"LEGEND". NO OTHER WAY OF DESCRIBING GRAHAM BECK

Mick and Cheryl Goss with Graham Beck and Laurie Jaffee in Dubai
(Photo : Summerhill Archives)

GRAHAM BECK
1929 - 2010

Mick Goss
Summerhill StudThe word “legend” is a much abused word in racing, or anywhere else for that matter. But in Graham Beck, here was the real life embodiment of the coinage.

What else can one say about a man whose passing has made all of the national news headlines, that hasn’t already been said. Descriptions that race to mind are “bigger than life”; overt generosity; an infectious, guttural sense of humour; a streetwiseness of uncanny proportions, and an enormous capacity for making others feel warm, wanted and, critically, worthy.

South African racing in general and the Jewry of Johannesburg in particular were once blessed with the “Three Musketeers”, Graham Beck, Cyril Hurwitz and Laurie Jaffee, now all passed on, and presumably, in the Elysian Fields. We say “presumably”, because they could at times be wickedly naughty, all three of them, and we’re not quite sure what the test is for entry to this apparent paradise. What we do know though, is that whatever the verdict on the first to go, (Cyril), it would’ve been the same for the other two, so the one assurance we do have is that they’re now together, and they’re probably looking down on us wondering whether we’ll see their like again. For my money, that’s c’est non possible. And you’d have to ask yourself, whether the makers of J&B have a factory big enough up there.

How do we place this man into perspective? In racing terms, he was a colossus, one of the greatest and most benevolent owners the game has ever known. Three things stand out for me in particular, not that they were necessarily, by any stretch, momentous in his life. The first involved the purchase of my first filly off the track from Graham, in a private transaction in his office. Given his stature and my own relative insignificance at 27, he couldn’t have been more accommodating, in what could’ve been frighteningly intimidating.

The second involved his purchase of Gainesway Farm. I happened to be representing the TBA on a trip to Kentucky, when I attended the Breeders Cup meeting. Just the day before, I made the acquaintance of a fellow solicitor, a Mr. Bishop who was counsel to one of the two greatest stallion stations in the world, Claiborne Farm; the grapevine, he said, was that a South African had purchased Gainesway, the other of the two great stallion stations. This was astounding news given that it was 1989, and that no South African had ever made such a splash in the bloodstock world.

The following day, Graham asked me to join him at his table at the Breeders Cup itself, there beside us was the founder, John Gaines himself, as cultured and intelligent a man as I’ve had the pleasure to know in racing. In that instant, Graham Beck had acquired the gigantic likes of Lyphard, Blushing Groom, Riverman, Vaguely Noble, Irish River etc, some of the noblest names of all thoroughbred breeding, and South Africa had “arrived”.

Henceforth, and for some time, Graham Beck would be Kentucky’s most favoured dinner guest, and his legacy at Gainesway today is one of the most beautiful farms on the planet. As a farmer myself, I should use this moment to applaud his stewardship of the land. That is his, and his lovely lady, Rhona’s signature, wherever they have invested.

The third instant reflected his own international standing in the thoroughbred world. I was in Dubai for the inaugural World Cup, and I received a distressed message from Graham’s office in Johannesburg, enquiring whether I could intervene in getting his private aircraft which was already in flight into Dubai. His sin was that he was Jewish himself, and that his aircraft had been to Israel on its journey to Dubai. Given the difficulties Israel and its Middle Eastern neighbours have experienced over the decades, aircraft emanating from there were not always welcome.

There was no one bigger in the thoroughbred world at that time than Sheikh Mohammed, and there was no-one more capable of influencing events in the Middle East than him. Within an hour, the big plane was not only welcome, but Sheikh Mohammed attended personally at the airport to fetch Graham.

In every material respect, Graham Beck was an enormous man, big in personality, big in generosity, massive in his contributions to our game, and in the lives he touched. At Summerhill, his Highlands Farm was our biggest competitor, and no-one competed “better” than he did.

Rest in peace, old pal. Your life has been hectic, and you deserve it.

LAURIE JAFFEE : The Passing of a Legend... a Summerhill Tribute

Laurie JaffeeWe’ve have just heard the sad news about Laurie. Only last night we were talking about the generation who had forged the character of racing as we used to know it, Laurie Jaffee, Eric Gallo, Graham Beck, Ronnie Napier and Cyril Hurwitz. Of course there have been others, but by any standards anywhere, these were the stalwarts and they stayed the whole course.

To Cheryl and I and the rest of the Summerhill team, the Jaffees were our role models. They bred and owned horses for the fun of the sport and with the style and grace of few others. Importantly, and unlike most, they took winning and losing the same way. In the end though, they had more fun because they knew that it wasn’t a matter of life and death, and that while racing was to be competed for earnestly, it was there to be enjoyed. Besides they never forgot that there were others who also wanted to play the game.

They both developed happy and enduring relationships and we shall forever count ourselves lucky at Summerhill, not only to have known the two of them, but to have enjoyed the great benefits of their friendship, their patronage and their loyalty, for so long.

By any definition Laurie was a “mensch”, and every one of us can take a lesson from his life. I was fortunate to have travelled with him and to have enjoyed his vibrancy, his generosity and his energy, and I can only hope that when my time comes, I will be able to say I lived half of Laurie’s life.

Cheryl and the entire Summerhill team join me in wishing Jean, Richard and Lloyd and their respective families, long life and every strength at this time.

Mick Goss 

If it needs to be done, do something about it, and don't leave for tomorrow what can be done today.

It’s all so easy to sit back and go with the flow, particularly in a well regulated, highly organized industry like horse racing. When Summerhill first embarked on its breeding enterprise under its current regime way back in 1979, racing presided over a betting monopoly which made it, in the economy of those days, one of the top five industries in South Africa in terms of its turnovers. There were no casinos, there was no sports betting, and every tote and bookmaker had to be licensed under the auspices of those that controlled racing. What a world of comfort and indulgence.

Besides racing’s monopoly, the government of the day was strongly inclined towards its farmer-based electorate, and the tax dispensations afforded to farmers, were the best in the world. This made the agricultural and racing sectors a comfort zone of note, yet both industries operated in fragile territory, vulnerable to the whims of a legislature that could amend matters at a stroke of a pen or the change of a government.

At Summerhill, we always felt we needed to position ourselves away from the calamities that might follow any amendments, or at least be in a position to influence their course, providing us with the proverbial parachute or soft landing. As a result, as long ago as 1985, we initiated an approach to the Natal Racecourse Betting and Wagering Board, requesting it to consider the establishment of a Breeders Premium scheme for the benefit of the local industry. While the motivation, which was drawn from the Summerhill boardroom table, took time to formulate following several visits to other countries across the world, and a good deal more time persuading the trustees responsible for the welfare of racing to understand our thinking, the scheme materialized 20 years ago in 1988. Today, it remains the only premium scheme in existence in the country, though we did assist the Western Cape at one time to get one of their own, which has since fallen into disuse.

Immediately after the inaugeration of the Breeders’ Premium scheme, serious stallions of the ilk of Northern Guest, Foveros, Rakeen and Secret Prospector found their way into the province, and this became the land of milk and honey, when it came to new investors entering the industry. Yet that alone was not enough to fend off the impact of the withdrawal of the tax concessions which had been primarily responsible for the attraction of business people into the breeding industry, and the deep recession the South African economy found itself in following the democratization of the country.

Farm after farm, big name after big name, came up for dispersal, as the breeding economy was decimated by the death in discretionary incomes. Remember the establishments developed by Cyril Hurwitz, Ross & Gardiner, Henry Kahn, Roy Meaker, Hylton Hale, the Scott Bros, George Rowles, Alan King, the Ellises, Bobby Jameson, “Bushy” Hamilton-Brown, all neighbours, all under the hammer. Those were tough times, with tough consequences.

Nonetheless, we’ve known the lasting value of the premium scheme, and we’re the first at Summerhill to acknowledge its contribution in attracting people like the Maktoums into the province, and its role in the building blocks which led to our first Breeders Championship in 2005.

Posted by Mick Goss