Mill Ridge Landmark Only Half The Story For Nicoma, Farm Celebrates 41st Grade I Winner Since 2000
Article written by Chris McGrath published in the Thoroughbred Daily News on November 21, 2025.
Excerpt and full article linked below.
“I think this filly's cheating on me.”
Well, if that was the opinion of a Hall of Fame trainer, who could argue? Least of all a woman, in the male-dominated Bluegrass of the mid-1970s.
But Headley Bell remembers that when Frank Whiteley Jr. sent Nicosia (Gallant Romeo) home to Mill Ridge, his late mother Alice Chandler was not ready to give up. After all, this was a daughter of Nicoma (Nashua), whose previous foal had just won a Grade I; and Alice's husband, Dr. John Chandler, suggested that maybe the filly had simply been bleeding.
“This was before anybody really thought about stuff like that,” Bell recalls now. “So they give her some time, and then mom brings her out and starts training the filly herself. Takes her to Chicago, where I end up being her groom, my senior year at Vanderbilt. And we win the Sheridan, and the Matron, and mom is suddenly the first woman to own, breed and train a $100,000 stakes winner.”
