Thursday, July 8, 2010
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ALLEN JERKENS INTERVIEW FROM ON THE LEAD
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For July’s “From the Backstretch” feature, NYRA Media Specialist
The 81-year-old is also nicknamed “The Giant Killer” for the memorable upsets his horses have caused over the decades, having defeated the likes of Kelso, Buckpasser, Secretariat, and Skip Away. Jerkens added another upset to his resume in April when Le Grand Cru scored at 27-1 in the Westchester on April 30 at Belmont Park, giving the venerable horseman his fifth career win in the race.
A long-time resident of
Q: How were you introduced to horse racing?
Jerkens: My father was always around horses, and he had a private stable. He worked for a man privately and had a riding academy. People used to send him racehorses that had been broken down, and he would try to get them back to the races. We were on a little inlet in Oakdale, Long Island, and then in
Q: How did you end up training for Jack Dreyfus’ Hobeau Farm?
Jerkens: I was the leading trainer during the spring at Aqueduct when he asked me to come and see him. That was 1962. I didn’t think we got along very well, but he came two days later and asked me to take six horses. And after that he wanted me to train for him exclusively.
Q: You upset Secretariat twice, first with Onion and later with Prove Out. How confident were you going into the 1973 Whitney when Onion beat that year’s Triple Crown winner?
Jerkens: Not really confident. When the great horses run in races, it makes small fields because nobody wants to run against them. There’s a good chance you can pick up second or third, and that’s what we thought we’d probably do.
Q: Did you expect Prove Out to run as well as he did when he beat Secretariat in the 1973 Woodward?
Jerkens: Not really, but I thought he could be a good distance horse. I remembered his breeding, and he had a lot of long distance horses his family. His grandfather, Bold Venture, won the [
Q: On your website, it says you don’t care for the “Giant Killer” nickname. Is that true?
Jerkens: It’s embarrassing when they call you that and you don’t win. But if they have fun with that, there’s no problem.
Q: Sky Beauty, the 1994 Champion Older Female, is the only champion you have trained to date. What were your impressions of her?
Jerkens: Probably the classiest horse I ever had. She won the Triple Crown for fillies, and won other grade 1 races, too. It’s a shame she got disqualified in the Spinaway; she was much the best. Leaving the starting gate, she crossed over right in front of everybody. You’d think the jockey would have been able to pull her over a little bit. When they come out of the gate, they allow you to do a little of that. It’s a shame because she still would have been undefeated for the year, if that was the case. I think she was the last filly to carry 130 pounds.
Q: Society Selection won the 2003 Frizette in just her second start. What was that like?
Jerkens: That was a big thrill. That really was. That was, in my own mind, one of my best jobs of training. We had set it up where she would get experience running between horses, and it worked out just right. We probably shouldn’t had gone to the Breeders’ Cup because she had only run twice.
She was awfully good the year she won the Test and came back and won the
Q: What have been some of your other favorite memories from
Jerkens: One in particular was the Personal Ensign with Passing Shot. She got a great ride, too. That was the first stakes race she won. We ran her in a couple of those overnight stakes, and she couldn’t win. Miss Shop also won the Personal Ensign [in 2007]. But a long time ago, before I had any stakes horses, I won the last race on the last day with a cheap horse that hadn’t been out in a long time, and that was pretty thrilling.
Q: Who have been some of your favorite lesser-known horses?
Jerkens: It’s not always the stakes races and stakes horses that you remember. I’ve had some real nice intermediate horses that were very game and very honest. One was named Beaukins. He won the Toboggan Handicap and the last stakes they had at
I had another horse named Third Martini. In fact, he was the sire of Onion. I remember one year when he won 11 races. Now they don’t even run them 11 times. He ran 22 times that year, and won 11.
Kilmore Ray was also a very nice horse, too. He won a couple of stakes races. We lost him in a claim, and a year later he was running in cheaper claiming races. Mr. Dreyfus let me claim him and send him to the farm for the rest of his life. He lived to be 25. [Dreyfus] had a big field where he kept all of the geldings that had been honest horses.
Tunex was another one. He won the [1971] Metropolitan Handicap. In fact, it was the only time I won the Metropolitan Handicap.
I felt great about Lilah. I just picked her out in the paddock and asked the people if they wanted to sell her, and we wound up buying her. Shannon Uske was starting to ride, and I put her on the first time, and she won the first time she had ever rode in her life at Calder. Those kind of things are almost as thrilling as winning one of the big ones.
Q: What is your opinion of Trappe Shot, the promising 3-year-old half-brother to Miss Shop?
Jerkens: He’s probably as good of a horse as Mr. Dreyfus has ever bred, but he didn’t come along until after he died. But he’s a good horse, no question. I bought the mare for Mr. Dreyfus about 20 years ago. We ran her once and she won, and then she hurt her leg.
Q: Your barn has been hot recently, winning with seven of your first 15 starters at the Belmont Spring/Summer Meet. What do you attribute that to?
Jerkens: It’s luck in one way in that we were able to get horses in the races. If you have horses that are sitting on ready and those particular races don’t go, then it gets very frustrating. And then you get talked into running where they really don’t have a good chance. Three of the races we won for maidens $25,000 on the turf, and the horses fit well into them.
Q: How has racing changed over the decades?
Jerkens: Everybody hollers about it changing, but it probably hasn’t changed as much as the rest of the world. Look at sports – a pitcher can’t go nine innings and all this baloney. The game really hasn’t that much.
Perhaps the biggest change is how we used to run the horses two or three times more they do now. I think they get that impression because there are a lot of trainers who have 100 or 150 horses and they have to keep them away from each other, so naturally they don’t run as often. It hurts the game because it’s harder to fill the races because people don’t run as often as they used to.
Horses don’t need to have that much time between races. They can run, and rest up, and run. They don’t need to run and rest up a long time. If you run a horse every six weeks, he has to be training pretty well to be ready for the race. He’s just not going to stand around for six weeks and run.
They don’t do things to get them durable. You’ve seen the workouts for the
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