Trainer Rodney Rash Dead at 36

Trainer Rodney Rash, winner of last year’s Santa Anita Handicap with Urgent Request and scheduled to saddle the same horse in today’s running of the race, died Friday morning at Los Angeles Midway Hospital.

Rash, 36, died of complications from a rare blood disorder that had been diagnosed when he checked into the hospital Tuesday. Rash had been complaining about sore kidneys and told his barn crew and other trainers that he thought he had flu. The rare disease, thrombotic thrombocytopenic purpura, affects the central nervous system. The disease’s cause is unknown.

Rash’s assistant, Ben Cecil, had been handling Rash’s horses during his absence. Cecil is the nephew of Stewart Aitken, the Scotsman who owns Urgent Request.

Rash’s mother, Doris Rash, and his two sisters, all of whom live in Maryland, were told about the trainer’s condition and were en route to California when he died.

Aitken was not in his hotel room late Friday afternoon and could not be reached for comment.

After a lengthy apprenticeship under trainer Charlie Whittingham, Rash struck out on his own in 1991 and was immediately successful. The first horse he saddled, Honor Grades, was owned by Bruce McNall and Wayne Gretzky and finished second in the Kentucky Derby Trial.

Besides Urgent Request, Rash’s important winners included Navarone, Alex The Great, Powis Castle and Blues Traveller. Navarone won the Oak Tree Invitational at Santa Anita and the Del Mar Handicap. Blues Traveller won the American Handicap at Hollywood Park and the Bay Meadows Handicap. Alex The Great won the Sword Dancer Handicap at Saratoga and the Golden Gate Handicap.

Powis Castle, who races for music executive Berry Gordy, is scheduled to run today in the San Carlos Handicap at Santa Anita.

Rash’s horses won 143 races and earned $8.7 million. Besides Gordy and Aitken, Rash’s clients included Gary Tanaka and Bob Hibbert.

Rash, who grew up on a Maryland dairy farm, was a teenager when he left home on a whim and flew to California with little more than a couple of hundred dollars and a pair of boots to his name. Unannounced, he arrived at 5 a.m. one day at Whittingham’s barn.

Whittingham remembered that day Friday. “He wanted a job as an exercise rider,” he said. “There were no openings, but my foreman, Ed Lambert, took him on as a hotwalker. He was a hard worker. He had some problems some of the time, but he always showed up for work.”

By 1982, Rash was Whittingham’s No. 1 assistant. He traveled the country with such major Whittingham horses as Exceller, Perrault, Greinton, Palace Music, Kilijaro and Dahar. During the Triple Crown campaigns of Ferdinand and Sunday Silence, when Whittingham himself went East for lengthy stays, Rash ran the day-to-day operation in California.

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Staff writer Bob Mieszerski contributed to this story.