Spotlight on a horse who won the Irish Cambridgeshire in Sheikh Hamdan’s silks for legendary trainer Dermot Weld – and is now thriving with Shadwell pre-training secretary Faye Enefer Harrison
They call him a grumpy old man, but it isn’t a problem because he’s among his own people. Jassaar is Shadwell-bred, Shadwell-raced, and those blue and white ties still bind now that he has left the racecourse behind and moved into a new role.
The ten-year-old is now based just up the road from Shadwell’s main office at the Nunnery Stud in Thetford, on the Norfolk-Suffolk border, and is thriving in the care of Shadwell pre-training secretary Faye Enefer Harrison.
Her ostensibly unflattering description of him is laced with all the affection and understanding that is the privilege of any much-loved family member.
“He is very much a loner at home, he doesn’t like any fuss,” says Enefer Harrison. “I liken him to a grumpy old man – but if you know how to handle him he is fine, and he is very much part of the family.”
Jassaar joined the Enefer Harrison household in February 2022, a case of right place right time for both parties. The gelding was earmarked for a move to Dubai, but when that plan was scrapped he became the ideal candidate for another plan, that of acquiring a horse for Enefer Harrison’s daughter Erin.
“Jack – that’s his name now – failed the pre-vetting for Dubai owing to ulcers, so he didn’t go and was considered for rehoming instead,” she says.
Rehoming programme
“Shadwell used to have a rehoming programme whereby a horse was taken by a rehomer, and if for any reason the rehomer no longer wanted the horse then it was to be returned to Shadwell.
“However, since the death of Sheikh Hamdan that is no longer a possibility – now horses are rehomed by New Beginnings [a British retraining and rehoming organisation] or sold to permanent homes of people Shadwell employees know personally. All the horses that were in the previous rehoming scheme were gifted to the original rehomers.
“In Jassaar’s case, Erin was 14 at the time and looking for a horse – after competing very successfully on ponies at national level she wanted a horse to reschool – and he seemed the perfect match.
“He was Erin’s first horse and she was not used to dealing with Thoroughbreds, so it was a sharp learning process for her as well as for him. They bonded very quickly despite his grumpiness and the occasional bite, and he is easy to deal with now that we know the correct way to manage him.”
Pioneering victories
It took a while for Jassaar to make any impact on the racecourse for all-time-great Curragh trainer Dermot Weld, whose unending stream of big-race success includes pioneering victories in the Belmont Stakes (1990, Go And Go) and the Melbourne Cup (1993, Vintage Crop).
Jassaar was not of that calibre; he was unraced at two, didn’t make his debut until the August of his sophomore campaign, and didn’t break his maiden until the following April.
Once the penny dropped, though, the patient approach began to pay off and on his next start he won a €100,000 handicap. Three months later Jassaar peaked with victory in the prestigious Irish Cambridgeshire Handicap over a mile at his home track, the last of his three wins. That swift ascent on the learning curve has been mirrored in his latest incarnation.
“Jack was a very fast learner – he takes life very much in his stride and nothing seems to bother him at all,” says
Enefer Harrison. “He adapted to pony club life very well, he is not at all spooky, and he and Erin were winning rosettes over jumps very quickly.
“One of his main strengths is the ability to cope with any situation – he doesn’t get wound up and isn’t at all clingy to other horses, which I feel helps immensely in regard to retraining a racehorse because they are happy to go out alone.
Very easy to ride
“He has his pony/riding club activities, he hacks out and loves going drag hunting. Erin is happy to take him out on her own and has been known to disappear into the forest on him for hours. I have ridden him on occasion and he is very easy to ride, he loves a mooch up the woods or a swim in the river.”
Enefer Harrison’s position within the racing industry gives her a stake in and an insight into the landscape of rehabilitation, rehoming and reinvention of former racehorses. She is swift with praise for the British programme (Retraining of Racehorses; RoR) while pointing out certain aspects of the process that may pose problems for both horse and rehomer.
“These schemes are a vital part of the racing world,” she says. “I think that knowledge is key to reschooling a racehorse – it’s easy to see how they might fall into the wrong ownership, as the Thoroughbred breed as a whole is a world away from a normal riding horse.
“I feel it is important that people taking on racehorses have a better understanding of how they are trained – having that knowledge is vital to successfully reschooling a racehorse, along with knowing the correct way to feed them.
“The RoR movement is great, although Jack is not eligible for a lot of the championships as he only ran in Ireland. Perhaps this could be addressed, as it would have been lovely to be able to do a few more of the qualifiers.”
Enduring memories
This restriction has not held Jack and Erin back too much, though, and there have been plenty of enduring memories to go along with the rosettes on the wall.
“The best moment we all had as a family was at Aston Le Walls British Riding Clubs arena eventing championships,” says Enefer Harrison. “Erin was in a team of four other girls her own age and Jack was the only horse.
“He went clear in the show jumping and headed out to the cross-country, but the rider before Erin had fallen off, which meant Erin and Jack were held on course – not an easy task for a Thoroughbred when his blood is up.
“Eventually they got going again to finish fifth individually and help the Worlington club to a national win as a team. Jack was also Eastern region champion in the club league run by British Showjumping.
“Once Erin has finished her college course they’ll be competing again, one-day events, showjumping, drag hunting. Jack is very easy in that sense, he is happy to take a step back when Erin is busy but it takes him no effort to come back into work – a lot of that is the grounding that Erin gave him to start with.”
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