Christina Jelm Has Been There, Done That
When it comes to horses, it’s hard to think of something Christina Jelm hasn’t been involved in.
Fox hunting, polo, Saddlebred riding? Check. Thoroughbred trainer, breeder, owner? Yep. Corporate marketing, bloodstock agent, international exporter? You bet.
While her childhood in Bath, Ohio (also home to a well-known trainer who comes into the picture later in this story) was filled with all manner of non-racing equine activities, after high school Jelm decided the “sport of kings” was where she belonged.
“Although I hadn’t been involved in racing, that’s where the real money seemed to be,” said Jelm. “I was sitting at a stop sign, and I thought I’m going to go into racing, and I just started working towards that.”
She bought her first racehorse, a 2-year-old colt, for $1,500 out of a local newspaper. Then, she bought the colt’s mother and father and leased a farm that boarded trail horses.
“I started integrating my racehorses in as my business grew and built a big racetrack out there around a corn field and just started training horses and learning as I went,” Jelm said.
At 19, she got her trainer’s license and saddled her first starter at Churchill Downs — Epic Dancer, a 4-year-old she owned in partnership. She took the horse to Mountaineer in West Virginia and won a $2,500 claimer next out. It seemed her ah-ha moment at that intersection might be the start of something big.
“I thought it was pretty darn easy,” said Jelm. “But it’s not easy.
“Training was really, really tough. I literally started at the bottom. It was hard to get clients. It was hard to sustain a business just racing as a trainer.”
She stuck with it for a while, but when Jelm was offered a job managing a Breeders’ Cup sponsorship for the NTRA in Lexington, Ky., her mother encouraged her to take it.
“My mom basically kicked me out of Ohio,” Jelm chuckled. “She saw what a struggle it was. It was kind of like, if you want to be in politics, go to D.C. If you want to be in the movies, go to Hollywood. If I was going to be successful and reach my potential, I needed to be in Kentucky.”
The training experience and the ones that followed — the NTRA, a start-up racetrack hospitality company, exporting U.S. horses to Hong Kong, writing a business plan that eventually led to the formation of the North American Racing Academy jockey school — all enhanced Jelm’s knowledge of both horses and the racing business. And she was about to come full circle with her connection to the small town of Bath, Ohio.
Prior to the 2012 sales, Jelm had connected with Green Smith, a well-known greyhound racing owner from Texas trying to getting into the horse racing game. She was on the phone with her father.
“I was saying that I needed to put together a team for this owner, this potentially big, new owner, and I needed a trainer,” Jelm recalled. “And my father said, call Jerry, call Jerry, I keep telling you to call Jerry.”
Jerry, of course, was Hall of Fame trainer Jerry Hollendorfer, who grew up in Bath and attended college with Jelm’s father at the University of Akron. Jelm’s team was set, and her new career as a bloodstock agent took off.
“It was an amazing year. We bought Scarlet Strike for $220,000. We bought Nonios, who I purchased for $70,000,” Jelm said. “In that group was Wild Dude. We paid $42,000 for him.”
Scarlet Strike earned more than $400,000 on the track for Green, Hollendorfer, and John Carver. The mare sold at last year’s Keeneland November sale for $1.3 million. Nonios had a fine 3-year-old campaign in 2012, finishing second to the likes of Game On Dude and Paynter in Grade 1 company. Wild Dude has had a couple of long layoffs but is still on the track, most recently winning the G1 Bing Crosby Stakes at Del Mar July 26, a Win and You’re In Race for the Breeders’ Cup Sprint. Having not been Breeders’ Cup nominated, Wild Dude will still need to be supplemented to go in that race.
“Green (and his wife Kathy) have been just wonderful owners,” said Jelm. “He does everything right as an owner. He has patience, and as you’ve seen with Wild Dude, the patience pays off, especially in Jerry’s barn. He’s a true horseman.”
Jelm has several other clients, but she sticks to the buying side and doesn’t get involved as an owner in the partnerships.
“I’m better at managing them. I tend to fall in love with my own horses and think they’re all Grade 1 superstars, so it’s easier to do it from the outside looking in,” she said.
As always, Jelm still gets her hands on horses, not only at the sales but working for Hollendorfer when he ships to the East Coast from his home base in California.
Assistant trainer to a Hall of Famer. It’s one more thing she can add to her resume.
Source: Paulick Report