He is 22 months into a two-year contract to train privately in Saudi Arabia for Prince Faisal bin Khalid Al Saud, a move that rejuvenated his career, but Jimmy Jerkens said he is ready to come home.
Jerkens told the TDN that when his contract expires in March he will return to U.S. and resume his career at the NYRA tracks.
It's not that Jerkens hasn't done well in Saudi Arabia. He's had 21 winners during his time there. And it's not that he doesn't have any quality horses.
“We've been doing good here,” he said. “We're winning at about the same clip as last year, winning at about 16%. That's good for here. They have big fields and you end up running in a lot of spots where you don't really fit into the race. We're a little down when it comes to the money won, but we've kept up the winning percentage.”
Music Critic (hip 379) | Fasig-Tipton
He also has a potential star in Music Critic (Maclean's Music), a $650,000 purchase at the 2024 Fasig-Tipton Timonium sale. He was an easy debut winner Jan. 9 in a 1400-meter race in Riyadh.
But Jerkens admits that he's home sick. He said his situation is particularly difficult because his wife Shirley has not been able to join him on a permanent basis.
“I miss back home,” Jerkens said. “It just wasn't working out for me the last couple of years in the U.S. I'm glad I did this. But my contract is up in March. I'll probably go home then and end up staying. I thought Shirley would be with me and it didn't work out for her. She said she couldn't stay because she didn't have a job here and she said that she didn't have anything to do. She got bored. So she would go home. At one point, it looked like she had a job here but it didn't pan out.”
Jerkens never would have left for Saudi Arabia if he were having more success in the U.S. Once among the top trainers in New York, he won just four races in 2022 and 10 in 2021. He's going to have to find a way to build a bigger, more successful stable this time around.
“I don't know what I'm going to do when I get there, but I'll figure it out,” he said.
Saudi owners have been much more active at U.S. sales of late as they try to improve the overall quality of their stock. Jerkens said that his owner still prefers to buy at European sales, but reached out last year to pick up a couple of horses stateside.
That has certainly been true at the Midlantic sale, where Jerkens picked up Music Critic. Middle Eastern interests have been focused on the sale as a source of two-year-olds in recent years.
In 2024, a dozen horses were purchased by U.A.E. interests at the Midlantic sale. Eleven went to Saudi Arabia, including Music Critic. Others went to Bahrain, Libya and Qatar.
“It's unbelievable how many horses they are buying in the U.S.,” he said. “That's really getting big here. We just had a couple run last week. One was Caramel Road. Bob Bafffert had him back home. And there are some Peter Blum horses running over here.”
As far as Music Critic goes, he's been a tough horse to figure out. Jerkens said he was slow to get going, and he wasn't sure why.
Jimmy Jerkens | Jockey Club of Saudi Arabia
“We had a lot of problems with him when he first got here,” he said. “We thought his knees were just immature. He was in Taif, where they race in the summer and we couldn't really do much with him there. But once he got back to Riyadh he really started to come around. We didn't do anything with him. No surgeries, no procedures, not anything. He just came around on his own. He started holding up during training and we went step-by-step. All of a sudden he just got there in a rush. He stayed sound and had plenty of work going into his first start. Especially first time out going 1400 meters, because the tracks are slow here you, really have to be ready.
Jerkens said he would like to run Music Critic in the GII UAE Derby, but likely won't get in because the colt will not have run enough times to qualify under the rating system in Dubai.
Before he hit the prolonged slump, Jerkens compiled an impressive resume. He won 78 blacktype stakes and trained horses like Quality Road (Elusive Quality), Artie Schiller (El Prado {Ire}), Wicked Strong (Hard Spun), Corinthian (Pulpit) and many others. Can he do it again and build the type of stable that will be competitive on the New York circuit against the Todd Pletchers and Chad Browns of the world? He's ready to give it a try.
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