ALBERTON'S FINEST BOYKIE... MIKE DE KOCK

Mike de Kock - Racehorse Trainer Extraordinaire
(Photo : Emirates Racing Authority/Mike de Kock Racing)

“…likely to have five or six of the
Durban July final 20”

Mike Moon
The TimesThis country has a gift for producing outstanding individuals in many fields - thoroughbred racing included. 

The list of homegrown superstars includes Mike de Kock - racehorse trainer extraordinaire, respected wherever hooves thunder.

We know all about De Kock’s feats abroad, burnishing the name of South African thoroughbred racing and breeding wherever he goes. No trainer in the world ranges as fearlessly.

But it’s at home that he’s displaying supremacy at the moment.

At Clairwood last weekend, De Kock saddled the winners of three of the five graded races on the card. He had a fourth trophy denied by a boardroom ruling on in-running interference, and was not far off in the fifth big one.

This tour de force capped a recent golden run, including the Canon Gold Cup the week before - when he sent out Ancestral Fore to overturn decades of precedent and sling dung in the faces of “experts” who said a three-year-old couldn’t prevail in the marathon. Yuck, spit.

Big Mike’s stake earnings for the season are approaching R19-million. That’s R2-million more than the season record - and there are three weeks of the term still to run.

It culminates in the Durban July on July 31, and who would bet against our hero scooping that too. He trains 11 of the 51 horses entered for the race, and is likely to have five or six of the final field of 20 - including favourite Irish Flame.

Mike de Kock grew up in Alberton in the 1970s and ’80s, alongside the old Newmarket racecourse, and fell in love with horses and racing at an early age while gazing over fences at the wondrous beasts as they trained and raced.

A school friendship with David Ferraris, son of Ormond - a training legend - led to a job as a stable hand.

By December 1988, De Kock was a full assistant trainer with Ricky Howard-Ginsberg. When his boss died suddenly of a heart attack, the yard’s leading patrons agreed to let the promising youngster take the reins.

The rest is history. After proving to be reasonably good at his job, in 1995 De Kock got a phone call from Bridget Oppenheimer, offering him horses to train. Figuring this was a prank call, he sarcastically brushed off the well-spoken woman and hung up.

An amused Mrs O got her stud man-ager to call the brash southern suburbs boykie. A swift apology to the grand lady of the turf proved to be a launching pad to propel De Kock to the heights of international racing.

For one early Oppenheimer arrival at the De Kock yard was a colt destined to become South Africa’s best racehorse of all time : Horse Chestnut.

NAAS BOTHA WAS RIGHT

SOUTH AFRICAN BREEDERS’ CHAMPIONSHIP

“The Currie Cup is not won in (October)”. But it’s a comforting thought that with barely 3 months of the new season expired, five times Champions, Summerhill, hold a healthy advantage on the National Breeders log, in what is, without parallel, the tightest held Championship in racing, anywhere.

Breeder	Wins	Stakes (R)
SUMMERHILL STUD	55	5,692,362
D COHEN & SONS	24	1,848,037
LAMMERSKRAAL STUD	28	1,716,550
HIGHLANDS FARM	25	1,584,000
KLAWERVLEI STUD	19	1,507,275
THE ALCHEMY	19	1,467,825
SCOTT BROS	18	1,359,375
MAURITZFONTEIN STUD	24	1,331,400
MAINE CHANCE FARM	17	1,310,950
BD OPPENHEIMER	6	1,296,825

  CORRECT AS AT 10 NOVEMBER 2009

 

For more information please visit :
www.summerhill.co.za

OF BALLYMACOLL, CONDUIT, THE BREEDERS CUP AND THE ARC

Conduit and Tartan Bearer
King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes
(Photo : Bloodhorse)

“IT’S NEVER TOO LATE”

We all know that the racehorse breeding game is a long one, and there are those who would believe that the senior years are an inappropriate time to kick off a breeding operation. Yet you only have to look at some of South Africa’s most celebrated breeders, Graham Beck and Bridget Oppenheimer, and what they’re up to right now in expanding their breeding holdings well into their 80’s, to know that the bug that drives mankind is a closer relative of emotion than it is a matter of cold logic.

We often have this conversation with one of our more “senior” clients at Summerhill, and we’re quick to remind him and ourselves of the story behind the Ballymacoll Stud in Ireland. Founded by the late Lord Albert Weinstock in his 69^th year, here was one of England’s leading businessmen embarking on what some saw as a “madman’s folly”, at his County Meath farm in Ireland, yet by the time he passed away on July 23^rd 2002, His Lordship had left behind a stream of world-class racehorses.

A man of humble beginnings, the success of Lord Weinstock’s breeding operation, largely conducted under the leadership of Peter Reynolds, has resulted in fifty Group One victories from twenty eight individual Group winners stretching back to 1966, following a founding investment in 1960.

From a scant twenty three mares, yielding on average 17 foals a year, this is a staggering success story by any standards. His legacy was never more evident than in the outcome of this year’s renewal of one of England’s greatest races, the King George VI and Queen Elizabeth Stakes (Gr.1), staged at Ascot at the backend of July, in which graduates of the farm, Conduit and Tartan Bearer, finished first and second.

“We’ve kept it going, and we need days like these. Lord Weinstock was nearly here for the last one (King George) when Golan won this race; he’d only been dead a week, God bless him” opined Reynolds.

“Conduit’s won a Classic, a Breeder’s Cup and now a King George, he can run at top speed for a very long time. He’s got great stamina, and when he kicks into gear, he keeps stepping up and up and finds plenty”.

“Obviously the Breeders Cup will be in consideration again. Conduit was supplemented last year, and is an automatic qualifier this year. The Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe (Gr1) is the one race the team still has to crack, and personally, I wouldn’t mind if we had the two runners in it. It’s a race Lord Weinstock wanted to win really badly, and before the show goes off the road, we have to win the “Arc”. Conduit could go for both (the Arc and Breeders Cup); the timing is fine this year”.

Long live Ballymacoll, just as His Lordship did.

DIAMOND QUEST’S OWNERS : A CAUSE FOR “LE HOPE”

Nigel and Rose Leheup
(Photo : Leigh Willson)

Canon Gold Cup 2009

We went to the Gold Cup on Saturday, fully expecting our Sunday evening guests, Rose and Nigel Leheup to come home victorious for the second time in three years. Their home-bred colt, Diamond Quest, was the hero of the 2006 renewal of Africa’s greatest staying race, the Canon Gold Cup (Gr.1), and we were lucky at Summerhill to have spawned the Gold Cup ace of 2008, Desert Links.

As it happens, Diamond Quest never really fired after his spectacular victory on July day in the Gold Vase (Gr.2), but in the process he left the spoils open to the grand dame of the game, Bridget Oppenheimer, who bred first and second past the post.

Most commercial breeders have given up on breeding horses with an aptitude for the mile and half to two mile trip, but not “Mrs O”. There’s no commercial imperative behind Mauritzfontein Stud, and so she simply gets on with the business of breeding the best horses she can. Saturday’s exacta for her black and yellow silks was another tribute to a private breeding establishment that keeps on churning out the class.

Well done to you and your team at the farm.

One dividend which accrued from Diamond Quest’s return to the races was the maiden visit to Summerhill (and Hartford House) of Nigel and Rose Leheup, two dyed-in-the-wool “victims” of the horse game who flew out especially from the UK for Saturday’s sports. But Diamond Quest’s story is not an ordinary one. He left South Africa after his famous victory in the most cherished of this continent’s staying races, for the desert sands of Dubai, where he promptly showed his class by winning a mile event in a competitive field.

He went on to Royal Ascot, where for a moment in that great festivals premier showcase the Gold Cup (Gr.1), he had South Africans on the edges of their seats as he turned for home just one behind the immortal Yeats, only to find the last half mile of the 2.5 mile journey beyond him. He tweaked a tendon in that race, and for most horses, that would be the end of the competitive road. But like Mrs Oppenheimer on Saturday, Diamond Quest had other news for his connections, and giving up was not an option.

He went home for a well-earned rest at their Buckinghamshire property, Barrettstown Manor Farm, where they have a veterinary hospital on the property, and where his recovery was not only complete, but near miraculous.

With a new spring in his step, and being the property of people who care for their animals, when the frozen wet and wind of the following winter descended upon Diamond Quest, they could see that he was yearning for this country, and he was sent back with gracious retirement on the agenda. Yet no-one had reckoned on the skills of Mike Bass as a trainer and not long after he was back in training. If he never does anything else in his life, his win on July day in the Gold Vase tells a story of a horse with a heart, and a couple of owners with their hearts in the right place.

FOREST PATH and GYPSY'S WARNING : The Big Stakes Weekend

KwaZulu Natal-bred Gypsy’s Warning
Grade 1 SA Fillies Classic Champion 2009
(Photos : Team Valor/Summerhill)

The world’s eyes were on Dubai this weekend, but South Africans were torn in where to fix their focus. Phumelela were celebrating one of two pinnacles in their autumn season with six Graded Stakes races on the menu, while the richest meeting in the world was spewing out surprise after surprise, which had parallels only in the tipping rain which preceded the meeting by a day and a half.

The Dubai World Cup might well have been one of Mike de Kock’s more “ordinary” days at the office, but such is the man and his team that they still produced the winner of South Africa’s richest race for three year olds, when Bridget Oppenheimer’s Forest Path, got home in a stirring tussle for the R2million SA Classic (Gr.1). As if to emphasize the growing “internationalism” of our racing, America’s Team Valor ran off with the spoils in the Fillies’ equivalent, albeit with the KwaZulu Natal-bred Gypsy’s Warning.