From Woodbine’s winner’s circle to hunter/jumper ribbons: Sandretti and Jurojin’s second careers

TORONTO, August 6, 2026 – Former Woodbine racehorses, Sandretti and Jurojin, are living proof of the successful second careers thoroughbreds can have after retiring from racing as they now compete on the show circuit.

Their story after racing all started when Jennifer Franks, who had worked with thoroughbreds over the years, was looking for a horse for her 11-year-old daughter, Molly.

“Within two years she was going to outgrow the pony she was riding, a little pony, like a 12.3-hand pony, and so I thought I should buy her a horse,” said Franks. “So, I asked people that I knew that had contacts at the track about if any horses were for sale.”

After being put in touch with graded stakes-winning trainer Harold Ladouceur and his wife Jessie, who believed they had a fitting horse, the process was set in motion.

“She warned me, ‘I know what I want, a lot of videos.’ I’m very particular, so she sends me this list, a literal itemized list of what she’s looking for in a horse and says, ‘This is what I want for my daughter,’” said Jessie Ladouceur. “I started reading the list and, honest to goodness, it was like she was describing this one horse we had in the barn, Sandretti. It was everything; flashy, the exact height, all sorts of personality traits that she wanted, the kind of body type.”

Initially, Ladouceur and her mother, Sandra Bird, Sandretti’s namesake, were not interested in selling this gelding, who, at the time, was still actively racing, but they reconsidered.

“We [Harold Ladouceur, Jessie Ladouceur and Sandra Bird] talked about it,” said Jessie. “We thought, ‘You know what? How about it? How often does this opportunity come up?’ she said. “How often does this come up that you literally get handed to you a beautiful forever home with a young girl to go riding, a second career?”

During his racing career, Sandretti, a gelding by Head Chopper, secured two wins and three seconds in 20 starts, most of which were claiming races, recording $53,224 in purse earnings over three years.

From what she was told by other people who knew the horse, Franks believed Sandretti could be a good fit for her young daughter.

“People said that he was quiet and people could ride him and it would be suitable because she was 11,” said Franks. “Usually, you don’t pick a horse off the track for an 11 year old.”

Ladouceur recalled, “She [Franks] came down, and I remember even that, she came down twice. We turned him out in the round pen, and she watched him move and all the rest of it, and she took him out and grazed him and then she said, ‘Okay, I do like him.’ And then she brought her daughter down. But the second time she came down, she came with the trailer.”

So, in 2020, Sandretti joined the Franks family.

Two years later, Franks was in need of another horse to temporarily befriend one of her own.

Naturally, Franks reached out to Ladouceur again who coincidentally had a racehorse she had turned into a pony at Woodbine, but had noticed that it wasn’t his true calling.

Sandretti’s half brother, Jurojin, son of Giant Gizmo, posted $118,331 in purse earnings over five years, in 30 starts with three wins, two seconds and three thirds.

Although he spent most of his racing career in claiming races, he also secured a win in the Black Type Kingarvie Stakes in his first season at Woodbine as a 2-year-old for owners Bird and Sarah Ladouceur, Harold and Jessie’s daughter.

“We asked if we could borrow him to stay with a horse that we had – Sandretti was going to a horse show and another horse of ours was going to a horse show and we had one left behind –  so I asked Jessie if we could borrow Jurojin as a babysitter,” said Franks.

After some time at her farm, Franks reached out to Ladouceur again.

“At some point, the girls wanted to get on him and so I asked Jessie if the kids could ride him and she said yes. And then he never went back.”

But Ladouceur had one request.

“I said, ‘Why don’t you try him?’ But, no, I don’t want to sell him because we’d bred him, he won a stake under my mom’s name and what have you,” said Ladouceur. “I said, ‘How about if you like him, you just keep them?’ But I don’t say that I sold them. And then I remember she messaged, ‘So when we go to the Olympics, you can just be the fancy owner in the stands.’”

Now, 10-year-old Sandretti and 12-year-old Jurojin compete in the Equine Choice Silver Series, a hunter/jumper competition circuit in Ontario, with sisters Molly and Gracie Franks.

“Molly’s is a champion in her A Equitation division at the Silver Series this year with Sandretti, second in the three foot Derby, came fourth in a Grand Prix with her sister,” said Franks. “Jurojin has just been a little more difficult because he was being finicky. Gracie is placing in her B Equitation – that’s based on age, B Equitation and A Equitation – and he’s come third in his thoroughbred Mini Prix. He’s placing in the ribbons.”

The two geldings are half brothers, both out of Copelan County, a mare by Gibson County.

And it turns out, Ladouceur also trained Copelan County in her first three races at Woodbine, as well as her final two races at Fort Erie Racetrack where she ended her career, with Bird as the owner.

“We knew that we were going to make her into a broodmare. She was a multiple winner,” said Ladouceur while in the stall with Lieutenant Stan, a 6-year-old gelding by Army Mule and also out of Copelan County, half-brother to Sandretti and Jurojin, who she had recently purchased back.

Copelan County garnered 11 wins, 10 seconds and five thirds in 57 career starts.

“We’re responsible for these horses, we breed them, we bring them into the world,” said Ladoucer, who, along with Bird, breed to race. “In general, all of us back here need to play a role in giving back for what these animals do for us.”

Now, the 21-year-old mare of eight offspring is living out her days on a farm in King, Ont.

And Sandretti and Jurojin, when they are not impressing in front of an audience, are living the life any horse deserves.

Ladouceur said with a laugh, “They’re knee-deep in grass, and then they come back up to where they stable and then there’s even a pond and a swimming pond. Oh, the life they live is what we could only all dream of.”

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Anna Jeffs, for Woodbine