EQUISOFT TO SPONSOR CURRAGH SERIES

Robbie Byrne with the Equisoft Team
(Photo : Equisoft)

THE CURRAGH RACECOURSE
County Kildare, Ireland

Equisoft, Summerhill’s Ireland-based horse and bloodstock management software supplier, will sponsor three races at The Curragh this year.

“We are delighted to support our local track and it will coincide with the introduction of major new features to EquisoftLive,” said Robbie Byrne, Managing Director of Equisoft. “Our team will be on-hand each race-day to demonstrate the new product.”

Equisoft will reward the leading trainer of the series, comprised of handicaps on 7 April and 21 July and a maiden on 25 May, with a free three-year subscription.

“We are delighted to add Equisoft to our list of sponsors for 2013 and look forward to working with Robbie Byrne and his team to help maximize their association with the racecourse,” commented Evan Arkwright, Commercial Manager of The Curragh Racecourse.

Editor’s note : The Equisoft Syndicate own Winning Glory, dam South Africa’s winning-most racehorse, Hear The Drums.

www.equisoft.ie

Extract from Thoroughbred Daily News

"V" IS FOR VICTORY

Emperors Palace Summer Ready To Run Sale
(Photo : Leigh Willson)

EMPERORS PALACE SUMMER READY TO RUN SALE
School Of Excellence, Summerhill Stud, Mooi River
20 February 2013

It was Winston Churchill that immortalised the two-fingered sign of triumph, yet those who’ve raised their catalogues at the past two editions of the Emperors Palace Summer Ready To Run Sale, would have good cause to do the same. Not only for the victories they have under their belts, but particularly for the value their intuitions have earned them.

Let it be said, this sale is about those that were left behind by reason of their immaturity, the odd injury on their way to the November version of the same sale, or an “unsold” sticker on their backsides at a previous vendue. Others for their flaws in the good Lord’s architecture which might’ve put buyers and customers off at conventional sales, where the benefit of seeing them run is never on the menu.

Horses are fascinating to look at, not only those with the “look of eagles”. More interesting are the ones that triumph despite their engineering or their lack of illustrious parents, like the Group One performers Pierre Jourdan, Hear The Drums, Black Wing and Imbongi, all unwanted urchins of an earlier era.

Often, the great ones do what they shouldn’t. In the age of computers, satellites and DNA, the racehorse is proof that the maths doesn’t always add up. The one thing good horses all have, is character. When they should’ve lost, they didn’t. No horse can be great without grit. The history of Summerhill at the Ready To Run, is littered with stories of racehorses that have made mockeries of their pedigrees and their prices.

The Emperors Palace Summer Ready To Run is just two-years-old, the first draft consigned to Michael Holmes Bloodstock’s Horses-in-Training event at Shongweni, the second a popular party at Summerhill last February. Those that follow these columns will know that there are already 21 individual millionaires among Summerhill’s recent Ready To Run graduates, with numerous champions among them. Nonetheless, to satisfy the sceptics, we’ve published a list below of the bargain buys of 2011 and 2012, to illustrate the point. Some of these are just beginning their careers, others have been at it for a short while, none of them have reached the halfway point. Others, like Gida, have already been sold on to international interests for many times their original cost.

These are almost irresistible odds, if you go to the Summer Ready To Run page on our website (click here), you’ll understand why. They say there’s gold again in them “veins”, besides a “feed” by Visa/House & Leisure’s No.1 National restaurant.

P.S. There are seven entries which carry a “ticket” for the R3million Emperors Palace Ready To Run Cup in November.

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

THESE STORIES ARE WORTH THE TELLING

Click above to watch Igugu winning the 2012 J&B Met (Gr1)
(Photo : Gold Circle - Footage : SABC)

EMPERORS PALACE READY TO RUN SALE
TBA Sales Complex, Gosforth Park
2nd and 4th November 2012

Success on the turf often has unpretentious beginnings. That’s part of the daydream that tempts young people to persist with the prickly beast with bad legs that cost them a few thousand Rands, and arrived with a patched-up headstall and a torn rug. They remember the folklore, and are comforted by it. We shouldn’t be sniffy about these fantasies: racing runs on them. One horse can change our lives.

You’ve often heard it said that horses are a language we can all share. Sometimes there are quiet asides, sometimes dramatic moments, but there is always a story to tell, and the Emperors Palace Ready To Run Sale is littered with the sort of anecdotes on which the racing game survives. Its good horses have come from any number of backgrounds, and some of these stories are worth retelling.

Hear The Drums was a once-in-a-lifetime horse, literally. He went where no other racehorse in South Africa had ever been. He took the “around-they-go” sameness out of the game, except in the number of times he visited the Number One box. Here was a man who gave Peter Fabricius not one, but 35 undying moments. Yet his legs failed the inspection of everyone present at the sale. He would’ve failed the scrutiny of his owner too, if he’d not bought him on the telephone, for a “scrappy” R42,000. As the winningmost racehorse in South African history, he reminded us that there are other things to a champion, besides legs.

Pierre Jourdan isn’t that big, his parents weren’t famous, and he only cost R60,000 as a youngster. Gary Alexander saw at the pre-sale gallops what very few others did, and “PJ” was the one, above all, that he wanted to get his hands on. But the horse doesn’t know any of this, and when he raced home as the darling of the Joburg racing set in the South African Classic, the crowd cheered him all the way to the winners circle. PJ was briefly more a deity than a horse. A prominent member of the Catholic clergy was so overcome, he forgot the injunction against worshipping graven images. He asked for, and received, a few coppery hairs from PJ’s tail.

As for Imbongi, he was the unwanted urchin of two sales rings, having failed to make his modest R60,000 reserve at the National Sales and again at the Emperors Palace Ready To Run. A lifetime of observation at the races and the trust Ronnie Napier invests in relationships, led him and his erstwhile partner, Michael Fleischer, to lay claim to his ownership one Saturday morning at the Summerhill gallops. Imbongi returned the faith in no uncertain terms, as the top three-year-old miler of his generation, and then again as the leading earner of his year at the Dubai Racing Festival. A Group race victory in England put the cherry on the top of a career which accumulated more than R8 million in stakes.

As Mike de Kock left the mounting yard for Imbongi’s assault on the Zabeel Mile, the Meydan racecourse’s richest event at the trip, he said “no excuses today”. He didn’t need any. Destiny came rushing up to embrace him. When jockey Christophe Soumillon said “laisse alle”, Imbongi surged away from his field, shaking off the hangers-on as much as Oscar Pistorius would farewell a bunch of neighbourhood joggers. That self-same day, de Kock claimed the laurels in the Fillies Guineas for Sheikh Mohammed and Ronnie Napier with yet another Ready To Run acquisition. The victress was Fisani, a girl whose heritage included Teenoso, winner of England’s greatest horserace. De Kock understands pedigrees.

And then there is Igugu, Horse of the Year and heroine of South Africa’s two richest races, the Vodacom Durban July and the J&B Met, as well as the nation’s first ever winner of the Triple Tiara. A daughter of the world’s hottest stallion, she represents the “toffs”. Predictably, she stripped a million from an unsuspecting wallet at the Emperors Palace Ready To Run Sale, but it wasn’t always like this for her buyer. Igugu’s original owner was a former battler and a one-time electrician, who’s come well of late.

He’s never managed a mention in Fortune magazine, but he did play scrumhalf for Diggers Fourths. As an apprentice, they paid Andre Macdonald two quid a week, and he used to punt half. He wrote his bets on his hand. That way he could keep track of his bank balance while he played. Igugu is such a celebrity these days, she’s found a home on cable TV, and even while she’s in quarantine in Mauritius, in the nascent blogosphere. When she romped home in the July, Andre Macdonald suffered a euphoria so intense, it was notifiable.

What else can we tell you about the Ready To Run? Apart from the fact that the stories go on and on, the one thing we just said which wasn’t entirely accurate, was that Igugu won the two richest races in the nation. Of course, we forgot to mention that this year’s Emperors Palace Ready To Run Cup will be contested for R2.5 million, which means the J&B Met no longer stands alone as the second richest event in the land.

A DIGNIFIED SENOR

Senor Santa on parade at Investec Stallion Day
(Photo : Dave Scott)

SENOR SANTA
“Summerhill’s very own Usain Bolt”

Jamaican speed sensation Usain Bolt is one of the greatest sprinters of our time, thrilling the world with his incredible speed and flamboyant performances on the racetrack. Here at Summerhill Stud we have our very own equine version: Senor Santa, who was recently paraded at the 2012 Investec Summerhill Stallion Day along with three of the other Summerhill champions of yesteryear; Hear The Drums, Vangelis and Amphitheatre in front of a crowd of more than 700 people from 21 different nations.

Senor Santa fittingly led out the parade, and it was a poignant tribute to the best sprinting son of the iconic Northern Guest, who was a nine-time winner of the South African Broodmare Sires title. Senor Santa was for many years the Champion Sprinter of South Africa, winning numerous Group Ones, his last coming as an 8 year old, and his subsequent retirement to the lush paddocks at Summerhill was just reward for an equine champion. These days Senor Santa is the babysitter for the weanlings, and he spends his days teaching the next generation their movements and imparting a bit of his “X” factor.

The other illustrious champions included: Hear The Drums, South Africa’s winning-most racehorse of the past fifty years, champion stayer Amphitheatre and 14 time winner Vangelis. It was a reminder of where Summerhill has come from, and the horses that helped it to its seven consecutive breeder’s championships.

www.summerhill.co.za

VICTORS LUDORUM

Click above to watch Igugu’s win in the 2012 J&B Met (Grade 1)
(Image : Gold Circle - Footage : SABC3)

Emperors Palace National Yearling Sale
TBA Sales Complex, Germiston, South Africa
27 - 29 April 2012

Today would’ve been business as usual at Summerhill, if it were not for the fact that it’s the departure date for our horses headed for the Emperors Palace National Yearling Sales. You only have to enter the Hall of Fame at our School of Management Excellence, to know what it means to us. So many great horses adorn the walls, so many warriors who fought the brave battle in the cause of our championships, and more than a few in every National Sales draft. By the time they leave, these fellows are “family”; we’ve played the role of “god” in planning the union of their parents, we’ve been the mid-wife when they arrived, and they’ve been hand- raised, step-by-meticulous-step, to this point. Now they have names, they’ve got personalities, and they’re carrying the brand.

There’ll be more than a touch of nostalgia as they take their first tentative steps onto the float, and while the old rituals where the woman and the children would serenade them off the premises are no longer (headmasters take school too seriously these days), it’s a strange world they’re entering when they first set foot on the big “dog” that tows them to Johannesburg.

You can’t help getting sentimental at times like these, and you can’t help remembering a couple that went before them. Just yesterday, I passed a paddock of weanlings, and I caught a glance of Hear The Drums in the midst of them. Just a fortnight before, there were a few among this lot verging on delinquency, looking like they needed reform school. The fellow in their midst is not an old man, but he has the grace and the wisdom of a sage, and already there is a sense of decorum in the bunch. Hear The Drums was a once-in-a-lifetime racehorse. Literally. He’s been where no other racehorse in South Africa has ever been. He took the “around-they-go-again” sameness out of the game, except in the number of times he visited the Number One box. This was a man who gave us not one, but 35 undying moments.

Pierre Jourdan isn’t that big, his parents weren’t famous, and he didn’t cost much as a youngster. But he doesn’t know any of this. In his first year at the races, he captured the hearts of fans across the nation. When he raced home in the SA Classic, the crowd clapped him all the way to the winner’s circle. “PJ” was briefly more a deity than a horse. A prominent member of the Catholic clergy was so overcome, he forgot the injunction against worshipping graven images. He asked for, and received a few coppery hairs from “PJ’s” tail.

As Mike de Kock left the mounting yard for Imbongi’s assault on the Dubai Festival’s richest mile, he said “no excuses today”. He didn’t need any. Destiny came rushing up to embrace him. When Christophe Soumillon said “laisse alle”, Imbongi surged away, shaking off the hangers-on, much as Oscar Pistorius might farewell a bunch of neighbourhood joggers.

Much as we’re tempted to recall the memory of the epic battle between Igugu and Pierre Jourdan in last year’s Vodacom Durban July, we won’t. Igugu has moved on since then, and she showed us another dimension in this year’s J&B Met. She’d been to the well so many times, her preparation had been severely interrupted, and she was feeling the effects of all sorts of bodily intrusions.

There was all kind of negative conjecture in the popular press, there were any number of warnings from those who supposedly know better, but the public would have none of it. They nailed Igugu down solidly to favouritism, as if they knew she wouldn’t let them down. The truth is, in nine consecutive runs, she never looked like doing so, yet here was something different. She faced the cream of South Africa’s athletic talent, she was going in half-cocked, and whatever her history and origins, there are limits to everyone of us and what we can do.

When they turned for home, the 40,000 in the stands let it rip. With 300 to go, there was no sign of Igugu, let alone the characteristic burst. The crowd fell silent.

In that instant, she lowered her head, like she shared their anxiety, she gathered her limbs and every ounce of will-power within her. Her body wanted to die, but her mind wouldn’t let it. Nine strides from the post, anyone of three others looked the winner. Igugu lunged at them, Bravura turned his head to look at her. His eye seemed to change. One should suspect humans who carelessly put words into the mouths of animals, but it seemed as if Bravura was saying “oh no, not you again”. When he dismounted after the race, Anton Marcus, who was riding Bravura, put it another way:

“I had her beaten, but if you’re dealing with Igugu, it’s always only half-over”. Igugu won by a growing neck.

The crowd gave Igugu a standing ovation as she passed the post, with the yellow lights of the infield timing board showing she’d equalled the long-standing record, which meant Bravura must’ve come close too. But it was Igugu’s day, she owned Kenilworth as no horse had since Empress Club. Ever so briefly, the sport had returned to its most glorious days. Wave after wave of cheering rushed over sunny Kenilworth, the horses and jockeys were exhausted. It had all been too brave.

In the public mind, Sheikh Mohammed had been transformed. Before the arrival of Igugu, he was known as one of those rich blokes with hundreds of horses, a distant and regal figure, which is unfair when you know him. He’d never tried to be anything but what he was, his family had come from the land of the Bedouin, and they’d started out with a few camels, goats and not much else. Of course there’s been oil and much more since then, but now, and mainly because of Igugu, like his partner Andre Macdonald, Sheikh Mohammed was a folk hero, a good bloke, just like the rest of us.

That’s what a Summerhill horse can do for you. See you at Block A, TBA Sales Complex, the rest of this week.

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