A little more than two months after Cherie DeVaux became the first woman trainer to win the Kentucky Derby (then went on to become the second trainer of her sex to to take the Belmont Stakes in June with Golden Tempo) Lindsay Schultz produced a record of her own Saturday, as a female trailblazing winner at the fifty-ninth running of the Grade I Haskell Stakes at Monmouth Park.
The first woman to train a Haskell victor, Lindsay is in charge of Baby Vino, the runaway winner of the Haskell’s prep race, the Pegasus last month. In the Haskell, the 3-year-old son of Vino Rosso overtook Preakness winner Napoleon Solo to win the New Jersey track’s $1 million feature, a win-and-you’re-in for October’s Breeders Cup.
Lindsay started taking riding lessons in fifth grade, and worked at barns in order to continue her involvement. She enrolled at the University of Louisville, which has an Equine Industry program, then went on to do everything from hot walking to prepping yearlings before starting her own stable.
Prior to the Haskell, Lindsay had never trained a horse that ran in a Grade I race. She is local to Monmouth in the summers, which made the victory even sweeter.
“Hopefully, there will be more to come,” Lindsay said to the Thoroughbred Daily News after her trip to the winner’s circle.
“It’s huge for our stable. It’s a really big deal. It’s so great for this horse. From the moment he started working, we just loved this horse, and to really show what he has is what we do it for.
“What’s even better,” she told Matt Shifman of Horse Racing Nation, “is that I’m the first female to win the Haskell and there was the first female to win the Derby and there was a first female to win the Belmont (Jena Antonucci in 2023). I think it’s just great that women like Kathleen O’Connell and Linda Rice have been around. They really opened it up for us.”
As she noted proudly about Baby Vino (bred in Kentucky by another woman, Lisa Parks), “This horse can make a run from anywhere. We thought the way it set up there would be a lot of speed and he’d sit behind it. But there wasn’t as much speed as we thought.”