Report: Longtime Northern California trainer Ellen Jackson retires

Longtime Northern California Thoroughbred trainer Ellen Jackson has shuttered her operation and will scale back her breeding activities as well, It was reported Friday.

Daily Racing Form quoted Jackson, 68, as saying bouts of fatigue following an infection by the West Nile virus prompted the move.

“I need to get rid of the stress in my life. I’ve had poor health. Once a month, I’ll have an episode when I can’t get up,” she told the publication.

Jackson told DRF that she has turned over her 16-horse racing stable to longtime assistant Alberto Ruvalcaba, who will saddle his first two runners in his name at the Alameda County Fair in Pleasanton on Saturday.

Over her career, Jackson-trained runners compiled a record of 4,145: 377-429-467, for a win percentage of just over 9 percent, according to Equibase statistics.

The trainer, who also has operated the 63-acre Victory Rose Thoroughbreds in Vacaville, north of San Francisco, for many years also told DRF she will scale back operations there, eliminating horse boarding, pensioning the 20-year-old stallion Bold Chieftain and transferring another stallion, Gig Harbor, to a nearby farm. She will continue to stand Idiot Proof and Many Rivers at the farm, it said.