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By Augustine Hwata
LISA HARRIS started training race-horses in 2002 and is now in charge of 65 equine athletes that she looks after as if they are her children.
Harris loves all her horses and takes care of their daily needs.
Just like any caring mother, Harris has to make sure that her horses are taken out for walks, they are cleaned, fed, given medicine if sick and that their bedding is comfortable everyday.
“It’s a job that comes with a lot of pressure,” said Harris.
She is the leading trainer at Borrowdale Park and has many winners to be proud of.
“Horses are like children. You want them to do one thing, but quite often they have other ideas,” she says.
There are eight trainers at Borrowdale and Harris is leading the trainers’ index and hopes to end the year as the champion trainer once again.
She was champion trainer in 2004 and 2005 but missed in 2006 due to hyperinflation in the country which caused technical problems with the stakes calculations.
“Although I trained the most winners that season, I missed the title, as the award is presented on stakes won and, with Zimbabwe’s hyper inflation at the time, the stakes calculation did not work in my favour.
“I was the champion trainer in 2007, 2008, 2009 and 2010,” she said.
Harris has 32 grooms who help her care for the 65 horses in their stables.
“I train the horses for individual owners and some for various syndicates with many members.
“I love all the horses as if they are my own,” she said.
With the help of her grooms, Harris said the horses are taken to the track for exercise and fitness work every morning.
“It’s like training an athlete for a race.
“Each horse is taken to a track and then returns to the stables.
“The stables are cleaned and around 3pm the horses go out for a walk.
“Even if it’s raining we try to take them out, unless there is thunder and lighting,” she said.
Everyday, Lisa runs her stable from her offices and attends to the medical requirements and everyday has its new challenges.
“In racing we have all learned that you never stop learning.
“I have to find the right horses for the right races and suitable jockeys to ride them.
“At the moment hay is a problem because the grass is still green and with all the rain around the grass is too wet to bale.
“Finding bedding for the horses is also not an easy task because the industries are not fully operational.
“But we manage,” adds Harris.
Dewi Williams, who is second on the jockeys’ index at Borrowdale, is retained by the stable.
Each stable has wooden shavings for bedding that are changed regularly for the comfort of the horses.
Clean water and feeds are also provided while the horses are also brushed on a daily basis
“I have a very good team of grooms who try to make sure everything is okay,” she said.
According to the current statistics of the MTC’s Zimbabwe trainers’ index, Harris leads the way with Kirk Swanson in second position while Noleene Peech is in third position.
As always, her ambition is to train champions and hopefully a fourth Triple Crown winner.
The Triple Crown is competed for each year by 3-year-olds and requires a horse to win the Guineas 1600m, the Bloodstock 2000m and the Derby over 2400m consecutively in an eight-to-ten week period.
Harris has won the coveted Triple Crown three times, Glen Monrach set the ball rolling in 2006, with Earl of Surrey emulating the feat in 2007.
Rebecca’s Fleet won the prestigious treble with Mr and Mrs Von Pezold’s home-bred filly Rebecca’s Fleet.
All three of the triple crown winners are champions in their own right and Earl of Surrey went on to win several top races in South Africa.
Harris is positive about the future of the racing industry in Zimbabwe and is always on the search for new champions.
“Racing is improving all the time and the MTC have done well to keep the industry alive with regular stake increases,” she said.
Some of the stakes in the races by the MTC are matching meetings in South Africa with the UBM Get it and Build putting US$8 000 in stakes recently.
At the moment Harris has a hot property in Flashing Numbers, the four-year-old filly that leaves colts and gelding stuck. Harris began training horses under the mentorship of Murray Lindley who was one of the casualties of the 1995 Bromley air disaster.
She then joined the stable of Paul Matchet who is now one of the leading trainers in South Africa.
Lisa has also worked under Neil Brus.
“I did a combined 10 years under the three trainers here at Borrowdale before starting the stable in 2002.
“The three of them were champion trainers and I learnt a lot,” she said.
Lisa Harris’ parents said she fell in love with horses as a little child.
“From when she was a little girl, she just loved horses,” said Lisa’s mother.
Her father added that they bought Lisa a donkey “because that was what we could afford then.”
Lisa said still remembers her first horse.
“Her name was Twiggy. I just loved her more than anything in the world,” she said.
Before training horses, Harris raced in amateur and women’s races as a jockey and she still carries the same passion for the equestrians up to this day.