TRIPPI Tops the Table

Trippi
(L’Ormarins Stud)

Sunday witnessed the pilgrimage of South Africa’s top exponents of the art of thoroughbred breeding to the Cape, where Gaynor Rupert’s Drakenstein Stud hosted an unveiling for their newest stallion, Trippi, Champion sire of Florida. While it might be vulgar to talk of values, Trippi is widely rumoured to be one of the costliest stallions ever imported to South Africa, and it’s hardly surprising, given the fact he’s not only spectacularly bred, highly performed as a racehorse, and now doing a serious job at stud. Beyond that though, he’s one of the most regal looking beasts imaginable, and was at his imperious best when asked to parade for a gathering that lacked few faces among the top echelons of South Africa’s bloodstock investors.

The event was a singular honour for Summerhill, firstly because Gaynor and her husband Johann have been customers of ours virtually since the gates first opened almost thirty years ago. The first of Gaynor’s broodmare faithfuls to arrive at the farm was the highly successful Final Call, who’s first two foals distinguished themselves as runners in the J&B Met and the Rothmans July. Broodmares don’t get much better than that.

Mick Goss was asked to deliver the introductory speech for Trippi, and he tells us that to speak for such noble friends and such a noble beast was not only a pleasure, but it was a task made that much easier by the fact that Trippi has never been hotter. Week after week, he churns out the Black-type runners, and on the eve of his unveiling, he had another juvenile Stakes winner (that’s four for the season) and a filly who ran second in a $400 000 contest in the United States.

As they departed Cape Town on Tuesday, the Gosses were greeted with the news that he’s had another youngster run second in Stakes company on Monday. So here’s a horse that can take South Africa’s already lofty reputation for producing top-class athletes to another notch.