Jimmy Jerkens: A son follows the footsteps of a giant

Memories are everywhere at Saratoga Race Course for trainer Jimmy Jerkens, starting at his barn.

His father, H. Allen Jerkens, was assigned the space - Barn 75 - soon after he began a legendary career that stretched from 1950 until his death on March 18, 2015, producing 3,859 victories and 14 New York training crowns.

“This barn has a lot of history,” Jerkens said. “They all do at Saratoga.”

His father’s stature was such that he was deemed worthy of two monikers – “The Chief” and “The Giant Killer.” The latter came from his ability to topple the mighty Secretariat twice in 1973, with Onion in the Whitney Handicap at Saratoga and with Prove Out in the Woodward, then run at Belmont Park. Before that, he sent out Beau Purple to bring down the magnificent Kelso in 1962 and 1963, creating an early legacy of saddling upset winners.  

“The Chief” still commands so much respect that the Saratoga training title has been named for him since 2010. The King’s Bishop, a Grade 1 $500,000 race for 3-year-olds at seven furlongs, was renamed the H. Allen Jerkens Memorial this year and is part of a spectacular Travers Day undercard.

The weight of following in such giant footsteps could be crushing for some. Jerkens, 58, is meeting that challenge as well as anyone possibly could.

He is content to apply lessons learned for 20 years as his father’s assistant, and to bring the same passion his father brought to the barn until shortly before his death at age 85. He accepts that the results, however good they might be, may never reach the same heights.

“I think he puts pressure on himself to do the best he can with horses that people have entrusted to him,” said Julie Schneider, Jerkens’s twin sister. “That is what I think is more pressure than just his last name.”

Jerkens provides a reflection of his father in numerous ways. He is so hands on with his 42 horses that he mixes his own feed. He maintains the same rigorous schedule -- at the barn throughout the morning, back again for afternoon feeding, back again at night. He all but tucks in his horses for the evening.

“Every night he likes to see how his horses eat, how they behave, how they reacted to the day,” said Shirley, Jerkens’s wife of nine years. “That is when he makes a lot of his training decisions.”

The 365, 24-7 commitment is the Jerkens way.

“You try to give as much as you can give. It’s what we were taught,” said Steve Jerkens, also a New York trainer. “You pay attention all the time.”

Jimmy ventured out on his own in 1997 at his father’s urging and with help from his father’s clients. Over time, he established himself locally and then nationally, earning Breeders’ Cup victories with Artie Schiller in the Mile in 2005 and with Corinthian in the Dirt Mile in 2007.

He dominated the 2014 Travers when V.E. Day and Wicked Strong ran one-two. Shaman Ghost, second to the brilliant Arrogate in the inaugural $12 million Pegasus World Cup Invitational, heads his current talented lineup.

“I like to think I kind of got a little style of my own,” Jerkens said. “But when you get right down to it, there are things I learned from him that are very sound and they still hold up today.

“There are certain things that stand the test of time. I don’t want to go into detail about it, but there are certain things, certain training methods with a particular kind of horse, and feeding. It still applies today, which is very gratifying for me. There is so much detail that is important and people don’t think it’s important.”

When Jerkens ships a horse, for instance, he makes sure that he or someone else is present to check in at regular intervals, keeping the horse as calm as possible. “It could be what makes you win or lose,” he said. “That goes a lot farther than people think.”

“The Chief” was known for putting an extensive number of distance works into horses that wanted to run long. There is a famous anecdote about the morning one of his horses dumped his rider and broke loose during training hours. The horse was touring the main track for the third time when someone remarked, “God, you’d think he’d be tired by now.”

To which the late Ralph Theroux replied, “If the Chief is training him, that SOB will get dizzy before he gets tired.”

The same might be said of one of Jerkens’s routers now. “I’ve always believed in giving horses long-distance works,” he said. “There is nothing worse than running a short horse.”

According to Julie, Jimmy enjoyed a special bond with their father. He went to work for him immediately after his graduation from Walt Whitman High School in Huntington Station, New York, knowing that racetrack life was the only life for him.

“He spent day in and day out with daddy. They were extremely close,” Julie said. “When you learn from ‘The Chief,’ there were so many things he did that were unique to the game. Like daddy, he is a wonderful observer. He is able to observe a horse and make changes according to what he sees.”

Shirley met her future husband when she worked for his father. She said of the similarity in their approach, “They put themselves in the animal’s place, and the thought process goes from there.”

Jerkens surely learned from Onion’s defeat of Secretariat that plans are made to be broken. The “Giant Killer” never intended to run Onion in the Whitney. His horse was doing extremely well, having won an allowance race at six and a half furlongs only four days earlier, and he observed that Secretariat labored in his final work for the prestigious mile-and-an-eighth Whitney.

He took a shot.

Jerkens recalled watching the start of the Whitney on a black and white television at a fruit stand on the backstretch. He ran to watch the rest live, arriving just in time to see Onion, in orange silks, leading Secretariat by a narrow margin as they disappeared behind a tote board.

When they emerged, Jerkens fully expected to see that Secretariat surging into the lead. Yet those shimmering orange silks were still in front, with Onion digging in, somehow fighting off “Big Red.”

Jimmy, Julie, Steve and their older brother, Allen, dashed to the winner’s circle. “Daddy did it! Daddy did it!” they exclaimed. Allen gushed tears of joy.

 “It was like a fantasy,” Jerkens said. “It was just incredible.”

They celebrated the way they often did, with a game of touch football outside the barn. As always, “The Chief” played quarterback.

Those are some of the memories treasured by Jerkens, a forever grateful son doing everything possible to follow the lead of a giant.