SUPER SOUTH AFRICA : SUPER SATURDAY

Click above to watch Mikhail Glinka winning the Dubai City Of Gold (Gr2)
(Image and Footage : Dammas Racing)

“SUPER SATURDAY”
Meydan, 10 March 2012

There were six thoroughbred events staged at Dubai’s Meydan racecourse on what they dub “Super Saturday”, the last major trial for racing’s biggest night, the Dubai World Cup (31st March). South Africans have a proud record at the latter, winning as many as three (50%) of the six events on the card on their best of days, and on two occasions, two of the six.

For the first time, this Super Saturday boasted two new Group Ones, so besides the added interest, there was a deeper concentration of quality in the line-ups than ever before.

That they’ve mastered the art of preparation for the Dubai Carnival’s fest of racing there can be little doubt, but even by their own lofty standards, Mike de Kock and Herman Brown would have to count Saturday as a good day at the office. They had their disappointments for sure, but these were overwhelmingly outweighed by the other outcomes. If you win well on Super Saturday, it’s a sound indicator you’re on your way to peak performance for the big day, and win they did.

The biggest South African-connected winner on the night was obviously de Kock’s Master Of Hounds, who’d promised so much in his young globetrotting career, with a narrow second in last year’s UAE Derby (Gr.2), and a come-from-behind fifth in America’s Kentucky Derby (Gr.1). Though he’d pretended so well, there were question marks over this son of Kingmambo, who kept sticking his hand up, only to stumble at the final hurdle. Just recently, he was outrun in a Group Two mile at Meydan by his highly regarded stable companion, Viscount Nelson, but a change of tactics under South African jockey, Kevin Shea (on Viscount Nelson that day,) saw him surge to the front from an outside draw, and that’s where he stayed. Shea rode a masterful race tactically, slowing down once he’d found the lead, and quickening his mount authoritatively as he sent him for home. Impressive in third was his stable companion, Mutahadee, (like Master Of Hounds, owned by His Highness Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Maktoum), who came from way off to finish within two lengths of the winner. Given that Mutahadee is a relatively unexposed youngster in his first attempt at this level, you can bet there’s more in store for the son of Encosta De Lago.

One of the weekend’s most impressive winners was the Herman Brown-trained Mikhail Glinka, who galloped off determinedly with the spoils in the Dubai City of Gold (Gr.2) over 2400m. There were some proper horses in the line-up here, several of them boasting respectable recent form, but this fellow, arguably in need of the outing, was unassailable once he got to the front. Herman Jnr can relax now in the knowledge that he has a $5 million contender for the Sheema Classic (Gr.1) on World Cup night. He’s a beautifully bred colt besides, a son of the world’s best stallion, Galileo, from the outstanding family of European classic winners Teenoso, Give Thanks and Old Country. Parochially, we can’t resist mentioning it’s the family of the millionaires Fisani, Catmandu and Ecole Militaire back here on the farm.

Finally, de Kock wound up the night (or rather opened it,) with a rollicking romp in the Al Bastakiya (Listed) when his Dubawi colt, Mickdaam raced home in a promising prep for the Duty Free (Gr.1,) also for $5 million. There’s cash up for grabs in Dubai, and the South Africans are in the thick of it.

In other international news, Hay List finally got to race without the formidable attentions of unbeaten Black Caviar in Flemington’s Newmarket Handicap (Gr.1) on Saturday. Toting the welter burden of 129 pounds, he was giving between 9 and 19 pounds to his nearest rivals, and while only a short head separated him from those in pursuit, his connections must’ve been more than relieved to emerge at last from the shadow of the world’s best sprinter. In the process, they deposited a cheque which took his lifetime earnings to Aus$2,47 million (roughly R19 million). Pity he’s gelded!

SUPER SATURDAY : 3 FROM 8 FOR DE KOCK AND BROWN

Click above to watch Master of Hounds winning the Jebel Hatta (Gr1)
(Image : The National - Footage : Dubai Racing Meydan)

“SUPER SATURDAY”
Meydan, 10 March 2012

South African trainers took three of the eight races carded at Meydan on “Super Saturday” - the race meeting billed as a dress rehearsal for the richest day in racing, the Dubai World Cup later in the month.

South African champion conditioner Mike de Kock saddled two winners and his compatriot Herman Brown one.

De Kock’s highlight of the day was the win by Master Of Hounds in the Group 1 Jebel Hatta.

South African jockey Kevin Shea made all on the four-year-old, runner-up in last year’s UAE Derby for Irish trainer Aidan O’Brien and, remarkably, recording only a second career win on his 13th career start.

Shea said: “From the widest draw, Mike gave me the option of going on if I could and after talking to Johnny Murtagh who knew the horse from Ireland it seemed the obvious option.

“I was always happy and he ran on well. I do not know where Mike will go with him but the Duty Free is one choice or perhaps the World Cup itself.”

Belgian Jockey Christophe Soumillon had earlier helped De Kock win the Al Bastakiya with Mickdaam, who started his career in the UK with Richard Fahey. In the 1900m contest, Soumillon was content to bide his time on the winner behind a frantic early pace but once he eased his mount to the front a furlong out he never looked in danger.

De Kock said: “We have always believed that he would be better over this kind of trip and he will probably stay further in time.”

De Kock’s major disappointment of the meeting was the failure of Bold Silvano to fire in the Maktoum Challenge after the former Vodacom Durban July winner got his tongue over the bit.

Herman Brown visited the winner’s enclosure after jockey Royston Ffrench made all the running on Mikhail Glinka in the Group 2 Dubai City Of Gold over 2400m on turf.

Capponi was a surprise winner of the concluding round of the Maktoum Challenge, the first thoroughbred Group 1 race ever staged in the UAE outside Dubai World Cup night.

Godolphin’s Dubai Millennium, Street Cry and Electrocutionist all won this race and then the Dubai World Cup and trainer Mahmood Al Zarooni will be hoping to repeat the trick with Capponi who won comfortably under jockey Ahmed Ajtebi, stalking the pace before sending his mount for home three furlongs out.

Ajtebi said: “I knew he would stay well and was happy to commit him for home a long way out. We went pretty quick up front but he stayed on very well. Obviously Sheikh Mohammed, Mahmood and Simon Crisford will need to decide where he goes but the World Cup must be an option.”

Trainer Saeed Bin Suroor and jockey Frankie Dettori combined to win the Group 3 Burj Nahaar with African Story. Never far off the pace, Dettori sent his mount to the front over a furlong out and skipped clear of Snaafy and hot favourite Musir, who is trained by De Kock.

Dettori said: “This horse is improving fast and I thought he was my best chance on the night. He travelled well and quickened nicely and I guess the Godolphin Mile will be the next step.”

There was a thrilling finish to the 5f conditions race on turf with Invincible Ash and jockey Jamie Spencer leading home an Irish 1-2-3 from Sole Power and Nocturnal Affair. The winner will now run in the Group 1 Al Quoz Sprint in which she was fourth last year according to trainer Mick Halford who said: “She bounced back to form last time and World Cup night has always been the target - she was a bit unlucky last year.”

Bahrain’s Fawzi Nass is the owner/trainer of Krypton Factor who was able to reverse the form of the Group 3 Al Shindagha Sprint with the David Barron-trained Hitchens over the same 1200m tapeta course and distance in the Group 3 Mahab Al Shimaal.

Jockey Kieren Fallon rode the winner and Nass said: “We always thought he was a good sprinter and he has proved that. Hopefully all roads lead to the Golden Shaheen on the big night.”

Extract from Racing Post

MUSIR ULTRA-IMPRESSIVE IN AL MAKTOUM CHALLENGE ROUND 1

Click above to watch Musir winning the Al Maktoum Challenge Round 1…
(Photo : Gulf News - Footage : Meydan Racecourse)

Al Maktoum Challenge R1 Sponsored By Etisalat
Meydan, All Weather, 1600m
12 January 2012

Etisalat was the sponsor of last night’s third meeting of the Dubai World Cup Carnival and the phone lines to South Africa must have been buzzing after the ultra-impressive victory by Musir (AUS) (Redoute’s Choice (AUS) - Dizzy De Lago (AUS)) in the $US200,000 Al Maktoum Challenge Round 1 Group 3 , the featured 1600m all-weather contest.

Trained by South African master-trainer Mike de Kock, Musir, the UAE 2000 Guineas and UAE Derby winner of 2010, was always going well under jockey Christophe Soumillon who eased his mount to the front from 200m out to score an easy victory with stable companion Master Of Hounds (USA) (Kingmambo (USA) - Silk And Scarlet (GB)) running on strongly to snatch second under jockey Kevin Shea.

Mike de Kock was obviously delighted and said afterwards: “We thought both would run well but I do not think we would have predicted a 1-2. Musir has been a great servant in recent years and is getting stronger and tougher with age. I do genuinely believe he is a better turf horse and the Dubai Duty Free is his big target so he will switch to the grass now. We hope Master Of Hounds is a Dubai World Cup horse so that is a good start with him. He was badly drawn and needs further so we are very pleased. He will continue in the second round of the Al Maktoum Challenge.”

Al Maktoum Challenge Round 1
Final Results

#	Margin	Horse	Kg	Dr	Jockey	Trainer
1	0.0	MUSIR (AUS)	56.0	4	C Soumillon	Mike de Kock
2	3.0	MASTER OF HOUNDS (USA)	56.0	12	K Shea	Mike de Kock
3	1.0	SECRECY (GB)	56.0	9	K Fallon	Saeed bin Suroor
4	0.5	MENDIP (USA)	56.0	1	L Dettori	Saeed bin Suroor
5	0.75	DERBAAS (USA)	56.0	2	R Hills	Ali Rashid Al Raihe
6	Sh	DANCE AND DANCE (IRE)	56.0	3	J Spencer	Edward Vaughan
7	1.5	KAVANGO (IRE)	56.0	8	P Cosgrave	Mubarak bin Shafya
8	0.25	ESCAPE ROUTE (USA)	56.0	6	R Mullen	Satish Seemar
9	1.0	LE DRAKKAR (AUS)	56.0	5	A Ajtebi	Abdulla bin Huzaim
10	1.5	FANUNALTER (GB)	56.0	10	R Moore	Marco Botti
11	0.75	SNAAFY (USA)	56.0	11	T O’Shea	Musabah Al Muhairi
12	15.5	XIN XU LIN (BRZ)	56.0	7	M Barzalona	Mahmoud Al Zarooni

Extract from Emirates Racing Authority

WHERE WERE YOU THAT DAY?

Power In The Blood
(Painter : Rick Timmons)

An appreciation of
the “Higher Things” in life.

Unlike motor racing, when the winner most times, is a foregone conclusion long before the chequered flag, and where “short heads” and “noses” are seldom descriptions for the margin of victory, never a week goes by that horseracing is without the thrill of a punishingly tight finish. The dross and the boredom of a motor engine wailing its way round and round the same old circuit, can never invoke the emotions a great ride and a great horse can for anyone with an appreciation of the “Higher Things” in life.

What inspired these feelings for me was the memory of the finish to the Champions Cup, in the year of the epic duel between Wolf Whistle and Yard Arm, when Strydom and Shea, Olympic class athletes if ever there were any, and horsemen at the world class end of their profession, bumped and bored and bollocked and bit their way to the line. I recall it especially well, because we ran third that day with an unwanted urchin of two sales rings, a millionaire racehorse who’d never missed a cheque in 33 starts, and who could’ve been anyone’s horse for R30,000. His name was Amphitheatre.

In the end, the race went to Wolf Whistle, the first horse owned by a long-time school and varsity pal, Paul Harris, (a fair hooker in his time, and later CEO of First National Bank), and to yet another fellow who had to overcome an education at Maritzburg College, Peter Seargent. That day at Turffontein reminded me again of the appeal of racing. Everything about Wolf Whistle had been so wild and improbable. He had been up against a horse of impregnable talent, a shoe-in for Horse Of The Year. While it turned out to be one of the great battles of all time, my own interest centred as much on the finish, as it did on Amphitheatre. As a five-year-old gelding, he’d been the subject of an enormous offer from Dubai, and I had insisted he take his place in this race as a swansong. In the end, he came out of it with an injury, and that was the end of the deal, a mortal blow to a Zulu farmer who could’ve done with the cash.

In the end, the gyrations of the crowd and the pulse of the chase, impaired my vision of the race, but what I did see was the bit that counted, and it was right up close. I saw Wolf Whistle’s eye when he got to Yard Arm’s girth, and he as much as told him “I’ve got you, pal”. As the American novelist, Cormac McCarthy wrote in a slightly different context, it was “a hot globe, and all the world burned in it”. The whips were flaying, elbows were flying, foam spewed from the gladiators’ mouths. In the heat of battle, none of these heroes felt any pain.

It was so obvious, so simple, I thought as I drove away. As our Aussie pal, Les Carlyon, once reminded us, horses and people, are the only things in racing that count. The rest is immaterial. Anyway, if racing were anything more, if it were a matter of business, its interpreter should have been Karl Marx. As a financial proposition, racing is about the re-distribution of incomes. It’s about socialism in a form so natural you’d hardly notice it. Hundreds of millions of Rands are each year supplied by businessmen from Dubai to Durban, by doctors and lawyers, by owners of car dealerships and merchant bankers, and by tax avoiders from all over.

The treasure they contribute is then re-distributed, slowly, a little each month so the trick doesn’t look too obvious, to trainers and jockeys, track riders, farriers, vets, clairvoyants, chiropractors, grooms, the bottlers of magical elixirs, owners of feed stores, horse psychologists and float drivers. When the cycle is over, the working classes have acquired most of the surplus capital of the bourgeois. The cycle then starts again with new players on the supply side, and the same clairvoyants and float drivers on the other side. Someone once said, the horsemen provide the experience, and the owners, the cash. When the cycle is over, the horse people have the cash, and the owners have the experience.

Racing is good sport, great sport when you see a Yard Arm or a Wolf Whistle in this kind of combat. It’s occasionally good business, but not often. Racing is a way of living, and a way of thinking. It has its own language and humour. It’s loaded with danger; physical and financial, and comes with a hint of conspiracy. It doesn’t necessarily build character, but it throws up some great characters. And that’s why, despite the recessions, the stock market crashes, the natural disasters, it survives year-in and year-out. The lure of the big horse and the prospect of grabbing the big one, the irrepressible dream.

Thanks for reminding us, Graeme Hawkins, with your presentation at our Winter School.

DURBAN JULY GALLOPS 2011 : THE ROYAL COUNTDOWN

VODACOM DURBAN JULY GALLOPS
Greyville Racecourse
Thursday, 23 June 2011

The Royal countdown has started and it will be your last chance to see your big race fancies in action before they step out at Greyville Racecourse on Saturday, July 2, to contest Africa’s Greatest Horseracing event, the R3million, Grade 1 Vodacom Durban July.

That will be at Greyville Racecourse this Thursday morning from 7am when they take part in the annual “July Gallops”, a tradition that has, apart for a few years, been a popular part of the build-up to this famous race for decades.

All the big race candidates based in the Durban area must appear at the gallops while those based in Gauteng will have completed timed gallops in their home region - these gallops to be televised at Greyville on completion of the official gallops in Durban.

A Sangoma will be in attendance at the racecourse to read the bones after the gallops and this will be followed by a panel discussion at 9.15am featuring Gold Circle’s COO Graeme Hawkins, trainer and Tellytrack presenter Paul Lafferty, former July winning jockey and now trainer Garth Puller and the globe-trotting, humorous and outspoken king of the saddle, Kevin Shea. 

For the ladies who have not yet decided on their “Royal Attire” for the big day, fashion will also play a part in the gallops so for inspiration pop down and soak up the glamour. 
As always, the traditional free sticky buns and coffee will be available and a special gallops breakfast, at a cost of R50, will be available from 6.30am to 9am in the Durban View Room. For reservations contact Gail on 031-314 1780.

The gates open at 6.30am and the Vodacom Durban July racecards and entry tickets will be on sale in the shop on the ground floor.

Extract from The Mercury

www.vodacomdurbanjuly.co.za