SANSUI AND THE SIZZLING SUMMER CUP

THE SANSUI SUMMER CUP (Grade 1)
Turffontein, Turf, 2000m
26 November 2011

Along with the Emperors Palace Ready To Run Cup, the Sansui Summer Cup is the joint third richest race on the South African calendar. It is topped only by the Vodacom Durban July and the J&B Met, and while these two might hold the upper hand in terms of value, neither is any richer when it comes to tradition. Contested in the heart of Africa’s biggest commercial city, Johannesburg, the Summer Cup was born out of history’s most famous gold rush, and it has spawned some of the greatest racers our sport has known. Its reputation as a legend-maker is matched only by it’s storied connection with some of the most stirring political events of our times, the most bizarre of which was the postponement of the infamous Jameson Raid by a week, to avoid that calamity clashing with the staging of the 1895 edition of the race. You see, the raid was inspired by the most powerful Randlords of their time, Cecil John Rhodes and Sir Alfred Beit (with Sir Abe Bailey and Henry Nourse in the wings), and most of them either had horses competing, or were stewards of the Johannesburg Turf Club. Here was an attempted coup d’etat aimed the military overthrow of Paul Kruger’s Transvaal Republic, and it’s argued by more than one student of the politics of the era, that the week’s delay occasioned the leaking of news of the intended raid, hence the fiasco it turned out to be.

Time was that when the Summer Cup (or Handicap, as it was in it’s earliest manifestation) overtook all sporting events in prestige and prize money, when it was contested under the guise of The Holiday Inns, worth R100,000. While there’ve been any number of fabled winners of the “Summer” since its first running in 1887, it’s arguable that among its most fabled sons included were the great Java, Home Guard and Elevation, who won it three times in a row under top weight, with the tragically talented Martin Schoeman in the irons. Elevation was to become one of the most successful South African-bred stallions of his era, eventually aspiring to the status of champion of the nation.

From a Summerhill perspective, we haven’t held a better hand in the event since Pick Six led home a farm exacta in 2008 from the enigmatic millionaire, Emperor Napoleon, under the unlikely name “Gomma Gomma”, the race once more boasted the biggest purse of R3million. The class of the race in 2011 is undoubtedly rags-to-riches hero, Pierre Jourdan, who’s been set the unimaginable task of shouldering 60kgs (yes, 132 pounds or 9st 6lbs as they used to say in the old days), from draw 19, which is akin to starting in Loveday Street with the rest of the field lining up in Eloff Street. He’s in good shape though, and he’s unbeaten this term, following an inspiring effort in the Vodacom Durban July, where only Horse Of The Year, Igugu, was good enough to shade him.

Besides, his trainer seems to have something up his sleeve. As he did when PJ was plundering the Classics as a three-year-old, he looks to have a joyous premonition. As he did then, Gary Alexander wears a beatific smile, as though he knows something others don’t.

We have two other strings to our bow, though we’d have to admit to a suspicion that there must be something of a conspiracy up there among the gods who organised the draw. The runaway victor in last week’s Victory Moon Stakes, Smanjemanje, has not only ended up at draw 13, but he’s been penalised six pounds for his dominant effort in that outing. The question is, was the difference the cornel collar made to his breathing apparatus, such that it raised his game five or six lengths? If so, he’s a runner. He couldn’t be in better shape for this, the biggest assignment of his life, but coping with the additional impost and a draw beyond 10 might be decisive.

Finally, we come to Black Wing, who must be in with a proper shout if the form of the Daily News 2000 (Gr1) has anything to do with the outcome, particularly as he now goes to post in blinkers. The likely favourite for Saturday’s big event, The Apache, was the hero of that championship three-year-old contest, and here Black Wing is 3,5 kgs better off with that one for a beating of less than a length.

At the weights, that’s enough to turn the tables, but the question is, can he overcome his 14 draw, as well as his ride from sea level to 6000 feet, and still get the toughest 2000m in racing? The 800m Turffontein straight is murderous, and its victims include some of the best stayers of their generations. Yet there is something about distance, and what it demands of man and his horses, which separates it from the shorter stuff. It gives a fresh dimension to Geoffrey Blaney’s theory about the tyranny of distance. There is a charm involved. It allows you to hang on to your myths.

Whichever way you look at it, the farm holds a decent hand, and our runners are ready to play it.

At the human level, we still have to overcome the hurdle on Friday of a pre-race party at Mike and Diane de Kock’s Dainfern Estate, where the trimmings and the trappings of several seasons of high plunder in the desert sands of Dubai, are gloriously evident.

For more information, please visit :

www.sansuisummercup.co.za

SELBORNE SUPREMACY SUPREME FOR SEAN TARRY

Click above to watch Selborne Supremacy winning his maiden
(Image and Footage : Tellytrack)

SELBORNE SUPREMACY
“FULL BROTHER TO DESERT LINKS”

SELBORNE SUPREMACY (Kahal (GB) - Selborne Park by Home Guard (USA))
3 Year Old Bay Colt
Owner : Chris van Niekerk
Trainer : Sean Tarry
Jockey : Anton Marcus
Breeder : Summerhill Stud
Win Time : 99.52
Career Record : 1 Win, 2 Starts

CONSOL MAIDEN PLATE
Turffontein Turf 1600m
16 October 2010

Anton Marcus steered three-year-old Summerhill-bred colt Selborne Supremacy to a 4.25-length Maiden success in a 1600m race at Turffontein’s inside track on Saturday. They did it in easy style, despite Marcus reporting that Selborne Supremacy over-raced in the early stages.

“He came from a strong formline and I was pleased to pick up the ride,” added Marcus.

Selborne Supremacy, a R450,000 purchase at the National Yearling Sale, is a full-brother to former Grade 1 Gold Cup and Grade 2 Cup Trial winner Desert Links, who was exported to Singapore.

Trainer Sean Tarry commented : “This is a decent horse and he moves well. I have to thank Chris van Niekerk for buying him for me. We didn’t plan for Anton to get the ride, he became available and thanks to him as well for taking the ride on short notice.”

Extract from Sean Tarry Racing Stables

Race Result

#	LBH	Horse	Kg	MR	Dr	Jockey	Trainer
1	0.00	SELBORNE SUPREMACY	58.0	0	6	A Marcus	Sean Tarry
2	4.25	LANCEWOOD	58.0	0	5	P Strydom	Brett Webber
3	4.75	BIG CITY ANGEL	58.0	0	12	A Delpech	Gavin van Zyl
4	9.50	ROYAL CAPE (AUS)	58.0	0	8	S Mtshali	Tyrone Zackey
5	10.25	MIDNIGHT CHARGER	60.0	0	10	G Figueroa	Brian Wiid
6	11.50	NTANDANE	58.0	0	4	G Lerena	Roy Magner
7	12.00	PITCHBLACK	58.0	76	9	*JP v’d Merwe	Alec Laird
8	12.75	KENTANO	58.0	0	11	S Brown	Bradley Maroun
9	15.25	FULL CANVAS	58.0	0	1	G Wrogemann	Robbie Sage
10	16.50	FULL COLOUR	58.0	0	13	B Lerena	Tyrone Zackey
11	23.75	SILVER SPECIALIST	58.0	0	2	N Welch	Roy Magner
12	24.50	PIRATE KING	58.0	0	3	F Naude	Paul Peter
13	25.50	GLORIOUS LEADER	58.0	0	7	L Nhlapo	David Nieuwenhuizen
		Late Scratching
14	0.00	MOONGAZER	58.0	73	2	M V’Rensburg	Stuart Pettigrew

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

THE SOUL OF THE FARM

The Soul of the Farm
(Photo : Summerhill Stud) 

Here you sense the history of Great Ones…

Continuing the extracts from the Summerhill Sires Brochure for 2010/2011. Are you on the mailing list? If not then please let us have your details and we’ll gladly ensure you get a personal copy when it’s published on the 1st August.

“Step into the stud office, with its marble floors, trophy cabinets and Designers’ Guild furnishings and you think, this is the soul of it all. But that distinction belongs to the Stallion Barn.

Here you sense the history of the Great Ones, whose names adorn the honours boards. Here you make the acquaintances of Greig Muir, in his 25th year of service, and the Zumas, whose grandfather “did” Mowgli in the 50’s; their father groomed Sentinel. This place reeks of tradition and horsemanship, and decades of success. The only concession to modern times, is the TV tuned to Tellytrack.

In as old a ritual as the farm itself, all the people that make Summerhill tick, assemble at 6.45am at the stud office. Not long ago, when the farm’s most famous resident, Northern Guest, made his daily way to his paddock, the management gathered on the verandah to pay their respects. He’d paid for most of what you saw around you.

Towards the end, the old horse with his arthritic gait, would announce his presence with a reassuring neigh. He was not about to play the invalid. Like every great stallion, he didn’t look at you, but over and beyond, across the fields of dreams.

“Legend” is a devalued word in sport, yet here, standing before you, was the genuine article. You realise in an instant that this is a place where the Thoroughbred is not only a way of life; it is a reason for living, and a deep pool of sentiment.

Alongside the Stallion Barn is the cemetery, the Heroes’ Acre. You don’t get in here unless you’ve been worshipped by the cult. St Pauls, Mowgli, Magic Mirror, Cape Heath, Panjandrum, Sentinel, Sybil’s Nephew and Masham from a bygone era, and the modern giants Liloy, Home Guard, Northern Guest, Rambo Dancer. There’s not much room left, and you get the feeling that immortality is the only yardstick for induction. Looking at the present line-up though, you’d have to believe there are more than a few live candidates.”

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

HISTORY OF THE SUMMER CUP

In pursuit of fortunes… Johannesburg, South Africa
(Photos : DVMinerals/ABDN/VinatgePC)

SANSUI SUMMER CUP

Saturday 28 November 2009 will witness the staging of Johannesburg’s most historical race, the Grade 1 R2,000,000 Sansui Summer Cup to be run over 2000m at Turffontein Racecourse.

The Summer Cup is almost as old as Johannesburg itself with the inaugural event taking place in 1887, a year after the dusty mining camp that would become Johannesburg sprang to life on a farm called Turffontein, following the discovery of gold on the Witwatersrand. It’s fitting then that the race is run at a venue that overlooks the city’s landmark mine dumps.

Nicci Garner writes on Tab Online that these dumps form an integral part of the Summer Cup history. Well into the 1880’s, news about the “discovery of gold” on the Witwatersrand resulted in an influx of fortune seekers who came from all walks of life in coaches and ox wagons, as well as on foot and horseback.

Johannesburg was then a bleak region dotted with the occasional marsh, but what the settlers had in common was that they were prepared to gamble their lives on the chance of making a quick fortune.

The first horserace in Joburg took place in December 1886 and the inaugural Summer Cup was run the following year as the Johannesburg Handicap. The race was won by outsider Haco, a five-year-old trained by Mr du Plessis and ridden by J Bundy, and no one could have imagined that from its humble beginnings, the Summer Cup would become one of South Africa’s most famous racing events.

In its heyday the Summer Cup was the highlight of the Johannesburg feature-race season and one of the city’s social events of the year, but following Cape challenger King’s Guard’s victory in 1971, the name of the race was changed to accommodate a new sponsor. As the years rolled by further changes were made to the event’s name, conditions and date which diminished the race’s glitter until it eventually became the Champion Stakes, run annually in April.

In 1999 horseracing and tote betting company Phumelela reintroduced the Summer Cup to the racing calendar in its traditional format.

Many famous horses have won through the years and they include Pamphlet (1917), Lenin (1940), Cuff Link (1963), Caradoc (1966) and Home Guard (1970).

One horse who really grabbed attention was the Jack Butler-trained four-year-old, Java, who pulled off a remarkable Summer Cup hat-trick from 1956 to 1958.

Elevation was to repeat those exploits almost 20 years later. Trained by the inimitable George Azzie, the chestnut landed his first victory in 1972 when the race was run as the Holiday Inns for the first time. He went on to score again in 1973 before completing a fantastic hat-trick under a big weight in 1974.

SUMMER CUP HONOURS ROLL 1999 - 2008

YEAR	HORSE	OWNERS	TRAINER	JOCKEY
1999	EL PICHA	Messrs Brian B Roux, TM Millard, A Swersky	Geoff Woodruff	Robbie Hill
2000	DELTA FORM	Mr & Mrs MA Airey, Messrs WI Geary, OV Leibrandt, RJ Simpson, BB Sinclair	Mike de Kock	Guillermo Figueroa
2001	INGLESIDE	Mr B Kantor	Mike de Kock	Kevin Shea
2002	EVENTUAIL	Mr & Mrs L Jaffee	Geoff Woodruff	Piere Strydom
2003	WOLF WHISTLE	Mrs PM Sargent, MP Egan, HR Enderle, WW Fenner, PK Harris	Mike de Kock	Kevin Shea
2004	TYSON	Messrs MK Naidoo & R Pancham	Stuart Pettigrew	Piere Strydom
2005	ILHA DA VITORIA	Mrs M Slack	Mike de Kock	Weichong Marwing
2006	MALTEME	MC Gerber, J Gerber, GL Blank, DI Catterall, MA Currie, GC Chamberlain & PG Joubert	Alec Laird	Brett Smith
2007	STRATEGIC NEWS	Messrs CG Snyman, JJ Snyman, L Steyn, MG Gramenie, DL Cunha, LL Cunha	Dylan Cunha	Glyn Schofield
2008	RUDRA	Messrs Tony Moodley, P Bayvel, MF De Kock, MC Gerber & F Ladeira	Mike de Kock	Kevin Shea

ANTHONY DELPECH : A Star in Racing's Firmament

Anthony Delpech and Mick Goss
(Photo : Hartford House)

There are not many of us who understand what it takes to be a world-class race jockey. If you’ve ever been onboard a horse pitching along at something of a gallop, even at a modest 40kms an hour, imagine yourself catapulting in the breeze at 70kms. If you can’t imagine that, try a motor car on a grass strip and you’ll see what it takes.

Make no mistake, to be at the top of your game as a rider in the racing world, you need to be as good as the best Olympic athletes, just as fit, and perhaps a little quicker witted. I think back to my polo days, when there were just eight horses on an immense pitch, and the traffic problems you encountered there and you quickly come to realise that in a 20 horse field travelling at full tilt, decisions are made in nanoseconds, and the ability to anticipate, to take initiatives and to seize the moment, is what separates the best from the field.

One man who’s had an almost uncanny association with the best horses from Summerhill, is Anthony Delpech, who with his wife Candice and his three children, was a guest at Hartford House over the Election Day holiday. Anthony’s association with this farm goes back to his days as an apprentice with “Uncle Joe” Joseph, one-time resident trainer to the Ellis family of Hartford. A little later in his career, Anthony Delpech teamed up with one of our earliest group winners, Home Guard, who we bred and raised at Summerhill for one of racing’s most celebrated owners, Lou Bernstein, and as the first horse to grace the silks of Robert and Robin Muir, now among the nations pre-eminent owners. This fellow not only won what was then known as the Smirnoff, the virtual two-year-old championship of its day, but he went on to earn National Championship honours, and he was quickly followed in a four year span by Spook n Diesel and Imperial Despatch. Three juvenile champion colts in four years.

Remarkably, as we don’t tend to keep too many colts in our ownership, principally because they’re part of our trading stock, of the few we’ve raced for our own account, Anthony has been successful at major level on three of them. Starting with Bianconi, a Christmas day foal who was advanced enough to become the first horse to ever beat the great Dynasty in the Golden Horseshoe (Gr.1), and in the process becoming one of only two horses to finish in front of that racing legend. He raced for Ronnie and Bev Napier along with the farm and is one of the legends of Summerhill Stud.

At a later stage, Anthony Delpech teamed up with two horses we were unable to sell, the first Amphitheatre the only horse to have attended two Ready To Run sales (as a two and three year old) and not to attract a single bid. His upset price was a meagre R30000, yet nobody wanted this “plain brown job”, mercifully, and he was retained to race for the farm, where he distinguished himself in Group One company from 1600m to 3000m earning 33 cheques in 34 starts and R1,5million, at a time when we needed the cash, to put it plainly. The partners in Amphitheatre were the fellows who co-bred him with us, old Summerhill stalwarts Roger Zeeman and Rodney Thorpe.

Anthony’s latest association with a Summerhill horse who’d proven difficult to place at the sales, was just a year ago with Imbongi. He too, was passed out of the ring unwanted at the Ready To Run, and we parted with a half of him at a subsequent time to Mr and Mrs Napier, Michael Fleischer and Owen Leibbrandt. Remarkable how Ronnie Napier seems to pick up on our best “Ready To Runners” whenever there’s possible potential staring at us.

Imbongi of course, ran in this past weekend’s Hong Kong Champions Mile (Gr.1) and in Anthony’s view, he was in with a live chance. Of course, he may have been biased, but we couldn’t help thinking that this may have been Imbongi’s moment. As it turned out, Imbongi ran a cracker of a race finishing sixth in a classy field, beaten by just 1,75 lengths.