SOUTH AFRICA: AFRICA: Racing'sracing's Best-Kept Best-Kept Secret Secret
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SOUTHSOUTH AFRICA: AFRICA: Racing'sRacing's Best-Kept Best-Kept Secret Secret September 2010 SOUTH AFRICA: Racing's Best-Kept Secret By BILL FINLEY Gary Player’s Stud I n winning the Masters and the U.S. getic, and passionate. He has the wealth was the best filly in the world. She went Open, Gary Player captured the to do so, but that’s not why he never everywhere and she won. We are just a biggest, most prestigious golf events in stops believing the next horse bred by small country, but our horses go any- the world. Now, he wants to breed his Gary Player Stud Farm will be The where in the world and run extremely horses that win the biggest, most pres- One; rather, it’s his faith in his country, well.” tigious horse races in the world. At age its land, its people and their determina- It’s easy to dismiss Player as just a 74, that is what keeps him young, ener- tion. When it comes to horse racing, proud South African, someone whose South Africa, he says, can do anything enthusiasm causes him, perhaps, to lose anybody can do. touch with reality. He knows what peo- ple must think. South Africa? Isn’t that “This has been the best kept some tiny, irrelevant country on the bot- secret in horse racing.” tom of the world still trying to escape Gary Player from its racist past? It cannot possibly ever be a horse racing power, even on a modest scale. Can it? “Look at South Africa. Look at “It’s already happening,” Player said. what we’ve done,” he says, his voice “This has been the best-kept secret in rising as he speaks, an evangelist horse racing. We have some very preaching to the non-believers every- wealthy people here, and they are buy- where. “The proof is in the pudding. ing the best, most beautiful ranches in I am not someone who says the world. We have people coming here these things when I cannot from all over to buy our horses and back them up with the they can buy them much cheaper than bottom line. I am a bot- they can in Europe or the U.S.--for way, tom-line guy. We’ve had way less. We’ve always been good, and Colorado King (Grand we’re getting better all the time.” Rapids II), Horse Chest- Maybe he has a point. BILL FINLEY nut (SAf) (Fort Wood), It has only been within the last 10 Gary Player is a firm believer in the virtues of the horses of Ipi Tombe (Zim) (Mans- years that the South African racehorse his homeland hood {GB}). Ipi Tombe has begun to venture outside the coun- 2 Magazine IINNVVEESSTT IINN SSOOUUTTHH AAFFRRIICCAA IInnvveesstt iinn aa LLiiffeessttyyllee The Next Move is Yours! For more information about breeding and racing in South Africa or to sign up for our monthly newsletter visit our new website: www.tba.co.za Should you require more information contact us on: Email: [email protected] Tel: +27(0)11 323 5700 Fax: +27(0)11 323 5788 try’s borders, and the results have been has had to go to great lengths to guar- impressive. Led largely by trainer Mike antee that it does not spread the disease de Kock, South African-bred or raced to other countries and South African horses have won dozens of races in horses have to go through long quaran- Dubai, a number of stakes in the U.S. tine periods before being allowed to go and England, and some of the world’s elsewhere. richest races in places like Hong Kong Even South Africans had all but and Singapore. given up on ever being anything more That, South Africans argue, is only than small and insignificant when it one part of the equation, one reason came to racing and the global picture. among many that South Africa is about “Everyone was rather critical of to emerge in the horseracing world as a South Africa and played us down,” said small-scale global power. These horses, Gary Player's Stud in The Karoo Mike Sharkey, the stud manager at they say, have won around the world, Highlands Farm, which was owned by yet remain great bargains. Top horses in sickness, apartheid and geography the late Graham Beck. “People would training still sell for a few hundred played a role in keeping the sport in say, ‘Oh, it’s only South Africa.’ And we thousand dollars, and the best-looking, South Africa small, isolated, largely ig- would listen to them. So we had this very best-bred horses at the yearling nored by the rest of the world, and suf- tradition of knocking ourselves and sales will cost you no more than the fering from an inferiority complex. comparing ourselves to racing in Eng- equivalent of about $350,000. It didn’t help that South Africa was “The price is right here, and that’s a pariah in the rest of the world because “The price is right here, the main point,” said bloodstock agent of its racial policies. and that’s the main point.” Jehan Malherbe, who represents Sheikh “When we had apartheid, getting Jehan Malherbe Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Maktoum. money out of the country was a long “The costs are low. You can buy year- and lengthy process,” Malherbe said. lings here and start them here. If they “There were a lot of little complications, land and the rest of the world. Instead, are good enough, you can ship them to and sending a horse outside the coun- we should have realized what we had the States or to Europe. The costs of fail- try became very difficult. The feeling in the way of strengths and promoted ure are much less, and that’s impor- was, why bother? You might as well ourselves right from the beginning. We tant.” just race here.” lost a lot of time when it came to estab- Horses came to South Africa with the A bigger problem was African horse lishing ourselves, getting on and being white settlers, and the first-known sickness. A highly infectious and seen as a country to be reckoned with.” horse races were conducted by the deadly viral disease that has affected What happened? There was no one British around the late 1700s. The South African horses, mules, donkeys and ze- watershed moment, but many point to African Jockey Club was established in bras, it can devastate a horse popula- Apr. 13, 1997 as a key turning point for 1882, and the sport would grow into a tion. The South African horse industry South African racing. London News plaything for the country’s many wealthy whites. Along the way, as was the case with most things South African, the racing industry was a complicated and insular business. There was the occasional breakout horse. Colorado King, a foal of 1959, came out of South Africa to win the 1964 Hollywood Gold Cup. *Hawaii (Utrillo II), bought in South Africa as a yearling for the equivalent of just $12,600 by New Jersey millionaire Charles Engelhard, came to the U.S. and won the Man o’War and United Nations Handicaps. He was the cham- pion older turf horse in America in Hong Kong Jockey Club London News (SAf) won the 1997 G1 QEII Cup at the Sha Tin Racecourse, Hong Kong 1969. But such things as African horse September 2010 3 (SAf) (Bush Telegraph {SAf}) had won How and why Mike de Kock five Group 1 races in South Africa for took on the world trainer Alec Laird and owner Laurie Jaf- fee. Jaffee was daring enough to try Mike de Kock seemed to have it all. By the mid-nineties, he had established something different and sent his horse himself as one of South Africa’s top trainers. He had the best owners, the best horses and was winning most of the country’s top races. De Kock knew he had to Hong Kong’s Sha Tin for the G1 nothing to complain about, but he couldn’t put a stop to a growing sense of dis- Queen Elizabeth II Cup. The good contentment. horse from the little racing country did Racing just in South Africa wasn’t it, winning by a half-length. working for him anymore, not when he “I think it all started with London was always butting heads with racing offi- News,” Sharkey said. “I can remember cials. He no longer felt challenged under being at a sale when he won a race in the constriction of the limitations that came along with racing in a small country; Hong Kong and everyone there was one which the rest of the world barely shouting for London News. It didn’t knew existed. So de Kock decided he had matter who you were. Even the grooms to do something to reenergize himself and were shouting for him. All of South his career. His solution? Take on the world. It turned out to be more than just the Horsephotos Africa was behind him.” Trainer Mike de Kock with Asiatic Boy London News helped give South best thing ever to happen to him. It was the at the track work at Nad Al Sheba, best thing ever to happen to South African Africans the confidence they had been Dubai, UAE racing. lacking and convinced many that their “I can’t tell you what Mike de Kock has done for this industry,” breeder horses were indeed good enough to Graeme Koster said.