Meet…JENNIFER SHAFER
Montreal-born Jennifer Shafer has arrived in Toronto and is ready to take on the biggest racing circuit in the country as the newest trainer to land at Woodbine.
Shafer has been working with a small stable of horses for Alberta’s Spring Lakes Farm for the past decade but she has been ready to expand her business for a couple of years.
Just one win away from her 50th career victory, Shafer has brought a group of Ontario-sired runners and an Alberta bred to Woodbine. She has even picked up a couple of Ontario clients with horses including Joe Perrone.
“You get comfortable where you are when you are working with your horses,” said Shafer about delaying her trip to Toronto until this year. “Your head is down and you are working seven days a week; you don’t think of moving.”
But with the uncertainty of the racing industry in Alberta – Northlands Park in Edmonton, where she has been stabled is set to close after this season – and elderly parents at home in Montreal, Shafer knew now was the time to head east.
Shafer was just four-years-old when she started riding horses and was accomplished in hunters and jumpers. She moved from Montreal to Alberta in 1998 when she started working for Spruce Meadows.
She left horses to attend university where she studied esthetics but in 2004, went to visit Northlands and she fell in love with racing.
“I started grooming but soon realized I was better on top of a horse rather than on the ground,” said Shafer.
She exercised horses for two years before she got her own horse and met a husband and wife who raced as Spring Lakes Farm. They offered her a chance to train their homebreds and a successful team for formed. The first horse she raced for the couple was Newport Road, who was stakes placed and an allowance winner.
Shafer has won with 19 of her last 110 starters and the Ontario-sired runners she has for Spring Lakes are now 3 and 4-years-old.
“They sent some mares to Adena Springs a few years back so we have a Giant Gizmo, North Light and Sligo Bay (Ire). They were foaled at Susan Rasmussen’s Openwood Farm.”
Shafer does all of the work with the horses herself from riding, feeding and leg work.
“I am totally hands-on. II don’t believe in cutting corners. If you want 100% from your horse, you need to give 150% and hope you get back 100% from him.”
This is her first visit to Woodbine and she is excited to get her chance to race on the one-mile track.
“The people here have been so helpful and receptive,” she said. “I am like a kid in a candy store.”
Look for the Shafer runners on the training track this week and in the entries once the season opens on April 9.
SAM-SON GETS A WINNER WITH SMART MISSION
SMART MISSION, out of Misty Mission , the 2012 Outstanding Broodmare in Canada, flies to her debut win on the grass – GULFSTREAM MEDIA PHOTO
Sam-Son Farms and trainer Malcolm Pierce have not sent out a lot of starters this winter in Florida but the performances have been less that stellar.
On Sunday, however, the farm unleashed its highly regarded filly SMART MISSION (scratched a few weeks ago from an off-the-turf maiden) and she did not disappoint. The flashy chestnut 3-year-old earned a 72 Beyer Speed Figure according to DRF for her win in 1:35.31 for 1 mile on the grass.
That puts the filly right into the picture for the Woodbine Oaks in June
She also earned Thoroughbred Daily News “Rising Star” status:
read TDN below:
Smart Mission stormed home to an authoritative debut victory Sunday at Gulfstream, becoming the latest ‘TDN Rising Star.’
Left far back after being sandwiched at the break, she raced behind swift fractions of :23.51 and :46.68, followed a rally to
the front by favored Akron Gold (Medaglia d’Oro), and circled the field with a wide bid on the far turn. Collaring that rival in midstretch, she kicked clear while racing a bit greenly to score by a length.
The winner is a half-sister to French Beret (Broad Brush, GSW, $659,434) and Irish Mission (Giant’s Causeway, Ch 3yo Filly & Ch Grass Mare-Can, MGSW & GISP, $1,357,073). This is also the extended family of Canadian champions Rainbow Connection (Halo) and Rainbows for Life (Lyphard).
Stakes-winning Misty Mission produced a filly by Medaglia d’Oro last year.
HABIBI RETIRED
HABIBI and her love of mints – and of course, Gator Kitten, who supplied this photo to Twitter with Sarah Ritchie
HABIBI wins the Flaming Page – Michael Burns photo
New Zealand champion and Woodbine stakes winner HABIBI has been retired from racing and will be bred to Kentucky Derby winner Animal Kingdom.
Habibi, trained by Mark Frostad in Canada and the US, won the Flaming Page Stakes and was 2nd in the Grade 1 Northern Dancer at Woodbine last year. In her most recent race at Gulfstream Park, Habibi closed fast in the Grade 3 Suwanee River to be 3rd for owner George Strawbridge, who bought the mare before 2015 from Peter, Heather and Gavin Crofskey.
The daughter of EKRAAR won 7 of 20 races and over $720,000.
“We were there to see her last race and it was a pleasure to be there for it,” Heather Crofskey said.
“She should have won a Group I over there. She lost by a whisker and might not have if the jockey had pulled the whip. She had a chequered career in the US which was a shame.”
http://www.stuff.co.nz/sport/racing/77190034/Habibi-moves-from-race-track-to-broodmare-paddock
