It took trainer Phil Bauer and his owner Richard Rigney a little while to figure the racing game out. From the time Bauer went to work for Rigney in 2013 through 2021, the stable had never had more than 17 wins in a year or earnings in excess of $1,724,016. But the last three years have seen the stable flourish into a win machine and one that can compete at the highest levels of the sport. From 2022 to present, Bauer has had 70 winners from 316 starters for a win rate of 22.2%. They've won graded stakes with Played Hard (Into Mischief), Xigera (Byquist) and Buchu (Justify). They're also not afraid to go into seven-figure territory when it comes to the sales.
“It really started about five years ago when Richard signed on and joined forces with John Moynihan in the yearling selection process for us,” said Bauer, who was this week's Green Group Guest of the Week on the Thoroughbred Daily News Writers' Room Podcast presented by Keeneland. “When we started in 2013, Richard and myself, we were trying to do everything ourselves. There's no doubt about it, it takes particular athletes to compete at the top level. Overall, our barn was just lacking talent. And so once John came aboard, it was just like a flip of a light switch. And you could tell as the horses came in and the years were progressing, you just felt like it was this giant wave heading towards the shore. And we felt it coming and we were excited.”
This year at Saratoga, Bauer has won his first stakes race at the Spa, with Galway winner Halina's Forte (Mitole) and also picked up a “TDN Rising Star” with the 3-year-old filly Two Sharp (Twirling Candy), the winner of an Aug. 2 maiden race.
“Two Sharp is a fun, fun story,” Bauer said. “We were shopping the September sale and the day she was going to go through the ring, we had a homebred sired Indiana filly that was running in a stakes at Horseshoe Indianapolis. So we left and Richard was going to buy her online while driving up there. We lost service. He panicked and called and got on the phone with one of the bidders. We had a budget and he just kept bidding back and bidding back and he blew past the budget. You saw the purchase price ($925,000) of her. It was close to a million. At that time, it was one of the highest-priced yearlings we had ever bought. He almost drove off the road as he kept going. But we loved her.”
Bauer said the mission has yet to be accomplished because Rigney wants to use his mares to create a band of broodmares.
“The last piece of the puzzle for us is the breeding,” Bauer said. “Richard keeps all his mares with Denali. The success that we've had at the track is now showing up in the broodmare band. We've got some foals on the ground this year out of some really, really nice race mares. We're impatiently waiting to bring them to market. I think that'll be the final piece of the puzzle for the Rigney Racing as a whole.”
In our breeding spotlight section, we took a look at the WinStar stallion Two Phil's (Hard Spun).
Elsewhere on the podcast, which is also sponsored by the Pennsylvania Horse Breeders' Association, West Point Thoroughbreds, WinStar, XBTV.com, the KTOB and Stonestreet Farm, the team of Zoe Cadman, Randy Moss and Bill Finley took a look back at the major races of the weekend, including some 2-year-old races that came up with very small fields. They looked at the decision to pass this week's GI Alabama S. with Thorpedo Anna (Fast Anna) and what impact that will have on both the Alabama and the GI Travers S.
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