Ada Rice Career
Ada attended school in Danville, Illinois through the 8th grade. She moved to Chicago around 1917 where she became a telephone clerk. She married Dan Rice in 1920 and in 1929 they purchased a 152-acre farm in Wheaton, Illinois.
Although she enjoyed painting, skeet shooting and working with many charities, her career began in 1943 when she suggested to Dan that she would like to own a racehorse. Dan responded by purchasing eight thoroughbred yearlings at the Fasig-Tipton tent sale in Keeneland, Kentucky. He hired a trainer, Bill Cousey, who housed, managed and trained the young yearlings. Mr. Cousey wrote to Ada “I have never seen in the same barn four yearlings that look as well as these do and sincerely hope that my judgement and dreams of training a good horse are fulfilled in the yearlings”. As it turned out, seven of the eight colts purchased won races their first year of racing and Ada was hooked.The success of her career began as she became formally involved in the sport of thoroughbred racing. She named her stables the “Ada L. Rice Racing Stables.”
The racing stable carried the colors of cerise (bright pink) and white. Ada Rice selected those colors for her racing silks, in order that her horses might be seen clearly on the dullest of days. Ada ordered special fabric with gold thread woven into the cerise color that imparted a unique shimmer to the silks. The silks were composed of a jacket with a white blouse and a cerise yolk, sleeves, collar and cuffs. On the front and back of the white blouse was a cerise diamond which encased Ada’s initials “ALR”. The R, located in the center of the diamond, was the biggest of the three letters, with the smaller A and L on its sides respectively. The cap was white with a cerise visor and cerise pom-pom at the top.
In the mid 1940’s, the Rices added a 26-stall Kentucky-style barn to the Wheaton farm. In 1947, the Rices purchased a second farm just outside of Lexington, Kentucky. Since the Rices lived in Illinois, they decided that the racing stables would be located at the Wheaton farm and the breeding stables at the Lexington farm. In their heyday, the two Danada farms had as many as 65 horses in training and another 65 broodmares, foals and stallions.
Horses raced by Mrs. Rice won 883 races and earned $8,770,989 through 1974, and horses bred by her won 2,310 races and earned $13,155,650. In a sense, 1965 was her peak year, for it included not only Lucky Debonair’s winning the Kentucky Derby, Santa Anita Derby, and Blue Grass Stakes, but also the smashing triumphs of Pia Star. The latter equaled the world mile record that year in the Equipoise, defeated Kelso, Roman Brother, and Quadrangle in the Brooklyn Handicap, defeated Gun Bow and Affectionately in the Suburban.
Throughout her career, Ada received many awards for recognition of her accomplishments and contributions to the sport of thoroughbred racing. After three decades of success as a major Thoroughbred breeder and racing stable owner, Ada decided that the time had come to retire from the sport. Ada Rice died at the age of 78 on April 11, 1977 and was buried at the Queen of Heaven cemetery in Hillside, Illinois.
