Jagged Ice (photo: Tracy Robertson Photography)
On 29 September 2016, the Lammerskraal Stud transport van arrived at Durbanville Racecourse to give their CTS Ready To Run draft a grass gallop. With the group was an imposing chestnut with a large white blaze, clearly older than the rest and with his tack and tendon boots suggesting that he was there in a different capacity to the others. As he stepped off the float, there was a shout – “Isn’t that Jagged Ice?”
Jagged Ice was bred at Lammerskraal Stud and is by their late, great champion sire Western Winter out of the Trigger Finger mare, Annie. Foaled in 2002, the flashy chestnut with the white face and 4 white legs went on to be trained by Dean Kannemeyer. With a total career tally of 5 wins and 8 places, he is probably best remembered for narrow defeats in the Daily News (finishing a short head second to Elusive Fort) and a very narrow third to Hunting Tower in the 2007 Vodacom Durban July. However, it’s his life off the track that is rather more fun and as most of that came courtesy of Nina Versfeld, I got her to tell me his story.
Nina was a big city corporate attorney working for BOE in Cape Town’s Waterfront, but approximately 10 years ago, she exchanged her corporate suits for a pair of Wellies and moved to her husband’s farm in Ceres. “When I moved to Ceres, I decided I didn’t want to go back into practice, but I wasn’t sure what to do, so I started up a livery yard on my farm. I’d heard there was a local Thoroughbred stud that backed and produced horses from the farm and when I asked my mother-in-law who it was, she said ‘that’s Sally Jourdan’”.
Joining The Team
Nina and Jagged Ice (photo: supplied)
As it turned out, Nina’s late father-in-law had been kind to Sally when she first went to work at Daytona, helping her move and taking her under his wing and she’d been a friend of the family ever since. “I asked my mom-in-law if she wouldn’t phone up and put in a good word and Sally said ‘let her come.’ The first horse I ever rode was the appropriately named Bursting Into Bloom. She was a 2yo at the time and they said they’d been having problems with her, but didn’t explain what the problems were. I put one foot in the stirup and she careered off. I came off, but managed to land on my feet. Given that it was my first day on the job, there was a certain amount of ego and pride at stake, so I got back on and from then on I became one of the regular work riders.”
“One day I noticed the stud PA, who wasn’t particularly horsey, trying to help lunge one of the young horses and I realised there was an opportunity for someone knowledgeable to help them with backing. I’d done a few of my own over the years, so I wasn’t a complete novice and that’s how I quietly got involved.
After about 3 months, Sally asked whether I’d like to take over the process and I’ve been doing that for going on 10 years now.”
How It’s Done
“We like to produce the babies over a period of 3 – 4 months, so that by the time they go in to training, they are properly trained under saddle, have been swimming in the dam, on the horse walker, done track work and road work, worked on the treadmill and done lots of hacking. I really pride myself on the fact that our horses are well schooled individuals by the time they go into training.”
“This is the first time we’ve prepped a draft up to Ready To Run level. Sally’s husband, Neil Bruss, asked why we didn’t prep the horses ourselves as he had full confidence in the team’s abilities and said there was no need to send them to a trainer as we normally do, so we decided to give it a go. It’s a trial run, but we may do it more often in future as it would save the farm a lot of money.”
Jagged Ice
“I just missed backing Jagged Ice – he went into training about 6 months before I started. Because Lammerskraal brings horses back to the farm for holidays, I did get to see him occasionally, but Sally always had a thing for him and there was an unspoken understanding that he would be Sally’s lead horse / personal riding horse when he retired.”
“Lammerskraal often does that. They don’t just discard their horses and will offer a retirement home if there is space available for a teaser or a yearling baby sitter and if not, we’ve got a very successful system going with me selling nice horses when they come off track to good competitive homes.”
“When Jagged Ice came back to the farm as a 4 and 5 year old, Sally used to ride him out with her son and pony on the lead. This was a horse in full training! He’s always been a very loveable character and it’s hard not to fall in love with him.”
“After he ran 3rd in the July, there was a big offer for him from Mauritius, but Sally pleaded with Mr Rattray and he turned it down. When he eventually came off the track, he took up the job as lead horse at Lammerskraal as planned. However, he’s always been a character and was so naughty – he’d be perfectly calm and then out of nowhere spook 20ft left or right just to have a good fat laugh at the 2yo’s coming apart at the seams behind him!”
Unretiring
Jagged Ice on the race track (photo: Gold Circle)
“Eventually Sally decided this was not on and started putting him on the treadmill to get rid of some of his excess energy. We had two 4yo fillies that had just come back from training and when we put the heart monitor on him, we found that his recovery rate was better than the 4yos. So Sally decided to put him back in training. He went to Shane Humby and ran in Sally’s colours. He’d always move up, then just hang around and finish within 3 lengths. He had all the ability in the world, but they do get wise to it and he obviously decided it wasn’t worth the effort. He came back to the farm again as a 7.5 / 8yo, but by then Sally had acquired Bound To Travel as a lead horse, so we decided that I’d produce him and sell him on as a competition horse.”
“As it worked out, the Highlands stallion day was coming up and they were taking Go Deputy and Parade Leader and needed a gelding to go along for company, so Sally said she’d keep him on the farm for a few weeks and I could take him after the stallion day. During that time, there was a little training show at Spier and I decided to take him for an outing. There are no formal jumping facilities at Lammerskraal and the only thing I could find were 3 bales and a couple of poles, so we set them up in an empty dam and practiced there. Then I took him off to Spier and he jumped fillers, flags, coloured poles – the works – all with the cheetahs still prowling up and down and he never batted an eyelid.”
“There was a little eventing training show at SDRC the following day and because he’d been so good at the jumping, I decided to stay over and give it a go and he did the entire 80 cm track without blinking and people were just amazed at how good he was. I had 3 horses of my own at the time and didn’t really have space for another one, but everyone said I’d be mad not to keep him, so I did.”
Bulls-eye Horse
“Bulls-eye horse” (photo: Caroline Hartley Photography)
“Damian Stevens used to call him my bulls-eye horse. I jumped him all the way up to 1.20m and qualified him for the 1.30m classes. This is all the more remarkable because he only started competing when he was 10, plus I had 2 pregnancies during that time, but he did really well. In his entire jumping record, he was always in the places, if not actually winning. I took him out of province, he was second at EC Champs one year and I took him to a couple of World Cups.”
“He turned 14 this year and I’ve got 2 young Warmbloods that I’m producing up the grades, so it was time to make a decision. I’ve had quite a few people offer me big money for him as a school master for juniors, but I just pretend they don’t exist! He was the stud’s blue-eyed boy and then mine – he doesn’t know any other life. He’s fully sound and I don’t feel it’s fair at this point in his life to go to a small city paddock and be a Junior hit and miss horse.”
Unretiring again
“At his last show in George, he won the 1.20m championship class and I decided to go out on a high and retire him officially. I pulled his back shoes off and was starting to let him down and then one of the Lammerskraal lead horses got injured. I’d said to Sally all along that he would always be available if the farm needed him – as I’m the only person that rides the lead horses at Lammerskraal, it would basically mean riding my own horse every day. So she asked me to bring him over to help with the Ready To Run draft. It was a week before the Durbanville gallops and he hadn’t been sat on for 7 weeks. I lunged him that Friday, sat on him at Lammerskraal on Sunday and showed him the flat track and general lay of the land so that it wouldn’t all be new to him and on the Monday he led the babies out.”
“From the second I got on, he puffed himself up like he knew this was his job now. So he’s there for good as long as he stays sound and if anything goes wrong, he will come home and be a baby sitter for the young horses at my livery.”
Ready To Run
Jagged Ice shows the Ready To Run draft how it’s done (photo: supplied)
“That Thursday at Durbanville was amazing though. And it was particularly special that so many of the work riders still recognised him.
He must have been special to a lot of people for them to still recognise him so many years down the line.
It was Jaggie’s first time back on a racetrack for eight years and he took his job leading the colts very seriously. So seriously in fact, that I had to ask really nicely for him to start pulling up. It felt like he could have gone around the track twice! Also, it was without a doubt one of the coolest things I’ve ever done. Bucketlist-cool.”
Asked whether Jagged Ice would be at the Ready To Run gallops to keep an eye on ‘his’ string, Nina said no. “We did ask, but CTS said there weren’t any stables available.” However, she assures me that Jaggy has done his job to perfection. “Our colts and fillies all behaved like old hands, and I am very proud to show them off. Bring on the Ready to Run sale!”
