The Perfect Day: Felice, The Gladiator’s Hat and a Win for the History Books

With a homebred and guided by a top-class team, the owner celebrated a Dardo Rocha triumph that blended revenge, emotion and a family legacy impossible to ignore

The Gladiator’s Hat, A Symbolic Image of a Unique Moment / JUAN I. BOZZELLO

LA PLATA, Argentina — The victory of The Gladiator’s Hat in the Gran Premio Dardo Rocha (G1) will live on in the record books, but it will resonate even deeper in the heart of his owner and breeder Carlos Felice, who experienced the crowning moment with a mix of disbelief, pure emotion, and pride in a story built from the ground up—with conviction and genuine love for the sport.

“When you see him pull away, you just pray he gets there… You don’t even know by how much you’ve won,” Felice said, still riding the adrenaline of the moment.

For Felice, the Rocha is far more than just another race. It carries deep personal roots. “My father was a racing man and he always came to La Plata. For him this race meant everything, and somehow you inherit that feeling,” he recalled. Family tradition and passion for horses merged in a particularly special triumph: winning with a horse he bred himself, a son of Hat Ninja (Hat Trick), a stallion that is also part of Felice’s own long-term project.

In fact, The Gladiator’s Hat is a product of a bloodline Felice has been carefully cultivating for years. “We bred this colt ourselves, with just a few mares, with a lot of passion and a lot of work from Mariano Semowoniuk,” he emphasized. And naturally, Hat Ninja stands at the center of that vision. Now based at Haras La Providencia after a brief spell in Córdoba, the stallion represents both conviction and risk. “It’s very hard to establish a national stallion when you’re small,” Felice admitted. “But he deserved it—his pedigree, his race record, his class. He was a real horse who could get distance.”

The race itself was a challenge by any measure. The Gladiator’s Hat arrived without the résumé of the headline contenders, yet Felice never stopped listening to the people who knew the horse best. “They told me at the stud: ‘Boss, we’ll win the Rocha.’ And they were right. I thought it was a brutal race, we were coming off a defeat in a stakes… but they know the horse,” he acknowledged.

He was also quick to highlight the team effort behind the success: “Francisco Durrieu did a fantastic job, the grooms, Renato, Lucho, Mariano… This is everyone’s victory.”

There was also a sense of redemption. Felice had recently endured disappointment with Único Happy (Hi Happy) in the Clásico Joaquín V. González (G2) and still carried the sting of an inexplicable loss in Uruguay earlier in the year. But racing always balances the scales. And this time, it paid him back in spectacular fashion—through a horse who not only stepped up, but etched his name into history.

Felice also reflected on the camaraderie among Argentina’s major operations. “There’s a great spirit among all of us. If Las Monjitas wins, we congratulate them; if Firmamento wins, the same. There’s a very healthy atmosphere around Dani (Carlos D. Etchechoury, his trainer).”

And then there’s the future. Felice proudly owns two stallions: Hat Ninja and Roman Joy (Fortify), both with promising crops on the ground. And he is already looking ahead to the debut of the first runners by the formidable Village King (Campanologist), whom he describes without hesitation as “the icing on the cake—a monster of a racehorse.”

For Carlos Felice, racing is not just about winning. It’s about building, about patience, and about believing in development. “Horses need time,” he reflected. “You can’t rush them. The ones that come into their own at five are the ones that really show if they have true quality.”

This Dardo Rocha victory doesn’t just close an emotional circle—it opens a new one. And when asked about the future, Felice doesn’t hide his dreams: the Pellegrini, the consolidation of his stallions, continuing to compete at the top.

But above all, he dreams of something even bigger: continuing to enjoy a sport he’s loved since the first time his father took him to the track.

“These are the horses that go down in history. And when you love this, you do it with intensity. It’s a beautiful sport,” he said.

And in that line, everything is said.