Jerkens Remains Active at Age 85
Gulfstream Park on Saturday will host the inaugural running of the $75,000 H. Allen Jerkens, a two-mile turf stakes honoring the Hall of Fame horseman who now calls South Florida his year-round home.
Though he has scaled back in numbers, the 85-year-old Jerkens still has a dozen horses stabled at Gulfstream, where he first arrived to rub horses in 1947. He ran second with All the Way and third with Bold Summit on January 15, and third with Easement on December 10.
“They said they named a race after me,” Jerkens said. “Naturally, it makes you feel pretty good. The first stakes race that I ever won in my whole life was two miles and a sixteenth, so maybe that’s why they did that.”
The son of an Austrian cavalryman, Jerkens won the Display Handicap on the final day of the 1955 racing season at old Jamaica Racetrack in New York with a son of 1937 Triple Crown champion War Admiral he claimed for $8,000 named War Command.
"Naturally, you look back at things over the years,” Jerkens said. “Things were different years ago, but really not that much. You have to have a good horse to win, just like you always used to. It’s somewhat the same, even though we think it’s not.”
Jerkens was the youngest trainer elected to the Hall of Fame at age 45 in 1975, two years after earning the Eclipse Award as top trainer. His career has been one of the most remarkable in racing, having developed more than 160 stakes winners after saddling his first winner at Aqueduct in 1950.
Known as ‘The Chief’ for his experience and horsemanship and nicknamed ‘Giant Killer’ after upsetting the likes of Secretariat, Kelso and Buckpasser over several decades, Jerkens has saddled more than 3,850 winners.
At Gulfstream, Jerkens’ winners include Devil His Due in the 1993 Gulfstream Park Handicap and 1994 Skip Away, Miss Shop in the 2007 Rampart, Teammate in the 2006 Gulfstream Oaks, Sensitive Prince in the 1979 Gulfstream Park Handicap and 1978 Fountain of Youth and Hutcheson Stakes, and Any Limit in the 2007 and 2009 Hurricane Bertie and 2007 First Lady.
“You figure you’re lucky to be able to still come out here at my age and be able to be around the horses which I’ve had all my life, ever since I was a little boy,” Jerkens said. “I’m very lucky. Most people aren’t that lucky.”
Jockey Dick Cardenas Looking to Add to First U.S. Win
A month after arriving at Gulfstream Park from Jamaica via Panama, jockey Dick Cardenas made his first trip to the winner’s circle Wednesday after guiding Red Pond to a commanding 5 ½-length victory in the fourth race.
“I’m very happy to get my first win,” said the 30-year-old Panama native, who scored aboard his 16th mount of the Championship Meet. “I can’t explain how I feel about it, I’m so happy.”
Cardenas, a boyhood friend of jockey Fernando Jara, attended the Laffit Pincay Jr. Jockey School and became the leading apprentice in Panama before venturing to Jamaica, where he became one of the most successful jockeys there for the next six years.
“I won a championship in Jamaica. I did very well. I won 600 races,” said Cardenas, who swept the Jamaican Triple Crown aboard My Word in 2010 and captured his second Jamaica Derby in 2011 aboard Technomoto.
Cardenas returned to Panama last year to look after his ailing father before deciding to ride in South Florida rather than return to Jamaica.
“I love it here. I speak Spanish and I know English. I love it, because a lot of people speak Spanish here,” Cardenas said.
Now that he had notched a victory at Gulfstream, Cardenas said he’s more determined than ever to become a successful rider in the U.S.
“I work very hard in the morning. I don’t take a day off. I work every day,” he said. “I love working and I get on as many horses as I can.”
Source: Gulfstream Park