All in the Family: Larry Rivelli Finds Another Level Thanks to Trust, Relationships

Article by Jennifer Kelly

In an era of super trainers with even larger owners behind them, the sport of horse racing still has at its foundation a legion of owners and trainers who operate on a smaller scale but nonetheless make big news on the racetrack. These are the men and women who have built their lives around the equine athletes in their care, their knowledge passed down through generations, supporting racetracks at all levels. These are breeders, owners, trainers, and many more who think of themselves as a family, one bonded by the love of horses. 

For Larry Rivelli, a third-generation horseman, family is at the heart of his barn. Lessons learned by his grandfather’s and uncle’s sides have informed his approach to his work and his relationships with owners as he takes his career to a new level. 

Windy City Boy

A Chicago native, Rivelli comes by his horsemanship honestly: his late grandfather Pete and uncle Jimmy DiVito both made their livelihoods in the sport. Pete made his life with horses, preferring his education on the track rather than in a schoolroom as early as 5th grade. He galloped horses for Bing Crosby, worked with horses during his stint in the Army, and then returned to racing in Chicago and California afterward. He trained for Louis B. Mayer, Harry James and Betty Grable, and Lindsay Howard, son of Charles Howard, owner of the famed Seabiscuit. He returned to Chicago for good in the 1960s and spent the rest of his career there. 

Son Jimmy followed him into the business as well, his home base also in Chicago. Alongside both worked Larry Rivelli, son of Pete’s daughter Julie and Jimmy’s nephew. While his mother worked, “I stayed with my grandparents a lot. And it was just racing forms and programs on the kitchen table every day. I would read them. My grandfather would read them. We would just go back to the track. The track was eight minutes from the house.” 

DiVito put his grandson to work cleaning stalls when he was nine or ten years old; later, he worked with his uncle Jimmy during school breaks, both giving Rivelli opportunities to learn the skills that would serve him when he went out on his own. The young Rivelli always had athletic ambitions at heart – “I either wanted to be a professional football player or a horse trainer,” – leading the state in rushing in his junior and senior years of high school before going on to St. Cloud State University in Minnesota. There, he played wide receiver and kick returner for the Huskies, and after graduation, found his opportunities at the next level were limited. Instead, he turned to the family business. 

“[Training] was always just something that I really was enamored with as a little kid. That's what I really wanted to do, train racehorses, and I think that's why I've been so successful,” Rivelli shared. “It's just not even a job to me. Being a horse trainer, it's just a way of life. You either got to love it or you're not going to be able to do it. You have to have a passion for it.”

With his mother Julie and stepdad Victor in his corner, Rivelli went out on his own as a public trainer, taking out his license in 1999, the year after his grandfather died. He made Chicago his base, staying close to home while building his business and his family. On the home front, Rivelli has daughter Brittany, a competitive synchronized skater, and son Dominic, a collegiate hockey player, continuing the family’s athletic tradition. 

His foundation made the transition from football to training an easy one, a natural progression for a young man who grew up idolizing his famed grandfather and uncle. 

Training Methodologies

Rivelli’s background as a football player and his emphasis on family has inspired his approach to training since he hung out his shingle as a public trainer 25 years ago. His experience as an athlete has cultivated an awareness of the relationship between how a horse feels physically and how they will perform on the racetrack. While such a correlation might seem obvious, first-hand understanding of that dynamic helped Rivelli manage his equine athletes in a manner that emphasizes both fitness and work ethic in his starters. 

“If you've been an athlete, you’ve dealt with injuries and setbacks and therapy differently than people that, let's just say, never played a sport,” Rivelli shared. “It's a sport, and horses get hurt. They want to try to work through these injuries where horses are so much bigger and heavier than humans. And they're putting all that pressure on about the size of our legs. So, if something goes wrong, I take steps back and time heals everything most of the time.”

Dr. Jean White, an Ocala, Florida veterinarian and part of the Rivelli team, describes the trainer’s approach as one where “he would rather do less and have the horse want to do more. If he doesn't think the horse can win, he doesn't want to run it. If it needs rest, let it rest. If it needs its feet fixed, fix them. If it needs us to evaluate it and figure out why, then do that.” 

“It's just like a human being. People go to the gym and absolutely kill themselves every day, and then they don't feel so great,” she observed. “It's a different style. It's a different thought process, a different mentality.”

That emphasis on fitness means the trainer is “a four to six weeks [between races] guy. Occasionally or situationally, you'll have something come up sooner.” 

“Back in the day [2002-2006], I had a turf sprinter, Nicole's Dream, and she was really, really good,” Rivelli remembered. “They had a boys race and a girls race in Chicago, and they were separated by a week. There was no other races on the planet for her for three and a half months, so I ran her back. And she won. She was an extremely sound horse, too, so it made that decision easier.”

The native Chicagoan prefers to run his horses in winnable spots so that they are not asked to give too much over and over again: “I take pride in running most of my horses. I'm a bad loser, so I won't run one if I don't think they can win, really. I'll take as much time as we need to get them to that point. We'll even stop on them and back off and send them home and turn them out and bring them back. If something's not going right during the process instead of getting ready, we're just going to stop. Horses, they only got so many races in them.”

Instead, the trainer prefers to give a horse time off and only bring them back “when they’re 100% and ready to go. And that's why he has horses that run ‘til they're eight,” White shared. “They're wanting to train, wanting to run.”

Vincent Foglia of Patricia’s Hope, one of Rivelli’s biggest owners, points out what he sees is behind the trainer’s success: “He does the same thing every day, seven days a week. He's got that set list. He's always looking at that big sheet. He's always writing down who's going to be walking, who's going to be galloping, who's breezing. It's like clockwork. His consistency, the amount of time he puts into it, is very regimented. Very consistent and meticulous. That's his approach. That's great. And he always does what's right by the horse every time. That's first and foremost.”

That emphasis on consistency and care has helped the third-generation trainer build a solid career in his native racing scene. In 2000, his first full season, Rivelli’s barn had 57 starts and an 8-7-9 record, for 14% win and 42% win-place-show percentages; in 2024, his 25th season, he had 279 starts and a record of 89-45-26, for 25% win and 50% WPS percentages. Nationally, Rivelli has been in the Top 50 by wins in 12 out of the last 15 years. His career win percentage of 26% and WPS of 56% reflects his ability to put his horses in the right spots for success. To this point in his career, much of that has been in the Chicago area.

He won his first training title at Arlington Park in 2011, and then was the track’s leading trainer from 2014 to its final season in 2021. Rivelli then shifted his stable to Hawthorne, the lone racetrack remaining in the Chicago area, and won leading trainer titles there for their 2021-2023 spring meets. This native son emphasizes his roots, saying “I'll still consider myself a Chicago trainer [even] if there are no tracks in Illinois.” 

For his winter racing, Rivelli has horses stabled in a private barn at Fair Grounds in New Orleans, one he purchased from former owner Louis Roussel, an acquisition that signaled his intent to make a long-term investment in Louisiana. “The state is thriving as far as races. They got four tracks in the state, and they're all doing their thing,” Rivelli shared. In addition, he has horses at Turfway Park near Cincinnati and then shifts back to his home base at Hawthorne the rest of the year. In addition to being on home turf there, the track’s proximity works in his favor as “it's easier on the help and on yourself,” plus “I [can] ship to Churchill, which is four hours. To ship to Keeneland is three and a half hours, three hours to Indiana. So, all these tracks around us, it's not a big deal to ship. You ship over a couple of days before or a week before. I like the fact that the horses are all under one roof.”

Staying in this area also helps Rivelli maintain the relationships that he has built with owners like Patricia’s Hope and Richard Ravin, both of whom found ample success at the Windy City’s racetracks. The bonds the trainer has formed with those two owners exemplify his approach to doing business: keeping it all in the family. 

Bonded with Success

Two ownership mainstays in the Rivelli barn include Richard Ravin and the Foglia family, the Chicago-area entrepreneurs-turned-philanthropists behind the Patricia’s Hope stable. Ravin’s investment in the sport includes both his current racing-age horses in Rivelli’s barn and the broodmares that Dr. White keeps on one of her Ocala-area properties. Both owners have been with Rivelli for more than a decade and count the trainer as more than just a partner in the sport. They are a team, and as the trainer puts it, “these are my guys, and they know that. It’s very rare that you have people like that that are in the game with you, and they are happier for you when we win than they are for themselves.”

An Ohio native who settled in the Chicago area in the 1960s, Ravin retired from the insurance business and got into horse ownership after a chance encounter with a friend who had bought into Nicole’s Dream, one of Rivelli’s earliest successes. Ravin partnered with Dare to Dream Stable in the sprinter and then expanded into breeding as well. He met Rivelli through “the four or five guys that we got together as a horse ownership group, and they're the ones that picked him. I didn't know him. I got to know Larry since we had the Nicole's Dream and a couple others when we made a couple of purchases early on, back in 2000, 2001. And I've been together with Larry ever since.” 

The Foglia family got into the ownership game after years of trips to Arlington that became bonding moments for mother Patricia and son Vincent, Jr. Father Vincent founded Sage Products, Inc., a medical supply company in Cary, Illinois. The company’s prosperity allowed the family to start the Foglia Family Foundation, which supports health care and education in the Chicago area. The younger Foglia wanted to expand their love of the sport into ownership in 2010. They met Rivelli when they wanted to claim a horse and immediately hit it off: “I knew he was winning most of the races at Arlington. That was it. I knew nothing. I got a quick introduction to him on the phone because we were going to claim a horse at Gulfstream. We just hit it off. We have similar backgrounds and are real close in age and became friends really quickly,” Foglia remembered. 

“He is like my brother that I never had. We are like two very similar people as far as just the way we are and ended up just being a great partnership and an even better friendship,” the trainer shared. That friendship led to a partnership that dominated at Arlington Park. While Rivelli was leading trainer for much of the track’s final decade, Patricia’s Hope was the leading owner. Rivelli also introduced the Foglias to Ravin, which led to the trainer and owners forging a solid partnership behind horses like Grade 3 stakes winner Jean Elizabeth and Grade 2 turf sprinter One Timer. 

Patricia’s Hope also has brought Rivelli Breeders’ Cup success. Their Cocked and Loaded was the trainer’s first Breeders’ Cup starter at Keeneland in 2015, and turf sprinter Nobals gave both their first Breeders’ Cup winner with his neck victory over Big Invasion in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Cup Turf Sprint at Santa Anita in 2023. The Foglias were also partners in Two Phil’s, second in the 2023 Kentucky Derby behind Mage. They bought into the colt, who became both the trainer’s and the owners’ first Derby starter, on Rivelli’s recommendation. 

“I'm tight with Larry. I'm his biggest investor. I'm his biggest owner. And we're very good friends,” Foglia shared. “The Sagans, who owned [Two Phil’s], they were trying to sell that horse from the sale on out. They wanted the money. I'm like, should I go in? He [Rivelli] goes, ‘Absolutely.’ I said, I'll take as much as I could get. I ended up getting 80%.” 

That trust is at the heart of Rivelli’s relationship with his owners. As Ravin puts it, “First of all, he's a very loyal guy and he just totally exemplifies honesty, integrity, and character. Those are the type of people I really want to be associated with. When you got a person like Larry, it then becomes a friendship, even more so than the partnership.” The Foglias echo that sentiment, the younger Vincent sharing that the trainer “always tells the truth. He's always working hard, and he does right by the horse, and he's honest about everything.”

That honesty translates into a trust that makes the relationship between Rivelli, Ravin, the Foglias, and Dr. White a collaborative effort where “there is plenty of room between the owners and the two of us for somebody to raise their hand and go, ‘Wait. What are we doing? Wait a second.’” White observed. “That is allowed. Every once in a while, somebody goes, ‘yeah, we need to look at the situation differently.’”

In the end, what each appreciates about working with team Rivelli is “the friendship, the team working together, being honest and direct, being upfront, it's just a tremendous experience,” Ravin shared. “My wife threw a very special 80th birthday party for me down here last year. And there was Larry flying from Chicago, coming down and being there as a surprise. So that's the person, that's the relationship, and that's as good as I can give an example of what a quality person he is.”

Rivelli echoes those sentiments whenever he talks about owners like Ravin and the Foglias. “I'm so fortunate right now that the people that I have, my main owners, I can literally say, I love these people,” the trainer shared. “These are my people. If they said tomorrow we quit, I'd say, ‘All right, where are we going for breakfast?’ These are my guys. And they know that, and I know that. And it's very rare that you have people like that that are in the game with you, and they are happier for you when we win than they are for themselves. Like me, I'm so happy for my guys, like for Vinnie and his mom and Richard Ravin and when they win, than I am for myself.”

So much of the success a trainer builds over the course of their career depends on the relationships they cultivate with racetrack officials, jockeys, veterinarians, and most of all, owners. As Dr. White shared, the dynamic between Rivelli and his owners can best be summed up with “Vinnie would just [say], ‘okay, whatever you want to do, whatever you think is best, Riv. That's what we're going to do.’”

That kind of trust, especially when Arlington closed leaving them without the site of much of their early success, led to a rethinking of their business model and one of Rivelli’s highest profile horses to date. 

A Change in Perspective 

Rivelli and team may have dominated Arlington’s last decade, but the track’s closure meant Patricia’s Hope, Richard Ravin, and their trainer needed to rethink their approaches to racing going forward. While they have found success after shifting to Hawthorne, they have changed the type of horses they want in their barn. “The game plan for the owners and myself has changed. Whether we're at Hawthorne or Turfway or Fair Grounds, that's really not important. It's all just a matter of what's running,” the trainer observed. “Focusing our efforts on buying more expensive horses, so to say, or better horses instead of filling the barn with the 20s, 30s, 8s, 12s, because you wanted to have one for each spot. Now we're looking for the best horses we can get all the time.”

That shift to quality over quantity means a multi-layered approach to acquiring horses, mostly through either private purchases or through sales like the Ocala Breeders’ Sales Two-Year-Olds-in-Training Sale. “Our thing is we really do a little bit of everything,” Rivell shared. “There's no method to this. There's no foolproof approach. If we just go to the sale every year, the two-year-old sales, we're going to get couple, of course. I bought One Timer, who has made over a million dollars, as a yearling for $21,000 on the way out of a sale just walking out. I thought I had a big budget that year. I spent a lot of money. That was the cheapest horse I bought. He was little. He's put together good, and I liked him. He looked like he would be fast. He grew up into this beauty, and he's woin over a million dollars. He's just a real nice racehorse.”

Nobals, on the other hand, “we bought him after he ran, so he was a proven horse.” Rivelli purchased the gelding by Noble Mission out of the Empire Maker mare Pearly Blue for $150,000 from owner/trainer Leland Hayes. “And then at the [2022 OBS] two-year-olds in training sale we saw Two Phil’s. The breeder gave him to me, said he wants to sell the horse. Patricia's Hope [the Foglia family] bought the piece that the guy wanted to sell.” Add in Richard Ravin’s broodmares as well as Two Phil’s now standing at stud, Rivelli and company also “breed a few. [Vinnie] will be breeding a couple because he stayed in for a percentage on Two Phil’s. So, we're going to have a lot of action. And you never know where it's going to come from.”

This new focus brought Rivelli his three most successful seasons to date, including 2023, with $4.9 million in earnings and a win percentage of 31%. “It's just a coincidence, but it's funny. The first year we decided to change the motto was the year we won the Breeders’ Cup [with Nobals] and almost won the Derby [with Two Phil’s],” he shared. “We couldn't make a wrong move that year at all. It was great.”

As his highest profile horses to date, One Timer, Two Phil’s, and Nobals are the best illustrations of the trainer’s approach to buying, preparing, and racing his horses. All three were acquired in different ways, each catching Rivelli’s attention based on their physical appearance or performance; Nobals’s lone start at Presque Isle at age two prompted Rivelli to pursue buying the gelding. After acquiring the talent comes planning a campaign. Even if the trainer envisions a specific goal for a horse, like the Kentucky Derby or the Breeders’ Cup, he still approaches the season start by start. 

Nobals was already a stakes winner prior to his 2023 Breeders’ Cup win, taking the listed Arlington-Washington Futurity at age two and following that with two black-type stakes wins at Turfway at age three, all on synthetic. Rivelli also tested him on turf: his first win at age four came in the Grade 2 Twin Spires Turf Sprint on the Kentucky Derby undercard at Churchill Downs, a three-quarter-length victory that had Rivelli circling the Breeders’ Cup at Santa Anita on his calendar. To get there, the gelding went to Horseshoe Indianapolis and won the William Garrett Handicap; to Saratoga, where he was second to Cogburn in the Grade 3 Troy; and then to Colonial Downs for the Da Hoss, which he won by a head, before his trip out west to Santa Anita. Each start was about four weeks apart with eight weeks between the Da Hoss and his win in the Turf Sprint. With Nobals returning for his six-year-old season, Rivelli knows his sprinting star has fewer options if he wants to build toward a second try at the Breeders’ Cup: “For Nobals, for those type of individuals, there are less select races for a five-eighths turf specialist and sprinter. Wherever they're at, you got to go to.”

When Two Phil’s (Hard Spun – Mia Torri, by General Quarters) landed in his barn in 2022, Rivelli was not thinking about the Kentucky Derby trail until his Grade 3 Street Sense win over a sloppy Churchill Downs surface, his third win in five starts at age two. That 5¼-length win came around two turns, the colt’s second try at 1 1/16 miles after finishing out of the money in the Grade 1 Breeders’ Futurity at Keeneland. After that, “we took a little closer order on what races we were going to run him in and stuff like that,” the trainer remembered. “Now, if he had run a third in that race, maybe I wouldn't have gone the route I went, but he won pretty convincingly.” 

Trying for the first Saturday in May “always is in the back of your mind, but when you don't have the opportunity or you don't have those type of horses all the time, it's hard,” Rivelli observed. “I’ve had one or maybe two. It's because I know what it takes to have those horses. I could have taken several horses that I've made hundreds of thousands of dollars with by running them in other races besides those races and try to qualify for the Derby, but I knew they weren't good enough, even though other people or other trainers might have gone down that road just for the fact to go down it.”

The Street Sense win showed Rivelli and the partnership, including Patricia’s Hope, that the colt had the potential for a try at the Run for the Roses. To get there, the trainer sent his colt to Fair Grounds, where he was third behind Angel of Empire in the Grade 3 Lecomte that January and then second behind Instant Coffee in the Grade 2 Risen Star four weeks later. Rivelli then sent his colt to Turfway for the Grade 3 Jeff Ruby Steaks, which Two Phil’s won by 5¼ lengths. Six weeks later, Rivelli was on the backside of Churchill Downs with a serious Derby contender and a barrage of media seeking out the chestnut colt and his Windy City connections. 

Two Phil’s and regular rider Jareth Loveberry, another Arlington refugee, entered the gate on the first Saturday of May as one of the four horses with single digit odds, fourth choice behind Angel of Empire, Tapit Trice, and Japanese hopeful Derma Sotogake. Loveberry stalked the pace set by Verifying and Kingsbarns through the first mile and then edged clear by 1½ lengths with three furlongs to go. Mage mounted his bid on their outside, building enough momentum to pass Two Phil’s in the final furlong. Though they were not victorious, “the overall day, with the Derby and with Nobals winning the half million-dollar race, that was probably the best day,” Rivelli shared. 

The trainer then broke with tradition and opted not to send Two Phil’s to Pimlico for the Grade 1 Preakness Stakes two weeks later. “We ran in the Derby, ran in the biggest, the baddest race in the planet, and we almost won,” Rivelli reflected. “What do you do now? Okay, that's done. Horse is doing great. Let's find spots where we can't lose. Not what we can maybe win, where we can't lose.”

That choice to skip the Preakness reflects this veteran trainer’s philosophy about both spotting his horses and timing their starts. The two-week turnaround makes the two races “too close, especially that caliber of race. I know they've been talking about backing it up, which I think would be a good thing.” 

Instead, Rivelli chose to follow up Two Phil’s second-place turn at Churchill Downs with a jaunt to Thistledown for the Grade 3 Ohio Derby six weeks later. “There's only so many times he's going to ask a horse to give a hundred percent of its effort,” Dr. White shared. “He's much more likely to ship to some other racetracks away from the crowd and ask them to run to 70% or 80% of their potential and leave that 100% for a spot here or there.” The nine-furlong stakes was another tour-de-force performance from the son of Hard Spun. Once again, he laid just off the pace, took over in the stretch, and finished strong, beating second-choice Bishops Bay by 5¾ lengths. 

“He was spectacular that day. We were so glad to see that he was back, and we was really looking forward to what he was going to do next,” Rivelli remembered. “We were all high fiving on the plane, drinking, partying on the way back. And then the next day, it's like, ‘Oh, my gosh.’ Hit right in the gut.”

After his Ohio Derby win, the colt started showing lameness in his left front ankle. Radiographs showed that the issue was a fractured sesamoid. The injury was not life-threatening, but it was career-ending. Two Phil’s was retired with a 10-5-2-1 record and $1,583,450 in earnings. He now stands stud at WinStar Farm, with both Rivelli and the Foglias retaining shares. 

The veteran trainer was realistic about Two Phil’s injury and retirement. “The prognosis is generally not very good. His was not that bad, but it wasn't insignificant. If you gave him a year off, he probably could be fine, or you could go back to training him,” Rivelli observed. “Me, like I said, being an athlete, knowing this stuff, you could be fine, but you're going to lose a step or two or three. What will be the point? What does he need to prove? He doesn't owe us anything. You always want to do right by the horse.”

With 65 to 70 horses and 30 employees in his barns, with a close-knit group of owners and team that have helped take him to a new level, Larry Rivelli is ready for 2025 and beyond. 

The Next Thing 

For this Chicago native, the name of the game is adapting. “Life throws stuff at you. You got to adapt anyway. And that's the key to it is, if you can keep adapting, you're on good footing,” Rivelli shared. “It's like coaching a football team. You got to keep the players healthy as you can for as long as you can. Meanwhile, trying to win races and be in the right spots where you're not going to run fifth, sixth, eighth, and put miles on your horse and not make your owner money.” 

With racing in his hometown down to one racetrack, this native son hopes that Hawthorne will add a casino to its facility, which will help keep the sport afloat in Illinois as such additions have elsewhere. In the meantime, his fellow Chicagoans Richard Ravin and the Foglia family will be along for the ride with complete trust in the man caring for their horses. 

“I have never thought about calling, watching, doing, or anything else with anybody except Larry,” Ravin shared. The retired insurance executive cites his trainer’s best advice about racing – having patience – as the foundation behind his confidence: “If we're patient and care about our horses, I think we'll be rewarded both for doing the right thing because it's the right thing to do, and we'll be rewarded by getting the wins that we need to get to make it a viable operation.”  

Vincent Foglia, Jr. received similar advice from Rivelli: “Don't get too excited about one start. Don't try to rush anything. Do what you think the horse can do. Stay within your limitations of the horse you have and its ability. Relax.” That perspective got the Foglias within a length of a Kentucky Derby. It is an experience that the family behind Patricia’s Hope would be willing to repeat, and they “would only do it with Rivelli. I've had people who want me to go in with them on other horses, and I will say, ‘Sure, but who do you want to train?’ Anyone that says different from Riv, I say, ‘I'm out.’”

The trainer’s 2025 does include another possible Derby contender, Murdock (Vekoma-Saucy At Midnight, by Midnight Lute), owned by Carolyn Wilson. “He won first time out by 10. He ran in one of the first two-year-old races of the year in Chicago. And he won like I thought he would,” Rivelli shared. “And then he had a couple of setbacks, and then he had a testicle up in his stomach, and we had to operate. Then he had something wrong with his foot. But he's a serious horse.” 

The year also includes another potential Breeders’ Cup campaign for Nobals, who is set to make his first start soon; and for One Timer, the new year brings a possible return to Kentucky Downs, the site of his Grade 2 Franklin-Simpson victory and a track that the gelding has run well over. 

“He [Nobals] can run in the race because he's won the Breeders’ Cup, and he's a Grade 1 winner, so he probably will get in as long as I spot his races. I probably would either turn him out for a little bit, but he was lightly raced last year, and he's doing really good. I don't think I want to campaign him from now all the way to the Breeders’ Cup. That would be one whole year of training,” Rivelli shared. 

“One Timer, I'll probably keep him on the Polytrack and then run him in a Churchill or Ellis race, places like that,” the trainer said. “He's a little different horse to train, a little different horse to keep going. So, when he's going good, we're going to keep him in action.” 

As for goals in this new year, short and long, Larry Rivelli is a realist. “Short-term goals is to wake up tomorrow,” the native Chicagoan laughed. “If you start making too many long-term plans in this game, I think it ends up biting you in the ass because you push yourself. It's like, okay, I got the next three races for this horse, and then tomorrow something happens.”

“The owners I have are great. They're not sweating, saying ‘we got to run.’ They let me do my thing, which is great. And I think that's why we've been so successful,” he shared. “It's just a pretty good team. And my help, the people that work for me. Obviously, none of this would happen if I didn't have them.” 

On race days big and small, his grandfather is never far from his thoughts, especially when Rivelli is getting his picture taken in the winner’s circle. “When I point, is actually I'm pointing to my grandfather,” this third-generation horseman shared. “I used to point up in the sky to him. That's back at him.”

For Larry Rivelli, racing is all about family, both blood and chosen, and the trust in each other that brings the successes they have all enjoyed. And he would not have it any other way.