Marialice Coffey will be the first to acknowledge that she is not a mainstream trainer at Saratoga. However, she makes every effort of trying to stay relevant for her love of the sport, whether it is cleaning her own stalls, caring for her own horses or exercising horses for another trainer.
“I should be better than I am, but it’s tough. It’s very difficult to stay relevant in this business,” Coffey said. “I clean stalls. I brush horses. I tack them. I do this because I love it. I love being out here every day.”
One of the horses who has helped Coffey as of late is Flora Dora, who is competing in Saturday’s Grade 1, $700,000 Personal Ensign for fillies and mares going 1¼ miles over the Saratoga main track.
Owned by Annette Bacola and Bob Cummings of Coffeepot Stables, Flora Dora has been Coffey’s best horse in her training career of more than 20 years. While Flora Dora has just two wins, both of them occurred in stakes races: the Florida Sire My Dear Girl Stakes at Gulfstream Park and the Busanda Stakes at Aqueduct.
“She makes all of us look good,” Coffey said. “When you get that horse and comes on, you’re not surprised. I have been doing this for a long time and this is a horse of a lifetime. It’s nice that Annette and Bob gave me a chance with her.”
“I am just a hard worker that kind of got lucky with this horse and these people,” the 59-year-old trainer added. “They have been really good to us. Whatever the horses need, they are going to try the best as they can for that horse. To work for people like them, it’s phenomenal.”
Coffey knows it will be a tough task to compete against Songbird for the third time at Saratoga. Last year, Flora Dora, who was originally purchased for $87,000 at the 2014 Fasig-Tipton Select Sale in Saratoga, finished third in the Coaching Club American Oaks and fifth in the Alabama.
“Songbird is Songbird,” she said. “It’s a privilege to be with her on the same track and the same race with her.”
This will be Flora Dora’s second start of the year. For her 4-year-old debut in June, she was beaten 3½ lengths in the Grade 3 Bed O’ Roses, then experienced a minor setback. However, since training at Saratoga, she has posted three strong workouts.
“We kind of got off to a late start with her,” Coffey said. “She keeps moving forward. She’s a bigger and stronger filly. She has this big, long stride. When she gets in full stride, she keeps on coming.”
Besides Flora Dora, Coffey has just three other fillies or mares stabled at perhaps the busiest backstretch intersections near her well-decorated Barn 18: Legally Bay, Finlee and Verona Blue. Coffey said she would prefer training these female horses over the males.
“I like fillies,” Coffey said. “They may be tough. For each one, once you figure out that switch, it usually works. If geldings are ornery, they will stay that way. Fillies might be flighty, but you know what will set them off.”
Unlike many trainers and their assistants, Coffey did not start by hot walking or grooming thoroughbreds. Rather, her career began by owning show horses.
It wasn’t until the mid-1980s when Coffey and her husband of 35 years, Don, took a trip to the defunct Suffolk Meadows (also named Parr Meadows) off Exit 68 of the Long Island Expressway in Yaphank to purchase a quarter horse for $1,500 named Valiant Patrol, who later won for them.
From there, Coffey started buying thoroughbreds, including Distant Lullaby for $800 at the Fasig-Tipton Atlantic Sale. At the time, that mare was in foal with Aquelaunch, who later won at Finger Lakes in 1993.
Distant Lullaby also produced Northville, another Coffey-owned mare who earned nearly $150,000 through multiple allowance wins at Aqueduct in 1996 and 1997.
While still competing on the New York Racing Association circuit at the end of 2001, Coffey moved to Rochester and started training horses at Finger Lakes after her husband was transferred by UPS.
“It was like winning a lottery,” Coffey said about the experience. “They packed up our furniture, paid our closing costs and got us a low-interest rate. We plotted 30 acres and built a house. Everything we needed right there – about 10 miles from the racetrack.”
Coffey had some modest success at Finger Lakes by winning 65 maiden, allowance and claiming races over 13 years. However, she noticed there were some limitations – and risks – for her training career to move forward.
“We had some nice horses who were doing really well,” Coffey said. “Then an owner would say, ‘I’m done.’ Now, you’re out of business. It happens that quickly. At Finger Lakes, I didn’t want to have a $4,000 horse run every week. There was no improving your stock. Here, you are trying to get to the next level.”
After winning 102 races from 1,707 starters for earnings close to $3 million, Coffey has learned a lot about being a trainer on her own.
“There’s a lot to be said of going out there and doing it yourself,” she said. “I didn’t have the experience of working at a racetrack. I had to learn as I went. I had my own ponies. They would get sick. It would be all of the things that you would go through as an owner of a horse. As hot walkers, they know the business and they know the angles, but they may not know the horse. I like the experience that I had. It doesn’t always apply, but for the most part, it does.”
