JAMES BOND ISSUE 22_Jerkins feature.qxd 14/10/2011 16:17 Page 2
JIM BOND
JIM BOND His mission? To go all the way with Tizway The name is Bond...Jim Bond, not to be confused with that of James Bond, the fictional daredevil and high-tech knight errant of international spymaster fame. Not for the exotic climes of London, Paris or Rio is our Jim. Raised in the small western New York town of Victor, Jim Bond has ventured no further geographically than a few hundred miles east to the decidedly unromantic sounding Mechanicville, the smallest incorporated city in the state, one named after the profession of its original occupants. But Mechanicville does have the saving grace of lying just 15 miles from racing’s magical summer capital, Saratoga Springs. WORDS: ALAN SHUBACK PHOTOS: HORSEPHOTOS.COM
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rom that modest point on the globe, Jim Bond, the trainer, oversees a racing and breeding empire that is in the midst of preparing for the biggest operation of its existence. D-Day is November 5, when Tizway is being aimed for the Breeders’ Cup Classic. It is a race Bond came perilously close to winning in 1995 with L’Carriere, who was beaten to the line only by the great Cigar. In Tizway, Bond has a horse that is physically and temperamentally suited to the trainer’s methods, which derive directly from those of Hall of Fame conditioner Allen Jerkens. “Jerkens is my idol,” Bond says. “If I could be one-tenth of the trainer he was, I would consider myself a success.” Suffice it to say that Bond is considerably more than one-tenth of the way to achieving his goal, Tizway alone giving credence to that
assessment. The winner of the second fastest Metropolitan Handicap in history in May, he followed that victory with a decisive threelength triumph in Saratoga’s Grade 1 Whitney Handicap. Bond now has the six-year-old exactly where he wants him, and exactly where he has always thought he could be. “I train horses hard, very hard,” he explains, “but I had to train Tizway safely rather than the hard way I would have liked to earlier in his career. He suffered from a series of minor little things, and I could only start to
“Jerkens is my idol. If I could be one-tenth of the trainer he was, I would consider myself a success”
go 100 percent with him this spring.” A $140,000 Keeneland purchase by Bond’s principal owner, William “Bill” Clifton Jr., Tizway may be the fruition of a partnership between the owner and trainer that began in 1991. It was May 15, 1991 to be exact, as Bond’s wife and keeper of stable purse strings Tina Marie, whom he met when she was waiting tables in a Victor restaurant, remembers. “That was the date on the first bill we sent Mr. Clifton,” she recalls. In the late nineties the Clifton-Bond team produced three-time Grade 1 winner Behrens, who is probably better remembered for his six second-place finishes at the highest level, one of them behind the incomparable Dubai Millennium in the Dubai World Cup. Clifton and Bond pulled off a grand Saratoga double when Will’s Way won the 1996 Travers Stakes, landing the Whitney a year later. “Behrens was the most athletic horse I’ve
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