CAPE ROYAL JAW-DROPPING ON DEBUT

Click above to watch Cape Royal winning on debut…
(Image : JC Photos - Footage : Tellytrack)

CAPE ROYAL (SAF)
2011 Summerhill Ready To Run Graduate

Dean Kannemeyer Racing’s tremendous Easter Monday was highlighted by a jaw-dropping win by debutante Cape Royal (SAF) (Royal Academy (USA) - Dubai’s Fairy (GB)).

Cape Royal gave the stable its second juvenile winner of the current season and stamped himself as one of the most exciting prospects in South African racing.

The Summerhill sales topper, when making R1.5 million at the 2011 Emperors Palace Ready To Run Sale, Cape Royal was all the rage for Monday’s race, a maiden juvenile plate over 1000 metres.

Sent off at the prohibitive odds of 9-10, the magnificent looking bay simply trotted up to give top jockey, Karl Neisius his 3,000^th win. Neisius has enjoyed a long and successful partnership with Dean, and the pair have enjoyed many high-profile triumphs together (most memorably with Dynasty) and it was extremely fitting that Neisius reached this landmark when riding a Kannemeyer horse.

Dean has also enjoyed a lot of success with Cape Royal’s sire, the late Royal Academy. Dean saddled the stallion’s sons, Eyeofthetiger and Express Way, to win the G1 Vodacom Durban July and Cape Guineas respectively.

Cape Royal has the pedigree to match his imposing physique. His dam, Dubai’s Fairy, is a daughter of leading British sire, Medicean, sire of recent Dubai World Cup runner up, Capponi. Dubai’s Fairy is also a half-sister to UK G2 winner Just James, and is from a strong international family.

Congratulations go out to winning owner, Lady Christine Laidlaw, who owns this exciting juvenile. Cape Royal should give her plenty of thrills and much excitement if his debut is anything to go by!

Extract from Dean Kannemeyer Racing

HOT CROSS BUNS MAIDEN JUVENILE PLATE
Kenilworth, Turf, 1000m
9 April 2012

FINAL RESULT

#	LBH	Horse	Kg	MR	Dr	Jockey	Trainer
1	0.00	CAPE ROYAL	58.0	0	11	K Neisius	Dean Kannmeyer
2	6.25	NOVEMBER RAIN	58.0	0	1	B Fayd’Herbe	Justin Snaith
3	7.25	LION’S ROAR	58.0	0	7	F Coetzee	Justin Snaith
4	8.00	WILMINGTON	58.0	0	4	R Fourie	Justin Snaith
5	10.25	OCEANS EDGE	58.0	0	3	G Wright	Justin Snaith
6	10.75	ZE KAISER	58.0	0	10	A Domeyer	Mike Bass
7	12.75	TIGER’S CHARM	58.0	0	9	F Anthony	Piet Steyn
8	13.25	SUIT OF LIGHTS	58.0	0	2	G van Niekerk	Mike Bass
9	14.50	WATERWAYS	58.0	0	6	C Du Plooy	Gary Collins
10	17.00	DISTINCTLY DRY	58.0	0	8	D Ashby	Glen Puller
11	17.50	TO BE HAPPY	58.0	0	5	A Nienaber	SHane Humby
		Late Scratching
12	0.00	GOOI MIELIES	58.0	0	11	* J Smitsdorff (4.0)	Carl J Burger

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

MELBOURNE PREMIER YEARLING SALE : THE SA CONNECTION

Melbourne Premier Yearling Sale - Oaklands Parade Ring
(Photo : Inglis)

MELBOURNE PREMIER YEARLING SALE
27 February - 1 March 2012

One of the early features of the 2012 Melbourne Premier Sale was the large contingent of South African owners, trainers and agents in attendance. Simon Vivian has had some sleepless nights in organising travel arrangements but is delighted with the results already.

“Mike de Kock and his agent Jehan Malherbe have flown in from Dubai with their vet Dr John McVeigh. Dean Kannemeyer and Geoff Woodruff are also here and all have been active at varying levels today so it is satisfying,” Vivian said. “Markus Jooste bought three lots under his Mayfair Speculators banner, including colts by Encosta de Lago and Danehill Dancer, so it has been a good start on day one.”

The logistics of getting everyone to Melbourne has been daunting. “The government bodies overseas have been very helpful, the Austrade office in Dubai was fantastic and we’re obviously delighted to have got them here. They are enjoying their accommodation at Crown and enjoying Melbourne and all it has to offer.”

Vivian feels that there will be more purchases to come from the South African visitors. “There’s a lot of horses over the next two days that suit them, they have come to buy, they have indicated to me that they are very happy with the quality of horse on site, they have specific things they look for, they very much like to buy proven sires and they are all shopping at different levels so there is something for everyone. Mick Goss who is a great supporter of the sale has not bought yet but I’m sure he will at some point over the rest of the week.”

“Given the fact that the Australian dollar is so strong right now, considering that the South Africans are here and spending is a very serious thing, not just for us but for the Australian industry,” Vivian said. “The South African buyers have not made a significant impact at the major sales so far this year so the fact that they are here in Melbourne and spending can only be a good things for us all.”

The impact of multiple Group One winner Igugu (Galileo) in South Africa, sold by Mick Goss’ Summerhill Stud on the Emperors Palace Ready To Run Sale, has had a positive impact in promoting the Melbourne Sale within South Africa and, along with Black Caviar (Bel Esprit), the results out of the Melbourne Sale have definitely worked in the auction house’s favour. “We at Inglis have been building to this for four or five years. Mike de Kock has a client base now that allows him to buy at any sale around the world and the impact that Igugu and Black Caviar have had certainly cannot be underestimated.” Vivian was also at pains to point out the help of Victorian-based agent Paul Guy in helping establish the South African connection. “Paul works tremendously hard. He and I share the workload, we make two dedicated trips a year there to get them here and it is a real team effort to make this happen.”

Extract from ANZ Bloodstock News

THE MOST FORMIDABLE BENCH IN RACING

READY TO RUN GALLOPS AT SUMMERHILL STUD
Friday 14th October 2011

The distinguished “bench” : Craig Peters, Graeme Hawkins, Jehan Malherbe, Dean Kannemeyer, Mike de Kock, Joey Ramsden, Sean Tarry and Michael Roberts, suitably attired in their judges’ graduation caps. Kip Elser is the invited international judge this year.

There’s a reason why these men travel so far to the Ready To Run. They know its history, and its capacity to surprise. Some of them have been associated with its stellar runners, others have been on the receiving end of their “medicine”. The one thing they all share though, is they’re masters of their own game.

When it comes to a “good thing”, they know it as soon as they see it. That’s why they’re at the top of their professions. Excellent quality, great dependability, outstanding value. The Summerhill racehorse.

And then there’s their own capacity to surprise. Where in the world will you find a gathering of “giants” in any form of endeavour, willing to share the fruits of their observations? Yet that’s what the “Judges” have been doing for years, for the fans of our sport. It’s a measure of the men, and the size of the Ready To Run.

A R2million race, the trophies in racing, and legacy of legends.

It’s your turn now to make your own history. Just dial the Champions.

The Emperors Palace Ready To Run Sale
Sunday 6th November

*Six cheque payment scheme for qualifying buyers.

Enquiries :
Tarryn Liebenberg +27 (0) 83 787 1982
or email tarryn@summerhill.co.za
www.summerhill.co.za

IF THE GALLOPS ARE ANYTHING TO GO BY...

Emperors Palace Ready To Run Gallops at Summerhill Stud
(Photo : Gareth du Plessis)

EMPERORS PALACE READY TO RUN GALLOPS
Summerhill Stud, South Africa
14 October 2011

We’re just a week from one of the unique events in the South African sales calendar: the Emperors Palace Ready To Run Gallops at Summerhill. Friday 14^th marks the day, 11am is the time, and if you can believe our fellows, for all the heroics of their predecessors, this is the best crop of youngsters we’ve had the privilege to consign. The Ready To Run has a distinguished history, going back twenty-three years to when it became only the second sale of its kind in the world. In those days, it served as the backstop for what was left on people’s farms: today, from a Summerhill perspective at least, it’s probably fair to say it’s the showcase of what we stand for.

Only yesterday, we counted up the millionaires to have emerged from the sale in recent times, and there were fourteen of them, six of them multi-millionaires. If their owners weren’t already there, they became millionaires through their association with their Ready To Run graduates, and some of them have gone on to reap multiple fortunes through the sale or the campaigning of these horses overseas.

The Summerhill version of the Ready To Run is altogether unique, as it is connected to another initiative of the farm in the R2 million Ready To Run Cup, the richest race of its kind in the world, and the joint third richest race on the South African racing calendar after the Vodacom Durban July and the J&B Met. That’s some statement, and for good measure, it’s celebrated with the finest trophy in racing, a beautifully embossed gift from King George V’s sister-in-law Princess Alice.

Perhaps its most extraordinary feature though, is the introduction four years ago of a panel of judges comprising some of the nation’s finest horsemen, whose function it is to select the horses they believe most likely to win the following year’s Cup, or alternately go on to become the biggest names in the game. For what it’s worth, their collective experience covers almost three hundred years; this oddity compounded by the fact that they also comprise some of the sale’s biggest investors, notwithstanding that it’s their function to betray their “picks” of the sale to an audience which last year exceeded more than 250! Visit counts to the Summerhill website after the gallops reveal that the judging panel’s selections and their commentaries on the horses are the most viewed of all items on display, so clearly there is appreciation among the sale’s fans for the views of these men. Let’s not forget, this is the sale that produced the first two past the post in this year’s Durban July, Igugu and Pierre Jourdan, but just to prove that the judges are not infallible, none of them put their fingers on Pierre Jourdan at the 2009 version.

Here are some pen pics of the judges for your interest :

MIKE DE KOCK
	He’s the man everyone wants to know. He’s become the idol of a social set to which he never belonged, and to which, you suspect, he never wanted to belong. De Kock knows the rich and famous, he has himself become rich and famous. Yet fame has not changed him, not outwardly anyway. He doesn’t conform. He can’t; he isn’t like anyone else.

JOEY RAMSDEN
	Has a pedigree as deep as the game itself. On his way to the mountaintop. Takes a few scalps en route. His CV includes “Picked Igugu”. His obituary will say the same.

DEAN KANNEMEYER
	Horses from his toes to the top of his head. Nothing left to prove. One of the best. Dean’s charges do the talking for him. They speak well.

MICHAEL ROBERTS
	Taught the British how to ride. A legend long before his time, from Japan to the United States.

GRAEME HAWKINS
	Simply put, ‘Mr Racing’. Commentator, auctioneer and administrator, he sees them coming, while others search for clues.

JEHAN MALHERBE
	Serves some of the biggest names in racing. When he wants to, he can say absolutely nothing with a stare that would guarantee him high political office if ever tired of his commentary rituals at Kenilworth.

SEAN TARRY
	National Colour, Mythical Flight, Successful Bidder to name a few. A meteoric rise through the ranks, this rocket’s got momentum, and it ain’t stoppin’ here. The powder’s dry, and the bullets are blasting.

CRAIG PETERS
	Master of his profession, and a walking encylopedia on the game. His binoculars bring a special dimension to the gallops.

KIP ELSER

Special international guest Kip Elser is one of the leading exponents of the art of prepping Ready To Run horses in the USA. Kip’s triumphs include 2011 Kentucky Oaks (Gr1) heroine, Plum Pretty, and Garden City (Gr1) ace Winter Memories, as well as champions Smoke Glacken and Alphabet Soup, Sharp Cat, Royal Anthem, Memories of Silver, and a further two Kentucky Oaks winners in Keeper Hill and Gal In A Ruckus. His Kirkwood Stables has several times sold the top priced horse at the American Breeze-Ups.

The Emperors Palace Ready To Run Sale
Sunday 6th November

*Six cheque payment scheme for qualifying buyers.

Enquiries :
Tarryn Liebenberg +27 (0) 83 787 1982
or email tarryn@summerhill.co.za
www.summerhill.co.za

KEVIN DOYLE : RETURN OF THE MAGI

Take a trip down memory lane and watch Saintly winning the 1996 Melbourne Cup
(Photo : Sport Horse - Footage : TVN)

“They spat on their hands and
shook on a deal…”

Mick Goss
Summerhill CEOI’ve only ever been to one Melbourne Cup in my life, but it was a helluva Cup. It was the year Bart Cummings saddled his home-bred Saintly, and it was his seventh (of twelve) Melbourne Cups. You have to go to a Melbourne Cup to understand what it’s all about, what it means to Australia as a nation, and what happens in what they call the “Birdcage”, and in the parking lots. You’ve never seen such festivity in your life, and you’ve never seen so many bodies strewn about, funeral parlour-like, in a car park either.

In a way, it was all just too much for us, and the devil quickly drew us into the spirit of things and especially the imbibing. By the end of it all, we were probably ready for bed, but our old pal, Angus Gold, racing manager to Sheikh Hamdan of Dubai, told us we’d all been invited; Rodney Thorpe, Roger Zeeman and I, to the 30^th birthday party of Adam Sangster. Summerhill’s association with the Sangsters goes back a long way, to our most famous resident, Northern Guest, and his erstwhile paddock mate, Home Guard. So we went, but we stopped off en route at an underground restaurant and made the acquaintance, for the first time, of a construction man from Edinburgh. His name was Kevin Doyle, a larger-than-live character with a pocket just as big, and just as generous.

Whatever the world may say about the Scots and their frugality, and how limited they are in handing the stuff out, Kevin Doyle inherited the lot in the way of generosity. There were at least a dozen dead bottles of Barossa Shiraz on the table when we got up to go to Adam’s birthday party. As they headed for the door, messrs. Thorpe and Zeeman were seen to conclude a pact with Mr Doyle. They spat on their hands and shook on a deal, promising that one day, just one day, they’d own a horse together.

Like most of these things, nothing materialized for a few years. Then, as if it was pre-ordained, Thorpe and Zeeman were forced into action, again after copious quantities of a favourite Shiraz. Well into the night at the National Sales, they bought a filly for what was in those days, an enormous sum, about R300,000. Most of us, when spending that sort of dough would take the time to inspect the horse, but all Roger Zeeman knew of her was the pedigree his well glazed eyes were gazing upon. There’s a thing called “buyer’s remorse” in the horse game, and it descended quite suddenly and quite strongly. They immediately thought of Summerhill, so kind of them. The invitation was to participate in what was arguably the most expensive folly of their lives.

It was approaching 23h00 when we visited the Maine Chance yard for an inspection. I must confess, she did have a wonderful pedigree, and the name Danehill appeared somewhere in its nether regions. Her sire Golden Thatch was a proven speed stallion, but he could get some very ordinary specimens as well. When the filly came out of her box in the dark, she looked like one of those, the ordinary ones. Never one to let friends down, we did volunteer to take 10% of her, but I said we’d have another look in the daylight and decide whether this could be amplified.

The next day we liked her even less, but having committed to the deal, we were stuck with 10%. Suddenly and rather ingeniously, Roger recalled the drunken evening in Melbourne. “What about our Scottish friend, the one we met at the Melbourne Cup?”. Letting him in on a filly of such breeding, after all, would broaden South Africa’s footprint in terms of international owners.

And so it was left to me to make the call. Characteristically, Kevin Doyle’s response was exactly as we’ve come to know the man. “Send me the bill for whatever is left”, and having included the man who’d introduced us for 5%, Kevin Doyle took up the remaining 50%. A year later, under the name of Lady Broadhurst, the filly debuted for the Dean Kannemeyer yard. Some debut. An effortless victory by 3,5 lengths.

It was December 1998, just as the first of the Summerhill partnerships formed ten years before, matured and their stock came up for sale. Lady Broadhurst was among the entries, and for the first time in racing history, a filly was sold at auction for R1 million. The protagonists with their irons in the ringside fire were John Messara of Arrowfield Stud in Australia and a partnership of Lady Chrissy O’ Reilly and the de Moussac family of Haras du Mezeray. Their agent was a young man who had been working for us for a couple of seasons, Laurent Benoit, who’d that day launched his now famous bloodstock business, Broadhurst Agency, on the back of that purchase. Kevin Doyle’s share of the proceeds was a cool half a million Rand, and as we’ve come to know him, he simply said “reinvest it in some of the mares in the sale”. Miraculously, of the four we bought, they included the dams of future champions; Icy Air, Amphitheatre and last year’s Dubai Carnival victor ludorum, Imbongi.

This is the kind of man we all like to know, and this weekend, for the first time, he visits us with the even better half of him, his wife June. Long overdue. Like the Three Wise Men.