A
brassy entertainer named Sophie Tucker once offered this commentary
on the human condition: “I’ve been rich and I’ve
been poor,” she said. “Being rich is better.”
Allan Jack has lived both sides of that coin.
Although he has been in the upper strata of Hastings Park trainers
for many years now, turning out such stars as Strawberry Morn,
Mike K and Ball and Chain and winning races at a steady 20 percent-plus
clip, he has endured lean times.
Before he grew to be a six-foot trainer, the
kid known as A.J. was a skinny jockey who lied about his age
and managed to get one or two mounts a week at Hastings Park.
This was 1948, Jack was 14, and the economy was still being
choked by the fallout from the Second Word War.
Boots and saddles were very scarce and very
expensive. In fact Jack, whose father Alex was a part time trainer,
didn’t have any riding boots. He borrowed a pair from
Sid Martin, who was not long out of the apprentice ranks himself.
“There was one day I was named on three
mounts, the most I ever had’” recalled Jack. “Turns
out Sid was riding every race that day, so I had no boots. I
had to take off my mounts.”
However, he was able to give Avelino Gomez
a boost on his way to becoming the most famous rider in Canada.
Gomez, making a comeback after a race-fixing suspension, could
only scrounge up a four-pound saddle. Jack, still a lightweight
at that point, swapped him his much lighter model.
When he finished his brief riding career he
galloped horses and became the track’s outrider, taking
horses to the post in the afternoon. After seven years, looking
for a new challenge, he turned to training.
In 1959 he saddled his first official winner,
a modest claimer named Madtogo, for Dr. Harry Pitts. Later that
year he turned out his first stakes winner when Al McLean and
Sam Collins’ Totem Hawk, a big, fractious almost-black
gelding, led all the way under resourceful handling by Charlie
Ulrich to win the Ascot Derby at a mile and one-quarter.
Two years later he captured another Ascot Derby
with Son of Donn and two years after that he won the inaugural
running of the B.C. Oaks with Be Famous, ridden by Job Dean
Jessop, a former North American riding champion.
In the fall of 1964 Jack and his friend Jimmy MacLeod took three
horses to Northern California. The van broke down en route and
two days were lost. There were no stalls waiting for them at
Bay Meadows and they were stabled in a ram-shackle barn at nearby
Pleasanton.
Old Style, their first starter, finished third
and was claimed. The same fate befell War Summit – third
and claimed. When they finally got stalls at Bay Meadows they
only had one horse left, Veteran Observer.
Jack and MacLeod also were running dangerously
short of cash. They were living in a tack-room and a bone-chilling
fog rolled in at night and left them yearning for the comforts
of home.
“I was down to my last $5,” Jack
recalled. “I couldn’t get any money out of the office
because the horses weren’t registered in my name. We entered
Veteran Observer and he was 99 to 1 on the board. I was going
to put the fin on him but decided to just bet a deuce. That
way we still had $3 to go to Steamy’s Bar after the races,
nurse two beers and eat the peanuts. Well, Veteran Observer
wins by a dirty nose and pays $265. We moved into a motel.”
Through four decades of training, A.J. has
rarely been without a good horse. Not always a stakes horse,
but one that could grind out the victories. His most prolific
performer was Warner Pass, a winner of 18 races while under
Jack’s care.
He has had 17 stakes winners and 48 stakes
wins. The best ones, Strawberry Morn and Mike k, have come in
the last few years, although Honarium, a star of the ‘70s,
was a very handy horse.
A successful trainer needs a variety of skills
and sometimes he needs a little luck. When Aubrey and Jenny
Roberts sent their homebred grey filly Strawberry Morn to him
in 1995 he quickly realized she was a star in the making. But
she came up with shin problems. Allan decided to turn her out
to the farm, thus losing a shot at some rich stakes.
“I couldn’t contact Aubrey because
he was out fishing (he runs a large commercial boat) and a few
days passed. I had her shoes taken off and she was ready to
jump on a van. But I ran my hand over her shins and I couldn’t
believe it. They were ice cold. If I had sent her to the farm
we would have missed out on about $150,000.”
He has never been blessed with a big-name sponsor,
no Jack Diamond, no Peter Redekop, no R.J. Bennett, no Kim Hart.
He enjoyed a lot of one or two-horse people who have stayed
with him over the long haul.
His most free-spending owner is entrepreneur
Ken Takeda, who names all his colts Shingen Something and all
his fillies Bamboo Something.
A.J. named his own star, Ball and Chain, after
a horse that ran at Hastings Park in the 1940s. He bought Ball
and Chain out of the Washington sale for $13,500 and won five
times that amount last season with four victories and two seconds
in seven starts, second only to King Jeremy among the three-year-old
colts.
About 30 years ago he bought a house about
two blocks from the PNE grounds for $14,000. “I came close
to buying a farm but now I’m glad I didn’t,”
he says. “You waste a lot of time fighting the traffic
on the highway.”
He grew up at Commercial Drive and Kitchener
and rode his bike to the track to help his Dad. By age 12 he
was galloping horses. No licenses were required in those free
wheeling days.
He turned 67 in January, which means he’s
been at the track, skinny boy with bike and tall man with big
hat, for more than half a century. He never thought of leaving.
“Until just recently I always thought that racing here
was going straight up.”
Jack says there are no secrets to his success.
“Get a good foundation under a horse and hire the best
help you can,” is as close as he comes to revealing the
keys to his winning percentage.
Trainer Henry Miller Jr. galloped horses for
Jack for 10 years. He elaborates: “I never worked for
a better trainer. There is so muchconsistency in the way he
operates. He watches them all when they are on the track and
he always paid attention to any suggestions you made. He runs
them where they can win and when that real good horse comes
along he trains them exceptionally well.”