell did so as the winningest Thoroughbred trainer last year in Maryland. The steady rise in her rate of success took her to nearly $8 million in earnings in 2023 that put her 16th among all U.S. and Canada trainers. Her 177 wins ranked 11th.

Within that successful framework, Russell could be excused for pausing when she was asked if women still have to deal with a glass ceiling in racing.

“I don’t think,” she said in a telephone interview this week. “You see a lot of women having success, right? I think it’s a good thing, and I think a lot of things have changed. Times have changed, right? I don’t think of it that way.”

In other words, Russell is a trainer. Not a woman trainer or female trainer. Just a trainer. Period. She leads a full life with her husband Sheldon Russell, who is her first-call jockey, and her children, Edy, 4, and Rye, 2. An ever-growing stable that keeps her busy 24-7, just like any other successful trainer.

“I feel like a lot of the other women probably feel the same way,” Russell said on Horse Racing Nation’s Ron Flatter Racing Pod.

It is a time when women are becoming more and more prominent in all walks of racing, but there have been some historic highlights lately. Jena Antonucci became the first woman to train a U.S. classic winner last year when Arcangelo won the Belmont Stakes. Linda Rice set a New York Racing Association record in 2023 with 165 wins. And with 118 wins of her own at Laurel and Pimlico, Russell became the first woman to be Maryland’s winningest trainer in a calendar year.

“Yes, like I’m proud of the accomplishment and all of that,” Russell said. “We work beside men and women. We just get up and do our job and try and be the best. It doesn’t matter who you are.”

There is something else that is striking about the success of Russell. She is only 34. DeVaux is 42. Antonucci is 47. In a sport that allows successful trainers to keep going long past traditional retirement age, Russell and those peers are a long way from that. She is one of the young guns that racing needs to perpetuate its very existence.

Russell said this new generation of trainers was eager to leave the collective professional nest.

“When I was an assistant, I was traveling around working for Brad,” Russell said. “A lot of people that I was working beside as assistants for other people are now out there on their own. We’re all sort of in the same boat. It is good to see all these guys, men and women, taking the step and going out on their own. It’s a big step. It’s a lot to do. You get comfortable in an assistant job. You work for a good trainer, but there’s a lot of us now I see that are doing well and having success. I’m proud to see quite a few of them doing it.”

Russell’s repeated path to winner’s circles has come courtesy of some high-profile clients like Michael Dubb, the lead partner for whom she won her first graded stakes with Wondrwherecraigis in the 2021 Bold Ruler (G3). There is Al Gold, the owner of last month’s Suwanee River (G3) winner Full Count Felicia. The blue-chip partnership of SF Racing, Starlight Racing and Madaket Stables entrusted her with Doppelganger, whose April victory in the Carter Handicap was Russell’s first in a Grade 1 race.

“I’ve worked for some good people, so I’ve had a lot of good connections,” said Russell, who then credited a big-time lawyer from Delaware who also had a share of the retired Wondrwherecraigis. “Actually, I have to thank Stuart Grant, because he’s one of my clients that’s been supportive for a long time.”

Happy, loyal owners and her apprenticeship with Cox before he became a two-time Eclipse Award winner have been the main ingredients to Russell having a career year in 2023.

“He was really getting rolling when I was with him. Look where he is now. He’s one of the best trainers in the country,” said Russell, who said location also was important for her. “A lot of the clients that I have now, maybe the horses don’t work in a certain place, and they want to send them to the East Coast. It’s been kind of good, because some of those horses that need an outlet that might get good somewhere else have come my way. That’s been really helpful with me winning races and people noticing and the phone ringing.”

Harry Papaleo, who runs an accounting firm in Delaware, came calling with Regalo, a $280,000 colt by Maximus Mischief who took maiden and allowance wins at Laurel into Saturday’s $150,000 Jerome Stakes at Aqueduct. Sheldon Russell rode to a fourth-place finish in the one-turn mile from the outside post in the skimpy field of five 3-year-olds.

“Sheldon’s up, and he knows the horse,” Brittany Russell said. “He can go and sit wherever he needs him to. You would like to think he’s going to be pretty forwardly place, but I leave that up to Sheldon. I trust he’ll put him in a good spot, and hopefully he fires.”

Her old boss had the winning favorite breaking from the rail. Drum Roll Please went off a 3-5 odds for Cox after finishing third in a muddy running of the Remsen (G2), going 1 1/8 miles around two turns on the same track last month.

“Brad to me is always in my mind the one to beat, right?” Russell said, laughing. “I think we’re both pretty competitive. I know that’s a nice horse.”

Then there was Rice, who had 5-2 second choice and two-time restricted-stakes winner El Grando O lined up next to Regalo on the way to a second-place finish Saturday.

“Linda’s horse obviously has done nothing wrong,” Russell said.

After the race, the Russells were headed back to Maryland to their two children. They all are blessed with success and good health again after Sheldon, a champion jockey in Maryland and Virginia, missed nearly a year in 2021-22 with a serious foot injury that required surgery.

Hopefully, that trip home will come without a cross word about how the race went in New York.

“We have that every once in a while,” Brittany Russell said, laughing again. “Obviously he’s going to try his best all the time. Look, anything can happen when the gate opens. You can tell him to make sure with this horse, go on with him and be forward. Then you get a stumble, and you don’t know what happens.

“At the end of the day it’s horse racing, and we’ll just have to see how everything unfolds.”