National Yearling Sale Supplement

Supplement to SPORTING POST • FRIDAY 19th - SUNDAY 21st APRIL 2013

NOT FOR SALE

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National Yearling Sale Preview - Supplement to Sporting Post 19-21 April 2013

Emperors Palace

National Yearling Sale

26 & 28 April

The Apache, who earned the equivalent of R9.9 million in Dubai, has a full sister at Nationals

2013 rammed it home again: when you hit the big one, earning opportunities abroad are mind-boggling.

In Dubai alone Soft Falling Rain earned some R6.5 million, The Apache R9.9 million, Shea Shea R5.9 million, Igugu R1.4 million - all bought at auction in South Africa for laughably less.

Not a year goes by without such opportunities. So this time, will you be the one to hit the ball out of the park?

309 Colts, 228 Fillies, 60 Sires, 57 Vendors, 26 Full & Half siblings to Gr1 winners, 13 offspring on Gr1 winning dams, ONE SALE.

Biggest annual adrenaline pumping brainteasing horse pickers convention in the land.

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Supplement to SPORTING POST • FRIDAY 19th - SUNDAY 21st APRIL 2013

Supplement to SPORTING POST • FRIDAY 19th - SUNDAY 21st APRIL 2013

60 SIRES

at Nationals sire colt filly A.P. Answer A.P. Arrow Admire Main Antonius Pius Archipenko Argonaut Ashaawes Atso Black Minnaloushe Brave Tin Soldier Captain Al Carpocrates Casey Tibbs Count Dubois Dupont Dylan Thomas Dynasty Easing Along Elusive Fort Encosta de Lago Equal Stripes Express Way Fort Beluga Fort Wood Go Deputy Greys Inn Henrythenavigator Horse Chestnut Ideal World Indigo Magic Jay Peg Jet Master Judpot Kahal Kildonan King Of Kings King’s Apostle Lateral Linngari Mambo In Seattle Miesque’s Approval Mogok Muhtafal Mullins Bay National Emblem Oracy Parade Leader Rebel King Right Approach Royal Air Force Sail From Seattle Seventh Rock Silvano Tale Of The Cat Tiger Ridge Toreador Trippi Var Western Winter Windrush all sires

3 1 1 3 1 5 3 2 10 2 12 2 2 1 1 24

4 2

14 2 10 2 7 2 1 15 1

2 1 1 1 9 1 7 1 1 1 1 7 17 12 24 4 1 3 5 1 16 7 6 4 1 2 1 2 3 7 10 5 16 1 11 4 17 10 12 4

1 1 4 2 3 3 1 3 10 7 15 1 1 1 1 8 4 6 3 2 3

Much of the content of this National Sale supplement is devoted to the breeders of our future champions.

Why they do what they do, how they came to do it.

The one thing that comes through above all else is that breeders have passion.

Some are new to the game, others come from generations of horse-mad ancestors, who came to our shores from wide and far.

Some are big, others small with no intention of wanting to be big. For all of them, the horse comes first, as their stories show. What’s on offer at Nationals are the fruits of their passion.

We pay tribute in the pages that follow.

2 1 2 1 7 6 19 7 5 14 8 11 2

309 228

26, 28 April 2013 TBA Sales Complex , Gemiston

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First-season sires

Every year, the new boys on the block stand to scrutiny.

What do their yearlings look like?

Will he make it as a stallion, be the next champion sire?

Here’s a brief look at the first crop of the Class of 2010.

A.P. Answer - turf miler in the USA, by sire-of-sires A.P. Indy. His dam Pas de Response was Champion 2yo Filly in Europe, with ratings of 113 at 2, and 118 at 3. Her grandam is 3-part sister to Champion racehorse and sire Storm Bird.

Brave Tin Soldier – European miler, by sire-of-sires Storm Cat. His dam, by Mr Prospector, is a full sister to Kentucky Derby winner & sire Fusaichi Pegasus. The grandam, by Danzig, is full sister to G1 winner and G1 producing sire Pine Bluff.

Elusive Fort – multiple Gr1 winner from a mile to a mile-and-a-half in SA, voted Equus Champion as a 3yo, by sireof-sires Fort Wood. Has dam is a stakes placed daughter of Gr1 winner Epoque, half sister to Champions Empress Club and Ecurie, from the potent Argentine E-family.

Fort Beluga – highclass miler in SA, by sire-of-sires Fort Wood. He is full brother to three stakes performers

by Fort Wood, his dam (by Northern Guest) half sister to a graded SW by Fort Wood, and to the dam of another.

There are four SA oaks winners under the 4th dam Nyala, an Oppenheimerstalwart. This is his only crop (he died in 2011).

A Sporting Post supplement Editor: Karel Miedema Tel: 021 797 8678 • spost@iafrica.com

www.sportingpost.co.za

Uncover The Hidden Truths

Ideal World – French stakes winner up to a mile-and-a-half, by sire-of-sires Kingmambo.

His dam is multiple European Champion Banks Hill, a daughter of Danehill and full sister to successful sire Dansili and three other Gr1 winners in Europe & N-America, with two other half-siblings both Gr1 performers.

King’s Apostle – European Gr1 winning sprinter, by King’s Best. His grandam is European Champion 2yo filly Embassy, the next dam European Champion 2yo filly Pass The Peace.

Lateral – Champion 2yo in Germany & Italy, Champion 3yo miler in Germany, by Singspiel (half brother to Rahy & Rakeen), from Germa Gr1 female line. Started his stud career in Germany in 2009, and sired a French Gr3 performer in his first crop.

Mambo In Seattle – US multiple G1 placed (to 2000m) winner, by sire-of-sires Kingmambo. His dam is G1 placed full sister to Champion sire A.P. Indy, whose dam is half sister to Al Mufti, from a sire-producing female line.

Oracy – Gr2 & Gr3 winning miler in SA, by Champion sire Zabeel. His dam is Australian Gr2 winning half sister to sire Oratorio (by Stravinsky).

Seventh Rock – Gr1 winning (at 2) sprinter in SA, by Rock Of Gibraltar. His dam is Champion 2yo filly and Champion older sprinter Ruby Clipper. Yearlings fetched up to R1.2 million earlier in 2013.

AUCTIONEERS Steve Davis Graeme Hawkins Andrew Miller

Bloodstock South Africa tel: 011 323 5700 email: enquiries@tba.co.za

www.tba.co.za

THE BUYERS GUIDE

• South African racing performance • aptitude • sale prices of ALL PREVIOUS OFFSPRING of mares catalogued.

www.sportingpost.co.za

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Supplement to SPORTING POST • FRIDAY 19th - SUNDAY 21st APRIL 2013

Ascot Stud

Stallions Maketh The Stud Ascot Stud, named after the famous English racecourse, began as a 100 hectare Jersey dairy farm.

Owned by Holden and Rose Parker, it became a stud quite by accident.

Rose was an accomplished horsewoman who enjoyed much success on the national show circuit. She bought an attractive mare for the show ring that proved to be a badtempered individual with the unfortunate habit of rearing.

One day she reared violently, fell over and poked out an eye. Now no longer suitable as a show horse, Rose had to think of a new career for the mare. She was a winning full sister to two good sprinters, so stud beckoned. Rose was offered a free service by a friend who stood stallions, and decided to try her hand at breeding. However, when visiting the stallion, the mare reared up and fell over again, this time injuring herself fatally. The stud owner kindly offered a couple of old mares in return for one of the future foals.

One of the mares produced a filly called Cherya, who not only did well on the racecourse, but went on to breed winners.

The Parkers were friendly with the Dell family of breeders, bought a couple of their old mares, “and that was how it began; Holden wasn’t really a horse person, but he sold the cattle in 1968, and the stud grew from there.”

Stallions were acquired.

First London Way, followed by Enchanter, Royal Enclosure, Lord Henham, Kilconnell and Mullineaux. Then, in 1990, came Al Mufti. But for a twist of fate, he might never have come to Port Elizabeth.

Rose and her son Ashley had expressed interest in Al Mufti, but his original asking price was exorbitant so they decided to look elsewhere.

Rose flew to California to view a son of Alydar and struck a deal, but the vendors had second thoughts and raised the asking price. The deal fell through and Rose returned to South Africa ruing the wasted time and effort. Then luck played its hand, for not long afterwards Rose got wind that Al Mufti was still on the market, this time at a much more realistic price. The Roberto colt had a real stallion’s pedigree and had shown considerable promise winning the Duke of Edinburgh Stakes as a 2yo in the UK. Rose flew back to the US, liked what she saw, and purchased him from Sheikh Hamdan Al Maktoum.

Al Mufti arrived in 1990, via the Durban quarantine station. Terrance Millard was campaigning horses in KZN at the time. A good friend of the Parkers, he went to see Al Mufti and urged them to race

the horse. Rose and Ashley had their misgivings – they had bought him for stud after all. Fortunately things worked out well for all parties. Al Mufti covered a full book of mares that season, while the stud maintained his fitness levels by sending him out for a daily canter up the hills. He was transferred to Millard on Boxing Day with the proviso to only run the horse if he was doing well enough in his work to win.

A scant 6 weeks into training, Millard sent him out over a C-division mile at Kenilworth and he won comfortably.

Al Mufti followed up with 2 more wins in Durban, and was being touted as a July Horse.

Five weeks before the big race he contested the Miracle Mowers, finishing with only three behind him. “Never raised a gallop!” says Ashley.

“He tucked himself in behind a mare named Respectable and didn’t move”. It was only after Ashley heard that Respectable was reported in season that they realised what had happened…

Three weeks later Al Mufti finished a much better fourth in the Mainstay Trial. Then came the July. Everything went according to plan, Al Mufti looking a certainty when Mark Sutherland hit the front inside the last furlong only to be pipped on the post by a flying Flaming Rock.

Al Mufti was found to have lost a hind shoe, which may have cost him more than the neck by which he was beaten. “Racing him proved damn good advertising,” says Ashley. “He’d been popular in his first season and the July run ensured he remained sought-after. We were hopeful he was going to be a success, but you never know – buying a stallion is a big gamble. And then he became champion first season sire!”

Al Mufti never looked back. He was champion twoyear-old sire in 1998/99, and when Captain Al won the Cape Guineas and The Sheik the Cape Derby in 2000, the Champion Sire title was in the bag.

Not surprisingly, Al Mufti is Ascot’s standard-bearer. He got some of the best horses the stud produced, including champion filly Arabian Lass and Gr1 winner Royal Fantasy.

His legacy continues, through stallion-sons Captain Al, the ill-fated Victory Moon and Cataloochee, and The Sheik.

Not unexpectedly, Al Mufti also made a considerable contribution to the broodmare band in South Africa. One of his daughters produced Bold Silvano, who stood his first season in 2012 at Ascot Stud.

Port Elizabeth expanded rapidly in the last decade, and the stud was in danger of being swallowed by suburbia.

So the Parkers relocated in 2007. The ‘new’ Ascot Stud is on the main road between Port Elizabeth and Sea View, on a much bigger expanse of land (357ha), with stallion facilities, 30 yearling stables and large paddocks. Ashley prefers the mares to foal outside, so there are two foaling paddocks right next to the house.

The broodmare band currently numbers 55, with about 15 borders (which increases during the covering season).

The matings are planned by Ashley and Rose.

“We weigh everything up conformation, what distances they run over, and nicks. We are a commercial operation and aim to sell all the progeny, but if there is a filly out of a good family we’ll keep and race her ourselves.”

Because the stud is relatively remotely situated, standing their own stallions makes sense. The main aim has been to acquire stallions to match their broodmare band, and Ashley is very happy with their current residents.

When they lost Kilconnel to a gastric torsion, Lecture

Lot 521 Sail From Seattle colt x Lightning Sands half brother to Gr1 SILVER ARC

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Supplement to SPORTING POST • FRIDAY 19th - SUNDAY 21st APRIL 2013

Ambiance Stud

Back To Basics You have an opinion? Better be sure of your facts if you vent your thoughts in the vicinity of Marianne Thomson. ‘Terrier Thomson’ could be a better description of the Doctor, who doesn’t take nonsense from anyone.

lot 455 Sail from Seattle colt •

Irish dam is out of half sister to Archipenko

was bought in in 2001. A four-time winner, the son of

by Seeking The Gold is from a family packed with sires, notably Johannesburg, Tale Of The Cat, Minardi, and Pulpit. “He gets good horses – Rock Opera was champion 2yo filly and is dam of a Gr2 winner in the UK, Hit Song won a Grade Two, Lightning Lecture was one of the best sprinters in Jo’burg, and Rock Concert went close in the Allan Robertson.”

Al Mufti retired from stud duties in 2007 and the hunt started for a replacement.

Ashley and Rose managed to secure a 40% share in Archipenko and Ashley still counts the day he watched the colt win at Ascot as one of the most exciting days of his life.

Although they eventually sold their interests and Archipenko now stands at Lanwades, Ascot retained 4 lifetime service rights Southern Hemisphere time.

Sail from Seattle arrived in 2009. He received good support in his first two seasons, but was kicked by a maiden mare early into his third book and had to sit out the rest of the year.

Fortunately he has made a full recovery and he covered over a hundred mares in 2012. His his first juvenile winners are on the board in 2013, headed by promising Tommy Gun and Navistar.

As a result of a long standing friendship with Gill Thomson, Ashley and Rose managed to persuade Gill and Sheik Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Maktoum to retire Bold Silvano (2010 Gr1 Vodacom Durban July winner) to take up stallion duties at Ascot Stud. He commenced stud duties in 2012 to a strong book of mares. The fact that he is a grandson of Al Mufti makes it all the more special.

Ascot has shares in several outside stallions including Captain Al, Black

Minnaloushe, Silvano, Twice Over, Mambo in Seattle and Rebel King.

The tall, red-haired Dr Parker cuts a distinctive figure.

Born in Port Elizabeth and educated at the Grey High School, he says “I was always interested in the horses and the stud. When I was 16 doing my matric, my father died running a marathon, and I decided to study veterinary science.” While doing his national service, Ashley spent much of his time at the military stud farm at De Aar, with any leave days spent helping his mother at Ascot.

His studies at Onderstepoort followed much the same pattern and when he qualified in July 1983, he was back at the stud for good.

Ascot has bred some high class racehorses over the years, including Enchanted Garden (Horse of the Year and champion three-year-old filly in 1985, winning five Grade One races), Arabian Lass (who won four Grade Ones including the Cape Fillies Guineas and was champion filly at both two and three), and the 2006 Gr1 Thekwini Stakes winner Royal Fantasy.

Other big winners raised at the stud are Bold Silvano, Smart Banker, Copper Parade and Royal Aproval, who was Champion 3yo filly in 2006.

Among his other commitments, Ashley is chairman of the South African Trade Council, the international marketing arm of Racing South Africa, and a longstanding director of the RA. Ashley’s wife, Bev, is also a vet and is involved in Government liaison and import/export protocols.

Rose Parker still lives on the farm, takes a firm interest in the stud, and accompanies the yearlings to the sales as often as possible. There’s much still to be done!

lot 89 Archipenko colt x Princess Magdalena

BROUGHT up on a wine farm in Montagu, Marianne used to ride the big Percheron plough horses. Her fascination with racing began when she spent her school holidays with aunt Marlene, wife of top trainer, Syd Laird.

She qualified as a vet back in 1963 and bred horses on the fruit farm she shared with her husband in Prince Alfred Hamlet, just outside Ceres.

With a little help from John Kramer she acquired her first mare from Wilfred Koster for the princely sum of R500.

Marianne was initially restricted to keep her horses in

the open areas between the fruit trees and in 2 small pastures on the family farm. She built up her broodmare band up to 5 mares, although she had to swear everyone to secrecy over the last one, as her husband was not impressed with how the stud was expanding.

Fortunately, by the time he found out about the additional horse, she’d managed to sell a yearling for some money, which suddenly promoted the mares from being “mom’s bloody horses” to “our horses”! In 1993 they purchased the 250 hectares just outside Worcester and named it Ambiance for

the picturesque setting. “Most of the good horses were born there”, says Marianne.

The farm comprises approximately 20 ha of pasture - “proper Kentucky rye and fescue – not kikuyu” - and 20 ha of dry camps. Marianne does not believe in running yearlings on pasture – “you can’t quantify what they’re taking in, and you risk problems like epiphysitis and small feet”. She mixes her own feed - “it’s a bit of a nuisance, but it’s the only way to know exactly what each one is getting”. They also don’t clear the paddocks of rocks, as she feels it teaches the horses to be agile. The horses live out as much as possible. “Except for my retired ladies – we call them the ‘blanket brigade’. They get to come in at night and stand under red lamps.

They’ve earned it”.

Her current ‘blanket brigade’ includes Hasta

Aqui (dam of Rosinante), Mufski (dam of Protector) and Jazz Champion (Almah, Zambomba, Zambucca).

Marianne was very pedigree focussed when she started out, but says she has very much gone back to basics. She likes to breed with the eye and just refers to Tesio to make sure she’s on the right track. She is a very firm believer in not overfeeding her mares and feels that a healthier BMI results in fewer contracted tendons, leg deviations, windswept and dummy foals.

One of the big Worcesterfarm successes was The Sheik.

He was a first foal and arrived early, catching everyone unaware. Jessamine had foaled him down all by himself and Marianne says the picture that met them in the paddock the next morning was arresting, the mare and her colt standing proudly in one corner of the paddock with the rest of the mares at the far end. The Sheik went on to win the Cape Derby and SA Guineas and is now a stallion at Scott’s Highdown Stud.

Ambiance has produced an unending stream of topclass performers, including The Sheik’s full brother Al Nitak who won the Merchants, Golden Horse Sprint and Tommy Hotspur Handicap.

Almah took the J&B Reserve Stayers Handicap, was exported and won three hurdle races in UK, while her sibling brothers Zambomba and Zambucca are both Graded winners. Sarabande won the Majorca Stakes and is dam of Gr1 performer Chesalon. Cataloochee took the Computaform and Golden Horse Sprints, and became a stallion. Alastor won the J&B Met. Marianne planned to retire and close down Ambiance in 2009, but she just can’t stay away. The farm currently has twenty of her own mares, and a similar number of boarders (recent Vodacom Durban July winner Pomodoro was born and raised at Ambiance).

Among her other accomplishments, Marianne has ten grandchildren, eight of them in Canada. “This is why I try to live so "green" -- having added to the world’s population troubles”, she jokes. “They are fantastic and I adore them.

They love coming to the farm.”

She was taken aback when one of them referred to her as Granny Rotten, but giggles at the explanation – “Mum says you spoil us rotten.”

At Nationals Ambiance consigns eleven yearling at Nationals, by a variety of sires. The farm’s proven families are well represented – there’s a Silvano colt (#281) out of a half sister to The Sheik and Al Nitak, a Dynasty colt (#444) out of Hasta Aqui, and a Var colt (#43) out of Mufski.

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Supplement to SPORTING POST • FRIDAY 19th - SUNDAY 21st APRIL 2013

Avontuur

Legend has it that in 1970 Zimbabwean tobacco farmer and industrialist Tony Taberer discovered an old racing trophy amongst his family possessions. It had been awarded for a race won at the Mashonaland Turf Club many years previously. His interest in racing thus kindled, he applied for his colours in 1977 and started out by buying horses in training. His first purchases were Joker and Linguist from Durban. Linguist won first time out in Zimbabwe and went on to win eight more. Joker was another story. Having run all his races at Clairwood, he was a left hand turn specialist and did not take kindly to the right hand Harare course. But the first time he took to the left handed Bulawayo track, he won by 20 lengths! Jockey Jimmy Anderson said to Tony “This horse is incredible. I will win 12 races in a row on him!” Tony offered him an all-expenses paid holiday to the Far East if he kept his word. Jimmy was as good as his word and won the bet with 12 consecutive wins – a record that may still stand!

Fortune on his side, TonyTaberer became a significant owner, steward and subsequently Chairman of the Mashonaland Turf Club. One of the highlights of his tenure was meeting the Pope, as the Mashonaland racecourse was the only venue large enough to accommodate the more than 20 000 Zimbabwean devotees who came out to hear his address.

In 1980 Taberer established his successful Borrowdale Stud. With extensive business interests in South Africa, Tony relocated to South Africa, purchasing a wine farm just outside Stellenbosch. Avontuur Estate was born.

Some of the mares from Borrowdale stud arrived as well. They included Cockey, who became dam of July winner Right Prerogative and was voted Broodmare of the year in 1989.

Pippa Mickleburgh, the daughter of journalist David

Mickleburgh, nurtured her love of racing and breeding when helping her father with pedigree research. She had just finished a stint at Hoog Eind Stud, and had gone back to Natal to work with her sister and brother-in-law, en route to the UK. Tony Taberer was looking for a stud manager, asked to meet over coffee in Mooi River - and that was that. It was 1988 and Pippa says “there were only eight mares, ten hectares and a cottage with one room!”

The stud mainly bred and raced their own progeny, the idea being to keep the breeding operation small, but of a very high quality. When the market took a dive, Taberer used the opportunity to expand his broodmare band and little by little, things have grown over the years. Pippa became general manager in 1999, and Avontuur now has some 40 mares.

Pippa relates that in choosing

mares for the stud, they look first and foremost for race performance, or at least performance in the first dam.

She tries to diversify by getting a well performed race filly every

year. The broodmare band now includes the likes of River Jetez, Baltic Beauty and A Daughter’s Legacy.

In terms of stallions, Pippa says “We’re not trying to reinvent the wheel. I look at what we need here on the farm and what I think the rest of the country needs. The current trend is for fast, precocious horses with some stamina.”

The first stallion to stand at Avontuur was Divine King, followed by Dominion Royale.

Kabool stood as a shuttle stallion in 2003.

Then came Gr1 Prix de l’Abbaye winner Var. “Mr Taberer knew he was sick and he wanted a good horse to end with. He asked me what sort of stallion we should be looking for. I said that when I did the matings each year, I always battled to find a speed sire. I added that I needed a horse that was so good-looking, and such a good racehorse, that I didn’t have to do any marketing – in other words, you must get me the best horse money can buy.”

Taberer was in Australia when Robin Bruss produced a shortlist of three, but the Pippa did not bother to courier Taberer all the details of Var “because the price was ridiculous”. She promptly received a telephone call from her boss

lot 503 TRIPPI colt • Half brother to NORMANDZ

to ask “What about the one with the short name.

Where’s the particulars on him?”

It was the start of Royal Ascot week. Taberer said he was going to buy despite the price, while Var was still due to run in both the King’s Stand Stakes and the Golden Jubilee. Payment had to be completed by midnight on the day after the second race.

If the money was not received by then, the horse would be sold to America. Having had to wait for Var to pass the vet, the deal could not be completed until the final day, a Sunday, when most banks in the world were closed. However, the troops were rallied, the money was transferred in the nick of time and the deal was secured.

Var arrived, saw more than 70 mares in his first season, and the rest is history. Veni, vidi, vici.

The much vaunted Oratorio arrived at Avontuur in February 2013. Pippa says it was meant to be. She’d initially had her eye on another stallion, but the deal fell through. Out of the blue she got the news that Oratorio was for sale. “I couldn’t quite believe it and had to check that it was the right Oratorio! It only took one day to make the decision. We paid the deposit and had only 6 weeks to find the balance. It was difficult because the horse was in Australia and we couldn’t show him to potential shareholders – they just had to take it on trust. Then we realised we wouldn’t be able to get him here in time for the SA breeding season, so Coolmore adjusted the price and kept him for the 2012 season. They must have regrets selling him, as his results just keep on coming, all over the world.”

At Nationals Avontuur has sixteen catalogued for the National Sale. The four Var yearlings must take centre-stage, given the stallion’s continued successes in black-type races, and the exploits of his champion son Variety Club.

One of the Var youngsters (#344) is a colt bred on the same sire x broodmare sire cross as Champion Sprinter Val de Ra. Interestingly, the remainder of the draft shows great variety in terms of sires, right across the spectrum.

Among them a full brother to stakes winner My Kazzie (MR 97), a full sister to Jet Trail (MR 100), and several by up-and-coming young stallions. In the Avontuur tradition “something for everyone!”.

Beaumont

Variety Show “Conformation is the key. A good looking horse tends to run. If a pedigree works on paper, so much the better, but first and foremost I try to breed an athlete.” Pointed comment from Anton Shepherd, Beaumont Stud’s lord and master for some two decades now.

Proof of the pudding is current Champion miler and Horse of the Year Variety Club, who caught the eye in the Beaumont paddocks right from the day he was born. Shepherd bought his dam La Massine at the Cape broodmare sale in 2003, aged ten, for a modest R25.000 in foal to Restructure.

When it comes to broodmare sales, Anton Shepherd is an addict.

“I love those sales and I buy every year. I look for good-looking, feminine mares with a lot of quality. They must be big, with good length of rein and be able to throw good-looking horses. I also like buying into families that I grew up with. I love all the old families that I saw racing ten to twenty years ago.” Favourite matrons include Tinseltown (“she was special – almost everything she produced was a top horse”), Aigrette, Witchita (“our bank !”), Spanish Treaty, Royal Pavilion (dam of Divine Force), La Massine (he would say that, wouldn’t he..). Of the newer additions, Anton thinks Caesour’s daughter Imperial Rome (a five grand purchase at the Cape mare sale last year, in foal to Judpot) will be top class.

Beaumont Stud was established in about 1983, when Anton’s father Harry Anton Beaumont Shepherd set about converting a

25hs fruit farm at the foot of du Toits Kloof into a stud farm.

Harry Shepherd wasn’t new to breeding. He’d got in partnership with Mordaunt Milner, after the latter placed an ad looking for someone with land to breed on.

Harry owned a fruit farm near Windmeul, Mordaunt had the mares, and so Knavesmire Stud saw the light of day. The duo imported stallions Dowdstown Charley and St Cuthbert, and also stood locally bred Lancaster.

One of their foundation mares was the grey Ranjit-mare Fleur.

“I grew up with her,” reminisces Anton, “she was a real blue hen.

A beautiful, docile mare and one of the only horses on the farm I was allowed to play with as a kid. Her and St Cuthbert.

Dowdstown Charley was a killer!”

Eventually, Sir Mordaunt and Harry went their separate ways, although they remained friends and worked together to import another stallion, Fair Season.

Harry started Beaumont Stud, originally a guava and grape farm. Today the fruit trees have long been replaced by paddocks, there are 25 stables, 2 foaling boxes and 2 additional barns and the farm has the use of an additional 10-15 ha from neighbours when necessary.

The first winner for Beaumont Stud was Witch Hunt in 1985.

He was the first foal of Wichita,

by Dowdstown Charley.

Harry wasn’t keen for his son to follow him into the breeding business and insisted that Anton get a university education before making up his mind.

After completing his national service, Anton studied business economics at Stellenbosch University. But he remained resolute about his future. He laughs and tells of helping his dad foal down a mare towards the end of his last university year.

As they were working Anton said “you know dad, I’m getting my degree in a few months’. There

was a short silence and then his dad’s response: “I know. F- it!”

Anton joined the farm in 1993 and says his dad was fantastic and allowed him to take over almost from the word go.

Today Beaumont Stud stands 32 mares of which approximately 60% are owned and the rest are boarded mostly for friends & acquaintances which they foal down and prep for sales. The broodmare band is relatively small and Anton knows the families really well.

They use a small stallion pool and learn what they throw and what works with their individual mares. “There are a few nicks that work. I also believe strongly that you don’t put a sprint mare to a staying stallion.

Also, with Dowdstown Charley & St Cuthbert, I grew up surrounded by stamina. It’s possible to become over-exposed to stout bloodlines, but there is definitely a place for stamina on the mare side.”

Resident stallions? “I’ve got no interest in standing stallions”, says Anton frankly. “The risk is far too big for me. Plus mares coming onto the farm at 6 am on a Sunday morning is not my idea of fun!”

Does he ride? “I’ve ridden twice in my life and fell off and broke my arm, so no. You get as much of a kick out of watching a horse you bred as a horse you own. It’s actually a cheap way to race !”

Harry Shepherd passed away a decade ago. Anton and his wife Dominique have been solely responsible for the stud since. They have 3 children, India (16), Cameron (15) and Arabella (7).

Beaumont has bred 5 group one winners on Anton’s watch, most notably current Horse of The Year, Variety Club. There will be many more years of fun on the racetrack to look forward to.

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Roski Stud

Roxy, the Old Lady, Soss, Kelly & I Greg Royden-Turner has horses and farming in his blood.

His father was a steward at the Pietermaritzburg Turf Club and bred horses as a sideline on their Greytown timber farm. Gregrolyn Stud ran for around 20 years and stood stallions such as Sky Line (winner of the Cape Guineas and Derby), Appointment and Herald’s Prince.

Greg followed racing from a young age and is a life member of Gold Circle. Even when he did not own horses, he followed breeding and racing results keenly.

Although a farmer for most of his life, producing timber, citrus, cattle and game on a 5500 farm outside Greytown, Greg decided to get out of farming and purchased a filling station on the highway near Cato Ridge. It might have made sense to settle in the Summerveld area, butGreg says “we are really Midland people”. They love the laid back Midlands environment and when they viewed the old Nutfield Stud in Lidgetton, they fell in love with it on the spot.

The 50 ha farm was beautifully appointed for horses with lush kikuyu paddocks, 21 stables, a maternity wing, a sick bay and yearling preparation block, but Greg vowed that “over my dead body will we have horses here”.

Initially Greg helped run the filling station, but says it was too big an adjustment from farming. His wife Chelle soon fired him and sent him home to run the farm and look after the cattle he’d brought with them from Greytown. Chelle is fluent in Zulu, Xhosa, English, Afrikaans and German and now runs the filling station full time with help of their daughter Roxy and long-time friend and colleague Big D Slater. Oldest daughter Kelly is part of the management team at nearby Michaelhouse

School. Youngest daughter Juli (Soss) has inherited the horse gene and is a top notch polo and polocrosse player, making the South African team - she was a member of the World Cup winning squad in 2011. She has been to Australia and then worked for Leo Baxter in Plettenberg Bay before coming to the farm.

Greg soon grew bored of his cattle (and forgot about his threats!), and decided to get back into horses.

Nutfield was renamed Roski Stud and Greg explains that the meaning is two-fold – Roski was his dad’s nickname, but he says it can also be seen as a combination of all the family’s names – “Roxy, the Old lady, Soss, Kelly & I”.

Much like the days when his father was breeding, the horses are a real family enterprise and despite the ups and downs they are enjoying their new venture enormously.

He had a look around the 2007 Cape mare sale and bumped into old family friend, Anton Proctor, who had been good friends with Greg’s father in his breeding days. Greg was delighted to meet up with him again and the two have been working closely together ever since. Greg says he is finally realising his dream to get back into breeding and racing and be able to surround himself with horses again. “We love the industry, but above all we love the horses and pride ourselves that our policy is that

the horse always comes first.”

Greg purchased 6 or 7 mares from that first sale and shortly afterwards, a few more from the Laurie Jaffee dispersal including Mistress Mine and Rambo’s Love. Greg believes that the key to success lies in high quality mares and has selected his broodmare band for good pedigrees with race performance.

The mare numbers have since increased to 28, with sire-lines like Royal Academy, Grand Lodge, King’s Best, Thunder Gulch, Noverre, Fastnet Rock and Singspiel. The farm doesn’t stand any outside mares, although Greg chuckles that they do accommodate 8 of Soss’s “polonies”.

After trying a number of different managers, Greg asked his youngest daughter Soss to come back to the farm. She takes care of the day to day work on the farm, including the sales prep, and breaking in and preparing horses for the track. Greg focusses on the agricultural aspect of the farm, such as the pasture management and enjoys studying bloodlines and designing the matings.

The mares are kept in groups of five to avoid competition for food and they live out all year round, although they are managed in a very hands-on manner and inspected twice daily. There is also a very strict maintenance routine of inoculation, farriery and deworming and the farm

Top Performers by Sale Year has fecal egg count analysis done four times a year. The horses are fed twice a day on a carefully balanced hard feed and an ad lib mix of hay and lucern that is milled on the farm. They also have access to lush kikuyu grazing in the summer and in winter the paddocks are over sown with rye grass to ensure that they have access to green feed throughout the year and Greg is proud of the fact that they have not had a single colic.

Unconventionally, they don’t foal in a box. There is an old tennis court that has grassed over and they foal on that. A night watchman keeps guard during foaling time and alerts them when a birth is imminent, although Greg says that his daughter Roxy is their best foaling spotter.

There are no resident stallions, but Greg has a number of shares in Cape stallions and regularly sends a number of mares for covering.

However, he feels that the travel does take its toll and has recently joined Anton Proctor in importing a Gr1 winning son of A.P. Indy called Just As Well, who stands with Bruce le Roux at Spring Valley Stud.

His first crop are foals of 2012. With a host of exciting stallions on offer in KZN, including Byword, Crusade, Irish Flame and the proven Toreador, Greg is very keen to support the local stallions in future.

Greg took out his colours a little over 4 years ago and races with his wife under the name Mr & Mrs G J Royden-Turner.

They imported a number of racing fillies from Ireland and Australia, some of which have already joined the broodmare ranks at Roski, including the very useful Katici Princess (a half-sister to Kahal), whose Captain Al colt forms part of this year’s National draft.

At Nationals Greg is particularly excited about this year’s draft of nine yearlings, by Fort Wood, Captain Al, Jet Master, Kahal, Dynasty and Tiger Ridge.

National Sale Yearlings (MR 95 or over) SI= Sale Index - price vs. the average price of a yearling of the same sex at the same sale; *= Select Sale

National Sale Yearlings of 2008

MR 116 115 113 112 112 112 109 108 108 108 108 108 107 106 106 106 105 105 105 104 104 104 104 104 103 103 103 102 102 102 101 101 101 101 101 100 100 100 100 100 100 100 99 99 99 99 99 99 98 98 98 98 98 98 97 97 97 97 96 96 96 96 96

price 400.000 375.000 100.000 300.000 400.000 2.500.000 1.200.000 275.000 1.000.000 400.000 1.000.000 260.000 525.000 200.000 130.000 600.000 500.000 230.000 900.000 350.000 1.600.000 500.000 180.000 200.000 300.000 380.000 410.000 240.000 150.000 400.000 550.000 600.000 350.000 470.000 100.000 170.000 260.000 225.000 550.000 900.000 325.000 750.000 90.000 120.000 175.000 150.000 800.000 200.000 100.000 250.000 450.000 60.000 1.000.000 250.000 400.000 130.000 200.000 1.000.000 80.000 1.800.000 300.000 200.000 850.000

select SI sex & horse

sire 0.94 c Bravura Silvano * 0.88 c Past Master

Jet Master 0.24 c Tales Of Bravery Kahal 0.71 c Bold Silvano Silvano 0.94 c Orbison Mogok * 5.90 c Noordhoek Flyer Pivotal 2.83 c Happy Valley Alphabet Soup 0.65 c Royal Bounty Muhtafal * 2.36 c Rebel Knight

Jet Master * 0.94 c Kiss Again Al Mufti * 2.36 c Captain’s Secret Captain Al 0.61 c Lizarre

Jet Master 1.24 c Happy Landing Al Mufti 0.47 c 06early Fun

Captain Al 0.31 c 06watercolours Dynasty 1.41 c Vacherin

Var 1.18 c Bois De Var

Var 0.54 c Never Forever

Captain Al * 2.12 c Iliad Fort Wood 0.95 f Flirtation Silvano * 4.33 f Alderry Al Mufti 1.35 f Laverna Parade Leader 0.42 c Clearly Silver Silvano 0.47 c Nocturnal Affair Victory Moon 0.81 f Give Me Five Goldkeeper 0.90 c Lochlorien

Var 1.11 f Mary Lou Rich Man’s Gold 0.57 c Whole Kaboodle National Emblem 0.35 c 06the Last Waltz Muhtafal 0.94 c Winter’s Night Western Winter 1.30 c 06jukao

Tamburlaine 1.41 c Apolo Grey Spectrum 0.83 c Eastern Cobbler Al Mufti 1.11 c Meltaway Alami 0.27 f Esterel

Var 0.46 f Arcola

Caesour 0.70 f Cinnamon Sugar Fort Wood 0.61 f Field Flower Silvano 1.30 c Massimiliano Model Man 2.12 c Sgidi Galileo 0.88 f Comet Chaser

Jet Master * 2.03 f Jet Trail

Jet Master 0.21 c Mahogany Silvano 0.28 c National Play

National Emblem 0.47 f 06beautiful Piper Goldkeeper 0.35 c Bandol

Var * 2.17 f Pagan Dance

Jet Master 0.47 c Polar Moon

Victory Moon 0.27 f Mama Ocllo

National Emblem 0.68 f Townsend

Captain Al 1.06 c National Emperor National Assembly 0.14 c King Fernando Parade Leader * 2.36 c Acrisius

Western Winter * 0.59 c Fort Petersburg Fort Wood * 1.08 f Quick Single Jallad

0.31 c Boylan Blaze Parade Leader 0.47 c Waitangi

Captain Al * 2.71 f My Kazzie

Western Winter 0.19 c 06little Arc

Tara’s Halls * 4.24 c 06circle Of Life Smarty Jones 0.81 f Comebackanddance Jallad 0.54 f Ariza Parade Leader * 2.30 f Valeta Var

Highflyer Stud

Still Flying High Gernot Eckert came to South Africa from Germany in 1963. He was a keen weekend horse rider, which is how he met his showjumping and eventing enthusiast wife Beryl – “we met on horseback!”

“I bought a horse to ride from William ‘Puka’ Ferreira.

I used to ride with him too.

My horse stood with his father at the plot next door.

That’s how I got to know the jockeys and got invited to all the parties. Eventually I bought my first racehorse, Jarambi. I could tell you a

book about that horse! We landed up with Jean Barnard and she had a little stud called Lyneham Stables in the Philadelphia area. We bought her out – not really knowing what we were doing - and have been in breeding and racing for 35 years now.”

“In the beginning things

weren’t all that hot, so I started buying some better bloodstock. We bred some nice horses. We’re the only stud to bred two fillies that beat Flobayou – Nobely Born in the Cape Flying Championship and True Tempo in the Merchants. It’s our claim to fame! We also had a few Gr1 winners. We won the SA Derby and Gold Bowl with The Monk.”

“Things went well and we ended up with 22 broodmares and 4 stallions. Then we were hit badly with the equine flu

and lost a lot of horses. We’re not so young anymore, so we’ve cut down to 4 mares - it’s too hard to compete against the big guys. We still breed and go to the sales, but only on a small scale. I sold a National Emblem who is entered for the Computaform Sprint with Ormond Ferraris.

He’s called Sharp Design and . We didn’t get a bid on the Nationals and we sold him after the sales to Ormond.

Out of 8 starts, he’s won 5 and placed 2nd 3 times.

Lucy’s Axe joined Highflyer in 1988 and became the farm’s flagship stallion, taking them to the top of the breeder rankings in the mid-90’s.

Stud manager Neill tells that he was such a gentleman that

one could stable him with the pregnant mares. The farm bought a little Shetland pony as Lucy’s companion.

Foundation mares were Young Lady (bought as a yearling off Maine Chance, back in the day when it was run by Stanley Bennett). Her first foal was Gr2 winner Young Victor, from the first crop of Lucy’s Axe. Neill says “He was so small and ugly that we used to hide him when people came to view the stallion! He went on to win 9 or 10 races Neill Griesel is the manager at Highflyer and is pretty much part of the furniture.

He joined Highflyer in 1984, when it was still Lyneham Stables and belonged to Jean Barnard, and has been there

ever since. Neill used to enjoy the pedigree side of things and designed all the matings with the assistance of New Zealand pedigree fundi Clive Harper, Andrew Reed, Henry Jooste and Karel Miedema, but these days Rob Knuppe is their main consultant.

At Nationals Highflyer has two fillies at the 2013 National Sales.

A Silvano filly (#170) out of Sporteska (a 5-time winner for Mike Bass), who scored a 9 with the inspection panel and is “a quality filly”. The second is a Dupont filly out of Young Anna, also with an excellent rating from the inspection panel.

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Supplement to SPORTING POST • FRIDAY 19th - SUNDAY 21st APRIL 2013

LEADING SIRE

SEASON 2012/20

stakes

sire

AEPR runs wnrs wns wnr LEADING rnrs SIRES

BY STAKES

rnr%

SEASON 2012/2013: to 8 April 2013

stakes

10,095,343 10,095,343 9,785,191 9,785,191 8,164,883 8,164,883 8,055,590 8,055,590 7,565,330 6,148,745 7,565,330 5,390,550 5,081,175 6,148,745 4,379,370 5,390,550 3,952,445 3,859,795 5,081,175 3,786,572 3,752,328 4,379,370 3,598,432 3,411,240 3,952,445 3,400,070 3,859,795 3,187,828 3,094,345 3,786,572 2,949,028 3,752,328 3,598,432 3,411,240 3,400,070 3,187,828 3,094,345 2,949,028

sire

rnrs

AEPR

Silvano Silvano *Jet Master 183 55,166 *Jet Master 206 47,501 Var Var 152 53,716 Kahal 167 48,237 Kahal Captain Al 173 43,730 Western WinterAl 129 47,665 Captain Tiger Ridge 85 63,418 Dynasty 92 Western Winter 55,230 *Victory Moon 128 34,214 Tiger Ridge Spectrum 126 31,369 Fort Wood 113 34,157 Dynasty Mogok 127 29,816 Right Approach Moon 94 39,918 *Victory Black Minnaloushe 120 29,987 Windrush Spectrum 117 29,156 *National Emblem 131 25,955 Fort Wood King Of Kings 113 28,211 *Strike Smartly 72 42,977 MogokApproval 116 Miesque’s 25,423 Right Approach Black Minnaloushe Windrush *National Emblem King Of Kings *Strike Smartly Miesque’s Approval

runs

wnrs wns wnr/ rnr%

183 919 206 61 985 86 152 67 753 933 167 60 884 67 638 50 173 427 30 459 129 30 669 41 85 669 39 542 42 92 34 611 494 128 33 539 45 610 126 39 661 36 113 593 34 359 127 19 622 36 94 120 117 131 113 72 116

55,166 100 33% 47,501 131 42% 53,716 112 44% 96 36% 48,237 92 39% 74 39% 43,730 49 35% 49 33% 47,665 60 32% 63,418 54 31% 59 37% 55,230 46 27% 48 35% 34,214 56 38% 54 33% 31,369 53 27% 34,157 42 30% 32 26% 29,816 42 31% 39,918 29,987 29,156 25,955 28,211 42,977 25,423

SW SW SW/ wnrs wns wnr%

919 49854 9 9 57537 5 93387 6 68848 3 5 36384 0 0 427 2 2 0 0 24592 26693 0 0 06690 1 1 542 1 1 3 4 06110 494 539 610 661 593 359 622

plcs plc/ SP rns%

61 7%86 261 10% 271 7%67 228 8% 60 234 9% 273 12%67 173 10% 117 10%50 131 0% 176 30 5% 155 0% 131 6%30 137 6%41 137 0% 131 0%39 181 3% 165 42 3% 144 16% 90 0%34 153 33 45 39 36 34 19 36

100 28% 15 131 28% 14 112 30% 11 25% 8 96 31% 9 27% 4 92 27% 3 29% 74 11 26% 3 49 3 23% 24% 1 49 2 22% 28% 60 2 24% 3 30% 54 3 25% 0 59 3 24% 25% 1 46 1 25% 48 56 54 53 42 32 42

top &%

33% Mar 42% Cha 44% Var Lov 36% Hill Cap 39% Wa Bea 39% Wa 35% Tus Pylo 33% Mea Wh 32% Wo Eye 31% Sha 37% Kin Slu 27% Ora 35% 38% 33% 27% 30% 26% 31%

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Supplement to SPORTING POST • FRIDAY 19th - SUNDAY 21st APRIL 2013

Riverton Stud

Fifty Shades Of Grey Fox. That’s how it started. Russian Fox. The temperamental grey arrived at Riverton in the same year that Duncan Barry took over the reins at the family farm. The new stallion firmly put Duncan on the map and he has endeavoured to stand a grey stallion ever since. Blue Tiger is his latest shade of grey.

THE BARRY family first arrived in South Africa early in the 18th century when Joseph Barry took up a post in the Cape as an export agent for the London Wine House. He liked it so much that he stayed, establishing a successful trading business. The family plied their trade by ship, up the East Coast as far as Port Elizabeth as well as inland, up the Breeder River to Malgas.

The business interests included dried fruit, gun powder, brandy distilleries and at one point they even issued their own paper money! The Barry name is indelibly printed on the Overberg landscape and they have left significant evidence of their influence on the region.

The Barry’s have a long history of breeding horses both for racing and as British Army remounts. In 1918, Duncan van Reenen Barry (grandfather of the present one) bought Riverton Stud and his son (George Joseph)

was born on the farm in 1921. In fact, barring two brief absences to fight WWII and a spell of auditing in Cape Town, George Joseph spent his entire adult life as a gentleman farmer on Riverton.

The farm consists of 180 hectares bordering the Breede River. It is situated next door to Klipdrif on the Bonnievale road out of Robertson.

Primarily starting out as a wine and fruit farmer, George began breeding racehorses in 1967. The Robertson and BAR Valley are home to the top thoroughbred studs in South Africa for a reason. The dry climate and high calcium content of the soil makes it the ideal location to breed tough, good boned, high class thoroughbreds. George met with great success, most notably with the imported French stallion Jamaico, a grey. However, by the early 80’s George was considering scaling down and selling the horses.

He discussed his thoughts with Duncan

(working in Ireland at the time) who promptly replied “It's your call Dad, but don't expect me back if there are no horses on the farm”.

Duncan Barry, after Bishops’ College and two compulsory years in the defence force, was in Ireland.

“I went to Coolmore and from there to the McGrath family’s Brownstown Stud on The Curragh. I’d gone to Ireland really to learn to work, as opposed to standing on the sidelines telling somebody else to do the job, and I was loving it. I was one of the stable lads and for three months helped prepare yearlings for the sales at Goffs.”

Duncan also took up skiing, lived out of a combi in London, and joined an expedition in Scotland searching for the Loch Ness monster (“we didn’t actually see it, but we detected on the ultrasound a blob that was bigger than any known fish”).

When he returned home, Duncan took over the running of the stud.

George had bought shares in Russian Fox and Piet Nel sent the stallion to Riverton shortly after he was crowned champion first season sire. Duncan formed a special relationship with the temperamental grey. “He was highly strung and after work I

would take him for a run round the farm. One day I took him to the river for a drink and he plunged straight in. He obviously loved swimming and so I took him often. It made him more amenable towards me, although not to others!”

In 1993 Cardinal Fury beat Please Be True by a nose in the Administrators Cup (now the Summer Cup), to give Duncan his first Gr1 winner since taking over the farm.

However, Barry began to suffer much the same sort of disillusionment as his father.

“There were too many lows and not enough highs.” He resolved to cut back and was down to 12 mares when Domino Man (Dominion Royale Storrington) became their first Dual Gr1 winner, with the 2003 Gr1 Cape Guineas and Gr1 Horse Chestnut Stakes. The enthusiasm was promptly rekindled and the numbers started to creep up once more.

Duncan Barry studies conformation, pedigree and Tesio ratings, and then allows his gut Irish horsemanship to kick in to help design that perfect mating. Duncan believes in having his mares foal down outdoors as he prefers the foals to take their

first tentative steps on natural grass, rather than the wet straw and cement of a stable.

He is convinced that the integrity of the bone in his horses is directly related to the quality of the land they are raised on, and land management is key. The soil content is analysed and checked annually. Spent paddocks are ripped, ploughed and put under vine or fruit trees. Korog or barley is sown between the rows during winter and ploughed back to enrich the soil, along with organic fertilizer made from stable straw, horse manure, grape pips and time. Once the vines are removed, the paddocks are put under lucerne to put nitrogen back into the soil, before being seeded to become a paddock again.

Duncan also believes that thoroughbreds thrive best on a natural diet of lucerne and oats. The farm produces its own lucerne which is cut and baled at night to ensure optimum moisture content, leaf retention and protein levels.

Riverton is skilled at sales prep and proud of the fact that they do not hot-house their yearlings. Young horses are walked through the thick stand tracks along the Breede River to build lean muscle and

strong hearts. Consequently Riverton has established an excellent reputation for breeding sound, good value for investment yearlings. The pack is led by Domino Man, who cost 100k and won a million, racing 24 times.

“Clearly one of the objects is to make money, but my main aim is to always try and breed a horse that will repay its purchase price,” Duncan explains. “Everyone knows that it is going to cost them R4000-5000 a month to keep a horse in training, but it grates with me when a guy spends a lot of money on one of mine and the horse doesn’t earn that back. I find it difficult to say to an owner or trainer who has spent big on a Riverton yearling, that he should buy another if the previous one has proved to be useless!”

In addition to Gr1 winners Cardinal Fury and Domino Man, Riverton Stud has produced 2yo Gr1 winner Potent Power, Gr1 winner and 2010 Equus National Champion 2yo Link Man (bred for Tawny Syndicate); multiple group winner Tales of Bravery (bred for Victory Moon Syndicate).

Duncan’s draft for Nationals includes a full brother to Link Man (#249). A grey, of course.

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Supplement to SPORTING POST • FRIDAY 19th - SUNDAY 21st APRIL 2013

Daytona Stud

TOP PERFORMERS by SALE YEAR

Small Is Bigger Daytona is a studfarm with history. Originally part of the Koster’s Klawervlei conglomerate, then owned by a partnership involving Charles Freeman (father of Boland’s Frank), Daytona was put up for sale to dissolve the partnership following the death of the elder Freeman.

The purchaser was German industrialist Arthur Pfaff, acting on recommendation of John Kramer. The latter had long been involved with Pfaff’s European breeding interests, their main success the 1979 Prix de l’Arc de Triomphe winner Three Troikas.

John was also instrumental in breeading Elliodor, who started his racing career in France before making his name as a stallion at Daytona.

WHEN Arthur Pfaff died in 1994, his wife Ingrid offered the post of general manager to Mike Barnard, then 28. Describing himself as “a townie from Natal’, Mike attended school in Pietermartizburg and first considered pursuing a career with horses when he started playing polo during his time at Cedara Agricultural College. He took a holiday job with the late Alan King, who owned Rathmor Stud near Nottingham Road, back in the days when it was known as Kingswood Stud. “Alan was one of the best breeding vets in the country. He was willing to teach people, and I

was fortunate enough to work with him. I stayed with him for eight years.”

Mike Barnard had not been in the Daytona job all that long when Ingrid Pfaff passed away. The farm went up for sale, and Natal businessman Robin Hamilton (who had got to know Mike when he had horses at Kingswood Stud), stepped in with an offer. He structured a deal where the two of them could buy 75% of the farm (amounting to a little over 200 ha).

Over all the years, Daytona stood a number of highly pedigreed stallions, including Black Melody (half-brother

to Sharpen Up) and African Hope, neither of whom received much support. Nor did French Guineas runnerup and UK-Derby fancy, Bally Game. Then came Elliodor, who produced just a dozen foals in his first crop, among those South Africa’s first equine millionaire, Model Man. Elliodor is also remembered for Crimson Palace (the first SA-filly to win a G1 race in the USA), Super Quality (Michael Roberts’first and only July winner) - and ten other Gr1 winners. His daughters have been responsible for champion fillies Val de Ra and Donatella, as well as Julywinner Trademark.

Elliodor was the resident stallion when Mike Barnard arrived. The former Vincent O’Brien-trained Sportsworld joined soon after. Much later, Qui Danzig and Kabool took up residence, but the stud does not currently stand any stallions.

The top horses produced in the Daytona nursery include J&B Met winner Bunter Barlow, Cape Fillies Guineas winner Sport’s Chestnut, and current champion sprinter and soon-to-be stallion What A Winter. Then there’s Tiza, who made a name in France.

Interestingly, where most people measure success

National Sale Yearlings (MR 97 or over) SI= Sale Index - price vs. the average price of a yearling of the same sex at the same sale; *= Select Sale

NATIONAL SALE YEARLINGS of 2010 in numbers, Barnard is convinced that the stud’s overall record has improved since he decided to cut down on mare numbers about five years ago.

“We would have between 120 and 150 mares at some periods in the year. We used to average 12 mares to a paddock and that meant there was too much competition for the grass. The weaker ones weren’t able to battle enough, and this particularly applied to the yearlings and weanlings. Now we have only six to a paddock at the most.

That’s paying off.”

Mike’s wife Gail grew up on a poultry farm at Camperdown and freely admits that she didn’t know a sire from a dam when she and Mike first met at Kingswood Stud. Gail had impressed Hamilton with the way she managed the paperwork at the stud. In fact, her input was a significant factor in the businessman’s decision to offer a partnership.

At Nationals Daytona has an eyecatching draft of two Jet Masters (including a filly out of a full sister to Sport’s Chestnut), a Captain Al half sister to Whiteline Fever, and colts

by Dynasty and Lateral.

MR 113 112 112 111 111 110 109 108 107 107 107 105 104 104 104 103 103 103 103 102 102 102 101 101 100 100 100 100 100 99 99 99 99 98 98 98 98 97 97 97 97

price 325.000 550.000 200.000 350.000 325.000 460.000 4.000.000 250.000 170.000 650.000 200.000 3.600.000 325.000 1.400.000 220.000 700.000 1.000.000 380.000 220.000 225.000 400.000 60.000 150.000 420.000 525.000 250.000 300.000 175.000 80.000 150.000 200.000 200.000 650.000 400.000 380.000 300.000 600.000 100.000 260.000 190.000 1.000.000

select SI 0.87 1.47 0.54 0.94 1.22 1.23 10.72 0.67 0.46 1.74 0.54 9.65 0.87 3.75 0.82 2.62 2.68 1.02 0.59 0.60 1.50 0.16 0.40 1.13 1.41 0.67 1.12 0.47 0.30 0.40 0.75 0.54 2.43 1.07 1.02 0.80 1.61 0.27 0.97 0.51 2.68

sex & horse c Pomodoro c Slumdogmillionaire c Silver Flyer c Master Plan f Princess Victoria c Pylon c Pilgram Bridge c Depardieu c 08jazz Champion c Changingoftheguard c Astro News c Potala Palace c Shogunnar c E-Jet f Felix The Cat f Amur Affair c Rio Carnival c Right Beauty c Straw Market c Indian Hawk f Hidden Beauty c Winter’s Song c Hard Rock c Alula Borealis c Punta Arenas c Heavy Metal f Kalami c Parceval f Beloved Betty c Pessoa f Magic Smoke c Wagner f Comtesse Dubois c Red Fort c Glorious Jet c Final Button c Winter Mischief c Putney Flyer f Solarium c Baracah c Second Tycoon

sire Jet Master Strike Smartly Silvano Jet Master Victory Moon Fort Wood Jet Master Dupont Lundy’s Liability Go Deputy Silvano Singspiel Solskjaer Jet Master Black Minnaloushe Tiger Ridge Hussonet Right Approach Windrush Black Minnaloushe Victory Moon Western Winter National Emblem Go Deputy Silvano Silvano Daylami Silvano Spectrum Go Deputy Fort Wood Tiger Ridge Count Dubois Fort Wood Jet Master Tiger Ridge Western Winter Miesque’s Approval Var King Of Kings Captain Al

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Supplement to SPORTING POST • FRIDAY 19th - SUNDAY 21st APRIL 2013

Maine Chance Farms

Chance Encounters Maine Chance Farms was established by Godfrey Gird in 1967, when he relocated to Robertson from his Wittehart Stud in Beaufort West. He designed and developed the beautiful stable blocks that still exist today.

GRAHAM Beck purchased the operation in 1976 and continued to breed and trade extremely successfully.

The farm led the breeders’ championship log for 5 consecutive years from 19972002 and has rarely been out of the top-five.

A decade ago Graham Beck sold Maine Chance to German industrialist Dr Andreas Jacobs, who third generation generation of a breeding and racing family. His grandfather Walther Jacobs founded Gestut Fährhof near Bremen in the early 60’s. Fährhof ’s reputation for producing top class thoroughbreds grew quickly and it established itself as a leading thoroughbred stud, winning Germany’s Leading Breeder award 18 times in the past 40 years.

One of Walther’s foundation mares, Suncourt, produced the filly Surama in 1970.

Mated to Literat, Surama got Champion racehorse Surumu, who became an influential sire.

Six times Champion Sire, his name figures in most of the pedigrees of the champions bred at Fährhof.

Surumu is also the broodmare sire of German Champion Sire Lomitas, sire in turn of Maine Chance stallion Silvano.

Andreas became involved at Fährhof in 1992. Grandfather

Walther officially asked him to come on board in 1995, and slowly and carefully handed over the running of the farm.

Dr Jacobs explains “One very big advantage for me was that my grandfather started the thoroughbred breeding from a background of riding Warmbloods, which we have all done” (father Klaus Jacobs was an Olympic dressage rider, and Andreas competed at dressage in the European Championships). “There are also a lot of people on the horse side that I’m closer to than the racing side, for example, my good friend Monty Roberts. He helped us a lot and devoted a chapter of his book to Lomitas. He has made the life of the horse a better place. I have been lucky to work with so many wonderful trainers, such as Andreas Wohler and my racing manager Simon Stokes.”

Andreas’ father Klaus acquired Newsells Park Stud in Newmarket (UK) in 2000 and built it up into one of Europe’s most successful commercial breeding operations, before his untimely death in 2008, leaving Andreas at the helm.

“At Newsells Park, the first mare we bought was Spirit Of Eagles, a tough American mare, and she produced Silvano. He was the first

good horse I bred. He was an international superstar, renowned as much for his toughness and constitution as his indomitable will and extraordinary ability to accelerate in an instant. I will always respect him as the consummate traveller with a perfect temperament.” Silvano was voted German Horse of the Year and Champion Older Horse and retired to Fährhof in 2001, replacing his sire Lomitas, who moved to Sheik Mohammed’s Darley Stud in England.

Andreas Jacobs purchased Maine Chance almost by accident. He had met his wife Natalie in South Africa in around 1989 and they were over on holiday early in 2002, visiting local stud farms with a view to shuttling Silvano to this country. On their final afternoon Robin Bruss, who was driving them round, suggested one at Robertson – “it’s traditional and nicely built.” Bruss also mentioned, almost as an afterthought, that it was for sale.

Jacobs was immediately struck by the Godfrey Girdbuilt stables and stallion boxes as well as by the beauty of the surroundings. The more he thought about it, the more he became convinced that this

was Lyrical Linda in the 2005 Garden Province Stakes, and I felt this was fantastic, even though the mating had been arranged by Graham Beck.

Happy Spirit won the Oaks in 2008 – great because she is by Silvano – while the likes of Vega and Fearless have also made us proud.” Recent Maine Chance stars include Princess Victoria, and international winners Ato and Flax.

“My first homebred Grade One winner in South Africa

Jacobs has commercial

EV landed a job with publishing house Maskew Miller and alongside colleague Sparg traversed the Cape Peninsula by horse drawn cart selling Bibles. Having sold their first load of Bibles efficiently, they asked for a pay rise and were promptly fired. From there, the two friends travelled to the Eastern Cape and got into a farming venture. Legend has it that on their first Sunday on their new farm, Birch and Sparg set off in opposite directions on horseback, east and west, to locate their nearest neighbours and hopefully swing an invitation to lunch. EV Birch encountered the Clark family and their four daughters. Not only did he get lunch, but he went on to marry eldest daughter Mildred Elizabeth. Bill Clark gave his daughter a wedding present of a 2500ha nearby farm called Vogel Vlei.

time. From him EV learnt a great deal about the art of horses. When Bailey scaled down his breeding operation, he passed on good breeding stock to his friend – including the stallion Sunstone, who had already twice been the country’s leading sire.

Among Sunstone’s offspring was a colt called Lenin, who registered 18 wins in five seasons and was regarded as the best racehorse ever produced in South Africa. Lenin’s birth in 1937 encapsulated the Birch philosophy of never mollycoddling horses. Lenin was born out in the veld during a snowstorm, and nobody could get to him for a whole week.

Lenin’s dam was imported English mare Drohsky, still revered by the current Birches as foundation mare.

Drohsky’s descendants threw dozens of great racehorses, her granddaughter Maritime producing July winners Sea Cottage and Naval Escort.

In her book They Raced To Win, Jean Jaffee wrote that, from the early 1940s, Lenin “remained the greatest hero of the turf for some 25 years until two great horses, Colorado King and Sea Cottage, began vying for the title”.

Guess who bred those two.

EV went to England and purchased 20 thoroughbred mares and two stallions. On their arrival in South Africa he immediately sold one of the stallions and ten mares, which paid for the entire venture.

Vogel Vlei came to prominence thanks to EV’s friendship with Sir Abe Bailey, the leading breeder of the

Chris Birch, grandson of EV, reveals: “We believed that to withstand the pressures of racing horses had to be raised tough. They were foaled out in the paddocks and mostly stayed out; they were pretty wild when we brought them in before the sales! They grazed and weren’t fed up to promote fast growth. We reckoned that the slower

Birch Brothers

One of South Africa’s oldest stud farms, Vogel Vlei was founded by Ernest Vincent (“EV”) Birch in 1910. EV was from the market town of Amersham in England.

When old enough to travel the world, EV and older brother Sydney decided that one should go to Canada and the other to South Africa. They settled the matter with a coin toss. So it seems South Africa chose EV - he arrived in Cape Town in the 1890s, age 17, with all of 17 shillings and sixpence in his pocket.

Andreas Jacobs and Graham Beck was not just the place to stand Silvano, but a stud which would ensure the stallion’s success.

“It was 30-plus years old and needed a bit of a polish but the horses looked well. I learned that it had been one of the leading farms in the country for the past ten years. That told me I would be buying into a good solid base, that the soil must be good, as must at least some of the bloodlines and the people running it.” Silvano became the first stallion to stand at Maine Chance for Dr Jacobs. Originally intended to be a short-term shuttle tour in 2003, it turned into a permanent arrangement after an outbreak of African horse sickness.

John Slade, who previously managed Scott Bros and Summerhill Stud, spent seven years in New Zealand doing general farming, but was tempted back to South Africa

by Anthony Beck and has been at the Maine Chance helm since 2000. a

thorough grounding

the growth, the stronger the bone.

Birch horses were always two to three inches shorter than most other yearlings at the sales.”

When young horses from Vogel Vlei Stud arrived at the yearling sales at Milner Park back in the day they were a scraggly, woolly-coated, unprepossessing lot. They were virtually straight off the veld, with minimal “preparation”.

However, informed buyers knew that the words “Birch Brothers” were a mark of supreme quality and excellence.

Vogel Vlei became a cradle of big race winners, including eight Durban July champions: St Pauls (1946), Left Wing (1960), Diza (1962), Colorado King (1963), Sea Cottage and Jollify (1967), Naval Escort (1969) and Royal Chalice (1987).

Elevation, a three time winner of the Holiday Inns (now the Summer Cup) was a Birch foal who later won a national stallion championship – thus emulating his own sire High Veldt. Wolf Power, the brilliant roan miler who carried all before him in the 1980s, was descended directly six generations from Miss Jeddah, one of the original mares brought out from England by EV Birch.

Syd Birch (snr) was of the opinion that breeders put too much emphasis on the worth of a stallion and not enough on the mare. “You can’t breed good horses without good mares”.

Expanding families and diverging interests eventually brought ‘Birch Brothers’ as breeders to an end.

– he holds a doctorate in competition law and a masters in business administration and Maine Chance is run on a strictly commercial basis.

“From day one the objective has been to be in the top five breeders, and secondly to have a top stallion operation with three sires as the key number.

Both objectives feed into each other. If you have the wrong stallions you will never end up in the top five. If you don’t have stallions, you don’t get into the top five either because it becomes far too expensive.”

Maine Chance current number One stallion is Fährhof bred Silvano. Victory Moon served 2 seasons before his untimely demise in 2009.

Black Minnaloushe joined the stud in 2007, and the farm has since added the Fährhof breds Lateral and Querari, whose first crops are yearlings and foals respectively. The Newsells Park bred Gitano Hernando joined them in 2012.

At Nationals With 31 yearlings catalogued, Maine Chance has the largest draft at the National Sale. The farm’s resident sires Silvano, Black Minnalouse and Lateral (with his first SA crop) take the lionshare, with eighteen youngsters between them.

Maine Chance’s top-earner this season, Gauteng Guineas winner & SA Classic runner-up Tellina, has a half brother by Jet Master who should grab attention.

But the Birch name and that of the legendary Vogel Vlei, which has held more than 40 breeder championships, lives on. The current Syd Birch, son of Bob, grandson of Syd and greatgrandson of EV, now resides on the farm with his son Colin. Their focus is on cattle and sheep, but they still produce racehorses from about 20 broodmares, many of whom have the blood of the foundation families in their veins.

The young stock still are raised tough, but the feeding regimes have had to change to accommodate modern market demands. Leading up to sale time, yearlings are hand walked daily, kept in individual paddocks and stabled at night.

There are no longer any resident stallions, and Syd prefers to support stallions from the Karoo and Beaufort West area, occasionally sends mares further afield. The breeding philosophy is still to try and find successful nicks, such as Fair Trial with the Drohsky line.

At Nationals Syd and Colin have three yearling colts, including a half brother to three winners with a full-blooded Vogel Vlei pedigree. Their dam is a daughter of Birch-bred Champion racemare Evening Mist, whose dam Sea Mist won the SA Oaks. Sea Mist’s sire Sea Cottage and dam Wind Bell are both by Fair Trial-line sires, and their grandams are full sisters,

by Asbestos out of Drohsky.The legend endures.

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Highlands

“One of these every year, that’s all I need to make me happy”.

Spoken from the heart by Graham Beck, on receiving the main trophy at the annual Cape Racing awards a decade or so ago.

It was at about the same time that the Beck was importing dozens of young fillies from Europe and the USA. To race here first, then to provide the mare-band at Highlands with new blood.

The immediate rewards for that brave (and expensive) venture were many – on the track, Dancer’s Daughter springs to mind, there were many more.

BECK’s intended longterm benefits are proving spectacular, their best current advertisement the still unbeaten international star Soft Falling Rain, whose USbred dam was a modest onetime winner in SA. The same is true for the dam of Jackson, but both mares certainly had the pedigrees to succeed in the Highlands paddocks.

Without doubt others will follow – tellingly, more than half of the Highlands yearlings at this year’s Nationals have imported dams.

Graham Joshua Beck was born in Cape Town on 5 December 1929.

He attended Kingswood College in Grahamstown and then started a Bachelor of Commerce degree at the University of Cape Town.

He was mid-studies when he set up his first building / renovating company. As he put it “My father said I was a useless bugger and to eff off – and that was how I started in business.”

After UCT, Graham struggled to find work in Cape Town, so resorted to an apprenticeship as a coal miner.

From humble beginnings, he managed to buy the disused Zuinguin coal mine in Vryheid and eventually either developed or acquired a total of 18 coal mines consolidated under the Kangra label.

The coal also led to the horses, because during his Vryheid days, Graham met Walter Grindrod (who also had coal interests in the area).

Walter was a racecourse steward and introduced Graham to Greyville and how to punt!

They say it only takes one good horse for the bug to bite, and for Beck Foreign Prince was the start. The brown and white Beck silks were soon seen winning major features.

In 1973, Graham Beck purchased the Regent Stud in Natal and he took over the Stormberg Stud in Dordrecht shortly afterwards. He had no knowledge of farming or breeding but he was willing to help and to learn and acquired the farm with 25 mares. He borrowed Sydney Birch to get the stud straight and to educate him in the game.

The breeding side of things really took off in 1976, when he took over Maine Chance from Godfrey Gird.

Highlands followed, acquired from the late Jack Stubbs in around 1985. Although Stormberg and Maine Chance were subsequently disposed of, Beck kept Highlands and expanded it with the addition of the adjacent Noreen stud from Granville Gorton.

Highlands is situated a few kilometres outside Robertson and stands on 520 hectares of lime-rich ground. According to manager Mike Sharkey, the area has much in common with the Hunter Valley, home of many of Australia’s most successful studs. “The Aussies say that, where vines and roses do well, horses thrive. Our mountains are

higher, and their valleys are wider, but otherwise we are very alike.”

Mike Sharkey has been the manager of Highlands Farm Stud for 23 years. Born in Nottingham Road in KZN, he grew up at Mauritzfontein under the auspices of his Irish father Paddy (who was the manager) and Tremayne Toms.

Mike remembers accompanying his dad to yearling sales when they were still held at Mill Park and the Birch Bros yearlings which arrived by train had to be lassoed from the roof!

Mike started his working life as a professional show-jumper and instructor. He spent three years working for Henry Devine at the Golden Oaks Stud near Paarl before joining Godfrey Gird at Oaklands.

“You wouldn’t find a better horseman than Godfrey but he couldn’t look at money. If it was there, he spent it. He was struggling when Antony Beck approached me at the sales one year and asked me if I would like to run the Beck farms. It was a great opportunity.” Mike joined Highlands in 1990 and has been there ever since.

Beck was famously a big fan of stallions. He’s quoted as saying “Maine Chance already had a stallion (Persian Wonder) and I began buying more, but it took me years to wake up to the fact that the best part of the game is having stallions, not broodmares.

There is no real gamble with a stallion – if he clicks, he can cover 300 mares – but if anything goes wrong with a mare, you are down the tubes.”

Dancer’s Daughter, Gardener’s Delight (dam of Soft Falling Rain), Moonlit Prairie (dam of Jackson), Helleborous Blue (dam of The Hangman), Scented Samantha (dam of Franny), Sage Blue (dam of Russian Sage), Crimson Lily (dam of Ravishing).

The stallions Beck has been associated with The Robertson temperatures over the years include soar in summer and the winters are Elevation, Lords, Bush sharp, but the mares stay out as part Telegraph, Badger Land, of Sharkey’s belief in leaving things Steady Beat, Jallad, as close to nature as possible. “If National Assembly, you feed them well, the mares can Joshua Dancer, West Man Mike Sharkey - Highlands look after themselves outside. If and Spectrum. Highlands manager for 23 years you stable them, the older ones get currently stand Windrush stiff and in the morning they can (imported from the Beck’s USA farm, Gainesway), hardly walk. Leaving them out means they can walk around Dynasty, Antonius Pius, and so keep their joints loose.”

Pathfork and Great Britain.

Highlands’ yearlings are regarded as the epitome of what The Becks have owned and well-presented, well-prepared horses should look like with bred any number of track “The yearlings are almost as good as Highlands” is the highest stars over the years, including compliment one can receive in the stable block. It’s a reputation The Rutland Arms, Tucaman, Mike is justly proud of. But how do they do it?

Bush Telegraph, Mark Anthony, Crimson Waves, “There’s no secret,” says Mike. “A good horse is a good horse Free My Heart, Russian Sage no matter where he is bred, but the prep is no more than basic and of course the flying grey horsemanship. Every horse is an individual and you’ve got to Dancer’s Daughter.

But treat them as athletes and feed them accordingly. And you can’t interestingly, it’s the 1983 Met scrimp and save, feeding them on second-rate this and that. In winner Arctic Cove who Beck addition, the feeding needs to be on a gentle curve all the way. considers the best horse he It takes 90 days to prepare a horse for a sale, but if you have and wife Rhona have owned. been feeding on a gentle upward curve, you don’t have to do Graham Beck launched a much more when preparing time comes. You keep them on the determined effort to upgrade same level and increase the exercise. Here they go on walkers the Highlands mare band, and in the day they are stabled during the 90 days to stop their importing large numbers of coats getting burned and bleached by the sun. At night they quality fillies from abroad. live out. We run colts separately otherwise they fight too much, As broodmares they do not but with the fillies we run five or six together. Horses are herd have long to prove their animals so they like to be together. But you can’t take anything worth, with four foals being for granted. If you think you know everything, you know the normal span. If they nothing!” don’t produce anything worthwhile in the first four, After a brief battle with lung cancer, Graham Beck passed they are lucky to get any more away at his London home in July 2010, aged eighty. Graham chances at Highlands. It’s a Beck has been described in different ways by different people policy that can open doors for - self-made entrepreneur, pioneering South African wine bargain-hunters, and has cost producer, social philanthropist. And those are all true. But his Highlands some big winners greatest legacy may yet be the one he left in the paddocks and over the years, but it allows racetracks of South Africa. new blood to be introduced on an on-going basis. Mike Sharkey shrugs, “mares move At Nationals on, it’s the foals who are the As usual a large consignment, some two dozen colts and champions. If someone has fillies. Resident stallions Dynasty and Antonius Pius feature bought a good horse from in a big way, but there are eleven other sires represented. you before, he’ll come back.”

Highlights might be the full brother to Cape Derby winner Jackson, the Captain Al half brother to Gr1 winner On Her The current broodmare Toes, and a Trippi colt from the family of Franny.Let’s not be band numbers 96 and includes dogmatic, though. At Highlands anything is possible! the likes of Overarching,

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Oldlands Stud

Vorsprung durch Erfahrung Barbara Sanne is a remarkable woman with a colourful past. She is also a successful breeder with interesting theories on breeding.

Barbara was born near Breslau, when it was part of Germany. Her family owned and ran a 1500ha sugar estate and Barbara was brought up with horses and had simply never lived without them. With the advent of the Second World War, her father joined the German army as an officer and was captured and taken prisoner. When the war ended, vast tracts of East Germany were ceded to Poland, including their farm. They had managed to keep 3 horses and found accommodation in some old sheep stabling. Her father provided for his family by pulling timber out of the forests.

Although the young Barbara has aspirations of becoming a vet, there was no money and when she left school, she joined Siemens who paid for her to qualify as an electrical engineer.

It was at Siemens that she met her future husband Reinhard.

“Reinhard was transferred from Germany to Johannesburg in 1963. Five years later I started breeding at our Witkoppen farm, Oldlands. It was a hobby in those days and I only had a handful of mares. We didn’t breed any world beaters, but I learned a lot.” She bred her first horse in 1969 and named him Gold Esel, after the Grimm fairy tale. He was by My Realm

out of Veronique and trained by Les Rathbone. “Les came to us to look at this yearling and said “Wow, nice yearling. I’ll train him for you if you like. My fees are R27.50 / month. Can you afford it?” Barbara chuckles. He won his 2nd start convincingly.

Stakes were R700 back then.

Those were the days.”

Barbara was chairlady of the Transvaal Breeders’ Association and was instrumental in implementing the Breeders’ Premium, before it fell by the wayside under the new government.

The Sanne’s bought a holiday home in Hermanus and Reinhard was always saying how well he felt there. “I did some research and found that it rained in this area every month of the year. I thought to myself, “That’s rather like Ireland and there they grow horses,” so we bought the farm “Oude Hemel en Aarde” from Hamilton Russell in 1995. It was a wine farm, and had never had horses on it. We had to pull out 49 000 ‘wingerdstokkies’ to turn it into paddocks.” Oldlands is in the hills above Hermanus. The original farm was 54 hectares, but she’s since bought some additional land and the farm now comprises 200ha with approximately 80ha set aside for paddocks.

“We are totally biodynamic, no fertilizers, pesticides, insecticides.” But they have had to add lime and phosphates.

“This part of the country did not have an ice age and so it was never under water, unlike other regions where the minerals settled. The soil is very lime deficient, so we’ve put in a lot of lime and phosphates and micro elements. We have a lot of fynbos and are trying to grow honeybush tea. We have as much mixed grazing as we want. We take soil and food samples regularly and mix up our own feed accordingly. I don’t like ready mixed feed. I like my land to be very productive and try to be more of a farmer than a horse feeder!” Barbara is a firm believer that this early grounding and meticulous attention to detail in terms of nutrition are what make Oldlands horses so good.

“The upbringing is so important.

We try to go back to nature. We don’t push them and we let them come by themselves. It is very important that foals should be reared where there is lots of green grass so that the mares produce plenty of milk. This helps the foals to grow to a good size before they are weaned.

Soundness and temperament are just as important. I don’t

want to be saddled with horses with funny legs and any with a bad temperament don’t last long with me. Also, if I see other people having problems with the progeny of certain stallions, I shy away.”

The farm is run by Barbara and her manager, Nicolene Dormehl.

The farm has around 29 broodmares and a few boarders.

There is a modern block of 22 stables, but they only use them at foaling time after which the mares and foals are turned out again. Young stock are brought in 2 months before sales for sale prep. In the run up to the sales, the yearlings are groomed and conditioned via a carefully designed exercise routine using the Roewer Rueb horse-walker that was installed in 2006.

“We’ve put rubber matting down for the wet season. It keeps it clean, and means the horses don’t need shoes.” Dr Martin Denkhaus visits the stud three times a week to attend to their veterinary needs and the farm enjoys an exceptionally high conception rate.

Barbara breeds very much on phenotype and likes to mate horses that have originated from the same country (UK to UK, US to US). “I don’t like inbreeding.

If I can avoid it, I will.”

Oldlands has produced a number of good horses. Lucky Find was one of the best and was 2nd in the 2007 Gr1 Daily

half sister to 3yo Slightly Blonde (2w, 5pl); dam half sister to TUVANA SILVA (8w, multiple SW, SP), Zopot Casino (7w, Gr2 pl)

News as well as winning 4 international races in the UK and Dubai. Another interesting success story is Rippling Ring who placed in the Derby, but was sold to France for a pretty penny before he could run in the July.

On his arrival in France, his new owners sold him into jump racing for a handsome fee. He debuted for Paul Nicholls at Doncaster in February, still sporting his South African summer coat. Barbara says the announcer commented “this must be the coldest horse in England!”. Ruby Walsh piloted him round and they won. Next time out they tried him at Cheltenham in the Gr1 Novice’s Hurdle where he finished 5th.

Let’s Be Cool won the Cape Oaks and her first foal by Indigo Magic is a 5 time winner. Pay The Piper and Tuvana Silva were a multiple black type earners.

More recent big names include English Garden, Astro News and Go Indigo.

The stud has a number of stallion shares, including Silvano, Black Minnaloushe, Querari, Var, Oratorio and Ashaawes. She has also had a number of resident stallions herself. At Witkoppen they stood Ribomar, Step To Fame and Historian (who moved down to the Cape with them) and Habaayib. These days they stand Indigo Magic. Barbara admits that she’s not a great marketer, so the stallion has not had a lot of support, but he

produces hardy, correct progeny that are able to keep earning till they are 6 or 7.

Reinhard died shortly before their golden wedding, but they have 3 sons and 7 grandchildren. The eldest son is the CFO for BMW in China, the middle son has followed his parents into Siemens Africa and focuses on Intelligent Networks and renewable energy. Youngest son Ian is a physician and is a professor of infectious diseases for Wits and Boston Universities.

He established Right To Care which supports and delivers prevention, care, and treatment services for HIV and associated diseases. Ian has inherited the passion for racing, holds his own colours and has also tried his hand at breeding. With his background in disease research, he has become very involved in the research into African Horse Sickness.

At Nationals Oldlands has a five-strong NYS draft which includes a half brother to Astro News and full brother to Darling Moon, who has recently debuted for Snaith Racing.

There’s a Silvano half sister to Rippling Ring, a Var filly out of Ginger Tree (whose first produce has a win and 2 places from 3 outings) and another Var filly, consigned for son Ian.

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Klawervlei Stud

Racing For The Top The Klawervlei establishment outside Bonnievale is another facet of the influence of the Koster dynasty in the South African breeding landscape.

Johan Peter Koster originally came to South Africa in 1890 as part of the gold rush. He returned to his native Germany. Years later his son Ralph left Germany and landed in South Africa in the early 1930’s. Ralph sired three sons: Peter, Werner and Wilfred.

Peter had two sons, John who is at the helm of Klawervlei in Bonnievale, and Charles who runs a spelling farm on the original Klavervlei in Beaufort West. Werner’s son Graeme runs Rosedene Stud.

Wilfred established Cheveley Stud, now in the hands of his son Vaughan. Some dynasty!

John Koster was brought up on the original Klavervlei Stud and relates that he inherited his love of horses from his grandfather. “Being the eldest of my generation of Kosters, I was very close to my grandfather Ralph and would spend time during most holidays with him. He instilled my love of the thoroughbred and my father Peter taught me about

nature and farming. While at Bishops in Cape Town, I used to write all our pedigrees by hand – I never considered anything else except farming and breeding thoroughbred horses!” He cites Paulie de Wet, Tommy Stack, Lionel Cohen and Vaughan Marshall as encouraging him in pursuing his dream, while “a wonderful evening spent with John Magnier at his home in Ireland sealed my fate!”

After Bishops, John spent six months on the family farm learning the ropes from his father and Uncle Wilfred.

Following two years national service as an army captain he did an eight-month stint at Zandvliet Stud with Uncle Paulie and Dan de Wet, and then spent the best part of 2 years abroad. He worked at Longfield Stud, then part of the Coolmore Group and now the training stable of John Magnier’s son-in-law David Wachman. Koster was given a place on the Irish National Stud course, but Tommy Stack (of Red Rum and Grand National

fame) persuaded him to stay at Longfield in a managerial position. Hello Gorgeous and Pas de Seul were the resident stallions, and outside the stud season John also worked at the Thomastown Castle Stud.

“World class farm, world class people!”

The current Klawervlei Stud was originally called Wagenboomheuwel, a 680 hectare sheep, cattle and grape farm on the banks of the Breede River, east of Bonnievale.

Paulie De Wet and Riverton’s George Barry inspected the farm with Koster senior and recommended buying it. John knew the area from his time at Zandvliet Stud and that the quality of the soil was good.

The farm was purchased in 1984. John returned from his travels later that year and began building the new stud.

They kept the family Klavervlei name, with a subtle change in spelling to differentiate it from the original.

As one might expect, Koster is passionate about his horses but it’s the stallions that are closest to his heart. When Complete Warrior passed away three years ago, he did so with his head in his boss’s arms, and the plaque that commemorates

his contribution is inscribed ‘your influence has changed our lives forever.’ “Stallions are the heart of the stud and so I put up this building in the middle of the farm. I also built it down the avenue from my house so I can see them in their boxes when I go to bed at night.”

The stallions live in the two wings which incorporate all the refinements that John Koster has picked up in a lifetime in the breeding business, including silver-coloured ceilings to keep out the heat, air vents at the bottom of the doors, and a separate tack room for each horse. Koster’s office has a window-sized opening in the wall to enable him to commune with the stallion in the adjoining box.

The magnificent stallion complex, which dominates the Bonnievale stud, was made possible by a discussion over lunch in a Hermanus restaurant in around 2004.

Koster had turned down a number of previous offers to go into partnership – “I had a nice family business and things were really good once Captain Al took off ” – but the more Markus Jooste explained his ideas the more the project

appealed. “I felt that Markus’s proposal was the right way forward and things have gone from strength to strength.

Without him and my other partners, I would never have been able to develop the stud in the way we have. The farm has changed quite dramatically over the past 5 years since forming the partnership with Markus and friends. It now has nearly 140 ha under post and rail. We have a 12 stable stallion complex, 120 stables, an 850m sand track with hot walkers and a treadmill, and a newly developed foaling and nursery unit on the banks of the Riviersonderend.”

The other partners – Johann du Plessis, Danie van der Merwe, Frikkie Nel and Jan van der Merwe – are all Steinhoff executives, and the legal framework is a company, with the young stock leaving the company’s ownership when they go to the sales.

“I’d always had this hankering to grow bigger, to be able to go to Australia to buy mares and to do the same in Europe. I remembered how my grandfather (Ralph Koster) used to buy one or two mares from Europe every year, but the exchange rate made it

impossible for me to do that.

“The initial decision was to have 30 mares of the highest quality and keep it small, but that has changed dramatically.

Once the stallions started firing, we decided the time had come to expand.”

Getting as much international blood into the country as possible is part of our dream. I have bought mares in England and France – I love the European pedigrees and my favourite is Sadler’s Wells – but I find it easier financially to buy them in Australia where the Southern Hemisphere covering makes them more attractive.”

“The first I bought was Egerszegi (dam of last year’s R3-million National Yearling sale filly) and her full sister Milanova has since been sold to Coolmore for five million Aussie dollars then, a Southern Hemisphere record.

Some of the mare purchases will be covered in Australia by top shuttle sires like Dylan Thomas, Bernardini, Flying Spur, Holy Roman Emperor and More Than Ready before taking up residence at Klawervlei.” cont. on page 18

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Klipdrif Stud paddocks. Today Klipdrif is one of the best kept studs in the country with smart, wellconstructed buildings, neat post-and-rail fencing, and immaculately cut lawns. All staff, including stud manager Shane van Zyl, live on the farm.

Bennie & The Jets

Perfection. Anyone who has dealt with Klipdrif Stud’s Bennie Marais knows what a stickler for detail he is. Of course that is the right approach for a full service operation which deals exclusively with Other People’s Horses – meaning that when things go wrong it’s always the same person who is responsible, and that when it goes right it’s no more than what’s expected. A band-leader like Bennie is music to every armchair-breeder’s ears. back, his parents refused. So Bennie found work with local breeder/vet Tommy Foulkes instead. “I used to work for him at night, often foaling down mares, getting plenty of experience.”

Dr Foulkes and Duncan Barry encouraged Bennie to start a boarding stud when he inherited a 45ha property.

The plan was to go The farm had previously travelling to the United States, been a dairy farm and then but fearing he wouldn’t come a sheep farm, so all the stud Bennie Marais grew up on a wine farm across the road from Klipdrif in Robertson.

Although his family didn’t have any racing connections, Bennie was a keen rider and showed American Saddlers.

During his army time he did farrier work for the entire period.

infrastructure had to be put in from scratch. “Some people said it was a bad idea, but Tommy recommended people to send me their mares. The Birch Brothers were one of my first big clients.”

That was thirty years ago.

The numbers climbed from ten in the first year to 35 in the second. Subsequent progress was slow, but steady, with profits being ploughed back into developing buildings and

Top Performers by Sale Year National Sale Yearlings (MR 95 or over) SI= Sale Index - price vs. the average price of a yearling of the same sex at the same sale; *= Select Sale

National Sale Yearlings of 2011

MR 110 104 102 101 101 100 100 100 99 98 97 97 97 97 96 96 96

price select SI sex & horse

sire 1.000.000 3.80 c Capetown Noir

Western Winter 2.000.000 9.02 f Blueridge Mountain Giant’s Causeway 250.000 0.95 c Sedge Silvano 200.000 0.76 c 09pine Forest Goldkeeper 100.000 0.45 f Counter Ridge

Tiger Ridge 210.000 0.80 c Tellina Silvano 800.000 3.61 f All Is Secret

Captain Al 70.000 0.32 f King’s Temptress King Of Kings 260.000 0.99 c Love Struck

Kahal 180.000 0.68 c 09lee Danzig

King Of Kings 300.000 1.14 c Twitter

Var 750.000 2.85 c Villa Del Largo Jallad 250.000 1.13 f Captain’s Lullaby Captain Al 150.000 0.57 c Gray’s Champ Greys Inn 120.000 0.54 f Wood Nymph

Black Minnaloushe 100.000 0.45 f Valdivia

Var 700.000 2.66 c Tevez

Caesour

Klipdrif does not have any private mares and is purely a boarding facility, with all the farm’s efforts ploughed into their clients’ horses. They take on seasonal as well as permanent boarding mares, and do sales prep projects for outside clients when required.

“The core of the operation are the permanent boarders and we have clients from all over the country. Some are large, some are small, but every single one counts. The biggest thing in boarding is the huge outlay on feed and labour, and as the profit margin is small you cannot do it without good in a minimum of 3 months clients. We are very fortunate before sale time and Bennie says “Even then, it’s sometimes in this regard.” too short. We hand walk the Apart from the foaling, mare horses a lot.” management and sales prep, For Klipdrif clients the Bennie and his team also advise on matings. “If people ask major sales are the main us for advice, we help. Some target. Because mare owners always credited as prefer do their own thing, are so it depends. In choosing a breeders, boarding studs earn mating, our advice is strongly recognition only gradually influenced by conformation, because there’s normally little because you have to have the publicity for winners. Even right conformation at sales. with standouts that have been Not that we get it always right raised the Klipdrif way such as J J The Jet Plane, Ebony Flyer, of course, but we try!”

Captain’s Lover, Captain’s Bennie is a big believer in Secret, Silver Flyer, Jet Legend running horses outside as and Love Is In The Air. much as possible. Mares are The farm had previously foaled outside. Once the foal is up and drinking and has stood modest stallions Beldale had all the necessary medical Lustre, Swift Call and Noble attention, the mare and foal Thatch, but the arrival of Jet are brought into the stables for Master just before his 3rd the first week or so, then are covering season in August turned out with the group, in 2003 changed everything. large paddocks. “We believe in “The chances of a boarding top class feeding, deworming stud being offered a stallion of and farrier work, but we leave his ability are slim. I thought it them outside day and night, was a great opportunity when summer and winter. We try not we were approached to stand to pamper them too much and him,” Bennie recalls. “Also I try to keep things as natural as liked what I had seen of his foals, and he came to us before possible.” his third covering season, Sales prospects are brought before anything had run.” Jet Master spent the rest of his

stud career at Klipdrif and his death in November 2011 was a bitter blow.

Jet Master will be impossible to replace, but the farm does have a new resident stallion, Soar With Eagles. Owned by an international syndicate, the son of Kingmambo came their way via old acquaintance and syndicate member Chris Peach. Soar With Eagles stood his first season in Zimbabwe in 2008, but the syndicate were concerned that the Zimbabwean broodmare band was not big enough to offer the horse the necessary opportunities and therefore opted to get him established in SA. He covered his first book of South African mares last year, and there’s great anticipation to seeing his foals on the ground.

At Nationals Bennie feels that his 31-yearling draft is an exceptionally strong one this year. It’s the curtain call at Nationals for Jet Master, but there are standout representatives by the leading sires including (but not limited to!) Captain Al, Silvano, Trippi, Var and Western Winter.

Klawervlei Stud - continued from p. 17

Racing For The Top “We are already sending some of our top fillies coming out of training to Australia so that they can visit some of the best stallions in the world. We will then bring back their fillies to race here. We feel that this is a better way of improving the South African breed and gene pool.”

Koster had no more than 50 mares before joining forces with Jooste & partners. These days it’s substantially more - “But the emphasis is on quality, not quantity – and on improving it. They say a good Irishman never counts, but we currently run somewhere around private 200 mares and approximately 80 boarding mares, but around 600 visiting mares walk through the stallion barn each year.”

The staff contingent has swelled accordingly and is made up of

accountant Hennie Barnard, stud manager Pieter van Zyl, stallion and general maintenance manager SOS Uys and farm manager George Griesel. John Gatt does the farrier work and DVC’s Robin Moore takes care of the farm’s veterinary needs.

Doing the matings is a team effort that includes Johan du Plessis, Grant Knowles and Pieter van Zyl. “Bernard loves the pedigrees and is very interested in the matings.

We ask plenty of advice regarding matings from professionals such as Form Bloodstock, John Freeman, Rob Knuppe, Lynton Ryan and Alan Porter of True-nicks, to name a few.

“That said, one of our main drives is to support our own stallions and we send huge numbers of mares to them. We also believe in supporting

our sires in the sales ring and in the last few years Markus has bought a number of high-priced yearlings by each of our sires, so showing support for the breeders who invest in our stallions.”

Complete Warrior, imported from America by John’s father Peter, was the first Klawervlei stallion. He is the maternal grandsire of Captain Al who was both bred at the stud and instrumental in boosting its fortunes. But their stallion band has increased exponentially since.

“When I visited Coolmore a couple of years ago, I asked Christy Grassick what were the best type of Danehills to stand. His reply was “all of them!” - a piece of advice the Klawervlei team have taken to heart.

John says “We try to buy potential stallion material as yearlings, this

has been particularly successful through Charles Laird and Joey Ramsden with the likes of Warm White Night, Rebel King, Seventh Rock and Oracy, with Variety Club waiting in the wings pending his success overseas.

“Vaughan Marshall gave us Captain Al and Charles our old favourite National Emblem.

Bernard has bred and owned Count du Bois and King's Apostle, a great feat as they are Gr1 winners in Europe. We look for racing class such as Jay Peg, and have been lucky to acquire UK and European champion Twice Over, who won 4 Gr 1's.

“We also have shares in outside stallions such as Trippi, Dynasty, Silvano, Querari, Philanthropist.

The Captain Al syndicate used their dividend to acquire Rebel King, which is quite special.”

Best progeny produced to date include Roland's Song, Captain Al, Danseuse Classique, Delta Force, Shadow Dancing, Emerald Cove, Thunder Dance, Wonderful World,

Hill Fifty Four, Black Toga, Top Seller (for Roy Eckstein), Secret Of Victoria (for Garth Miller), Trinity House and recent Dubai sensation, Shea Shea.

The continuous development of Klawervlei is monitored with interest by John’s wife Lana-Anne who plays a key role in landscaping, interior decorating and entertaining.

The couple have three children: John-Peter, Nicholas and Tina, and the two boys are star rugby players – John clearly setting the example for his stallions.

At Nationals The Klawervlei team has sixteen yearlings at Nationals. Resident stallions Captain Al, Jay Peg, Seventh Rock and Count duBois are represented, as well as leading commercial sires Jet Master, Trippi, Western Winter and Var. One Australian bred colt by sire-of-sires Tale Of The Cat completes the draft, the dam having Danehill and Kingmambo as her grandsires.

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Moutonshoek

Seattle Here We Come

IF you like a tall Van Der Merwe story, Bennie’s your man. Always ready for a laugh, the jovial veterinarian must find himself under a fair bit of pressure these days, with the first crop of their new stallion Mambo In Seattle coming under the hammer at Nationals.

Is he sleepless about Seattle? “Not a bit. They look the part and they’ll sell well. The plan is coming together!”

The plan has been a long time in the making. Bennie was brought up in Johannesburg and is the son of a judge. His grandfather was a medical doctor and worked as the superintendent at Groote Schuur. Although he never met him, Bennie tells me “he was a serious racing guy and every five minutes he had to spare from the hospital was spent following horse racing.”

Bennie’s mother hoped he might follow her family footsteps and study medicine at Trinity College in Dublin, but Bennie was insistent that he was wanted to be a vet. Interestingly, his initial ambition was to be a wildlife vet and says that his equine career was entirely unplanned.

Immediately after he qualified in 1986, he headed off to join a veterinary practice on the Isle of Man. Two weeks into the new job, his boss broke an arm and young Dr van der Merwe had to step in. Their practice happened to manage a large number of Robert Sangster’s Curragh Bloodstock Agency stock. He relates that a lot of Sangster’s horse are named after landmarks on the Isle of Man, such as Fairy Bridge (the dam of Sadler’s Wells), named after a bridge that Bennie says he must have crossed 14 times a day! Bennie stayed for 9 months and says “I’ve never been further than a metre from a horse ever since.”

On his return to South Africa, he did his national service, during which time he did a post grad degree with Dr Schulman at Onderstepoort.

He spent a brief time working with polo ponies in Kokstad before joining Frank Freeman and Dirk Triegaardt in the Ceres Veterinary Hospital.

The family were blessed with a windfall and Bennie purchased Namaquasfontein in 1993. It was a mixed farming endeavour,

producing table grapes, rooibos tea and citrus and Bennie spent 2 days a week at the Ceres veterinary practice and for 3 days a week he focussed on developing his farm.

He was just getting things under control on his farm when Mary Slack arrived in the area and purchased Wilgerbosdrift in 1997. Bennie spent 6 years at Wilgerbosdrift, helping to develop it and serving as the resident vet. Bennie says working at Wilgerbosdrift was an incredible education and pretty much included a world tour of horse breeding. He spent time in Brazil studying why their breeding was so successful and brought their breeding philosophies back to South Africa. He cites Dr Marianne Thomson as also being instrumental in encouraging his breeding career. In 2003, he was approached by businessman and racing enthusiast Chris Gerber.

Chris is the son of Springbok rugby player, Mickey Gerber, but despite the rugby genes, says that he grew up going to the races with his father and has had horses in his blood all his life.

Chris proposed a partnership, Bennie accepted, and Moutonshoek was on its way with 5 foundation mares – three from Bennie and two from Chris. Bennie chuckles and says “Back then ambition was ‘One day when we’re big, we want to have 30 mares’today we have more than 80 mares and a stallion. I think we overachieved!”

The fruit farming still forms a big part of the operation with a lot of their produce headed for the export market.

Biochemist wife Jacqui is in charge of all the farm admin and runs a very tight ship, but after the grapes, citrus and cattle, there is plenty of space left over for the horses.

The farm is spread over 950 ha and Bennie says it is a joy to farm where he does – “The farm helps us a lot. All we have to do is make paddocks, the farm does the rest!” There is plenty of water and the farm produces good, natural grazing all year round – knee high rye grass in the winter and kweekgras in the summer.

The farm produces all its own lucerne, teff and oats which Jacqui analyses regularly to ensure that the horses’ dietary intake remains balanced and of the highest quality.

There are stables, although Bennie says the only time they use them is during sales prep, to keep the sun off the yearlings’ coats. There is a well-equipped mini veterinary hospital and Karel Skirmaans (who was trained by John Kramer) has been with the farm for years and is in charge of the horses. As the farm has expanded exponentially, Moutonshoek doesn’t miss a chance to send Karel on as many training courses as possible, to help him grow with the job. Pieter Odendaal is the general manager and then there’s the irreplaceable John Gatt “a farrier I wouldn’t want to be without!” who has worked with Bennie since his Wilgerbosdrift days.

Bennie also worked with Jehan Malherbe and Charles Faull extensively during his Wilgerbosdrift days, and says both have been immensely influential. The philosophy in building the mare band has simply been to go for the best and Moutonshoek have aimed to ensure that two thirds of their mares have enough pedigrees for their progeny to enjoy automatic qualification for National Sales. The other third are mares we believe in, but they will have to make their own way. Obviously the dream is to have a band of

mares where all have National quality pedigrees. Bennie says they have good mix of mares with a lot of depth and variety in their pedigrees, and believes they have representatives of all the serious bloodlines in the world.

They have acquired members of most of the big local families too – the only one to elude him so far is Soho Secret. Bennie chuckles and says that he loves pedigree analysis and with the combination of their computer programme and his veterinary knowledge, feels he often bids on horses for very different reasons to most!

In terms of designing their matings, the farm spent years custom designing a sophisticated software programme (the bulk of the input on this has come from Chris – he is a real scholar of pedigrees!) that helps them plan their foals. Bennie says “We get a list of 40 stallions in order of preference and then because I’m a vet, conformation and compatibility are paramount, so I’ll factor in all the necessary criteria before we make a final decision. We plug a mare into our programme, it lists the stallions in a ranking of 1 to 40 odd. We then pick the best all round (including physical) match – which may be option 12 in some cases.

Bennie foals down all the mares and once the mare and foal have had a few days to bond and the foal has had all the necessary medical checks, is drinking well, they are turned out into the large camps, and that’s more or less where they stay until sale time rolls round.

Paddocks are rotated on a counter clockwise system and rested for 3-6 months at a time to prevent overgrazing. “We keep things to extreme basics. We ensure they have good food and take care of their feet and teeth, and have a very basic weaning system of stealing the mares out of the paddocks. Young stock are raised following the horse’s natural cycle. We raise them up on the higher lying areas of the farm as it’s a few degrees warmer up there. You can’t keep them to any kind of straight line growth trajectory, it’s simply not possible without compromising their skeletal integrity. Horses will naturally grow slowly in the winter months and then grow like blazes in the summer. We do not feed them up until we up their workload. And it shows in our results. Our horses all get clean x-rays because we build the skeletal system correctly before we load it and our strike rate of winners to runners put us at the top of the list.”

“This is real horse country and was the area they used to breed cavalry and Green Point tram horses. Look at what’s coming out of our farm and Wilgerbosdrift - the results we’re getting are better than average.”

Although Moutonshoek is still a relatively young stud (their oldest horses are now 5 year olds), their stakes winners include Thanks John, First Honour, Final Button, Al Kindi, Lucky Moon, Badger Lake and Albert Mooney.

Moutonshoek also acquired a resident sire in 2010, Mambo In Seattle. “We were lucky to get him,” relates Bennie.

“We were actually onto another horse, but the guy reneged on the deal. In 2008 everyone tried to buy Mambo in Seattle, but he wasn’t for sale because of dead-heating in the American mid-Summer Derby (G1 Travers Stakes).

An acquaintance of ours happened to be in earshot when the announcement was made that Mambo In Seattle wasn’t going to race as a 5yo (even though he’d put in the fastest fractions of his career just the week before). Our contact rang Hugo Merry, Hugo phoned Jehan, Jehan rang Chris, and an hour later our offer was on the table.

“We originally aimed to syndicate 40 shares, but by the time we got him, the demand was so huge that we had to go to 50. He’s syndicated from Ambiance to Wilgerbosdrift! The support has been phenomenal. He had 87 mares first season, 109 in his second year and a book of 111 mares in his 3rd season. Often a horse with this sort of pedigree doesn’t have the race performance to match, but Mambo In Seattle was proper. He was less than 2 lengths behind Curlin in the Gr1 Jockey Club Gold Cup and of the field he beat in the Travers Stakes, no less than 8 have gone on to be stallions.”

Apart from Mambo In Seattle, Moutonshoek has a lot of firepower with shares in Captain Al, Silvano, Trippi, Philanthropist, Twice Over, Sail from Seattle, Rebel King, Jay Peg, Right Approach, Gimmethegreenlight , Bold Silvano and Kildonan (a stallion Bennie feels is particularly underrated).

At Nationals Moutonshoek are consigning 25 yearlings to the National Sales. Bennie says there is an exceptional Silvano filly, a standout Captain Al filly, and he thinks highly of the Trippis and Fort Woods in the draft.

“But our 10 Mambo’s are rockets!”

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Boland Stud

All In The Family Boland Stud is situated in the picturesque Ceres valley, known to pundits as The Valley Of Champions. Charles Freeman (father of Dr Frank Freeman), was a chartered accountant and made his way to Ceres after being appointed to doing the accounts for the Deciduous Fruit Board.

The Boland breeding operation originally started at what now is Daytona, where Charles Freeman farmed fruit and sheep.

FRANK FREEMAN qualified as a vet in 1963 and returned to Ceres to help run the farm. The only stud in the area was Odessa and Dr Freeman says “most of what I’ve learnt about horses, I owe to Colin Cohen.

He allowed me to learn and make mistakes”. Colin suggested starting a boarding stud at Daytona. The deal was that Charles would continue to run the fruit and sheep while Frank would run the stud, as long as the horses remained self-funding.

Sir Mordaunt Milner had kept his breeding stock at Broadlands, but when the farm changed hands to the O’Neills they didn’t want boarding mares and he became Daytona’s first client. Sir Mordaunt Milner and Charles Freeman struck up a firm friendship and he not only helped them expand their client base, but was also instrumental in the acquisition of Mexico II. It came about when Sir Mordaunt met Peter Butler (Mexico II’s owner) at the York Club. Mexico II was standing at Godfrey Gird’s Wittehart Stud at the time, but Godfrey felt the stallion lacked in size and asked for him to be moved on. Sir Mordaunt suggested moving the horse to Daytona. In lieu of standing the stallion, the stud got a 50% share in Mexico II. Harry Hotspur was one of his first progeny to be born at Daytona.

When Charles Freeman passed away, the farm was sold to dissolve the partnership and Daytona passed into the hands of Arthur Pfaff. Dr Freeman spent a few years living in nearby Hamlet before purchasing Boland Stud in December 1975. He has built it up from scratch into what it is today: 53 stables, with six large foaling boxes and a lunge ring to assist with sales prep.

The best foundation mare, Confidence, traces back to the Daytona days. She produced the dam of sprint champion Senor Santa as well as the granddam of Cape Guineas winner, Flight Alert. Her influence is still strongly felt at the stud today. Boland currently has a band of 50 mares, of which half are boarding mares for local and international clients. They also accommodate large number of seasonal boarders, coming from all over the country to be covered in the Western Cape. There is not currently a stallion in residence at Boland Stud, but Frank’s son Eugene is keen to add one should the right opportunity present itself.

lot 31 Argonaut colt x Model Guest half brother to LONDON GUEST Eugene returned to work full time on Boland Stud in 2005, which he now runs alongside his wife Hannelu.

She is a qualified vet who holds an honours degree in equine reproduction and has joined Dr Freeman’s practice in Ceres. They get sent mares with reproductive problems from all over the country and Eugene says his wife and father love the challenge.

When it comes to matings, Eugene says “I make use of Tesio, G1 Goldmine, broodmare, sire and progeny statistics as to which stallions suit which mares and vice versa, proven nicks and crosses. I take previous foals into account and try to improve on their conformation.

Then I physically look at the mare and stallion to see if they suit each other on conformation, if not then I will not do the mating unless there is an exceptional reason.

I look at what matings have worked in the family and why. Doing a mating takes days! My father, mother, wife and employees each give their own input and then we compare notes and argue our points of view. This is a team effort.”

In terms of raising young stock, Eugene says “raising young stock starts with conception and looking after the mare and her wellbeing. The foundation for developing a successful sales performer and racehorse is nutrition.

Horses are checked daily to insure their nutritional needs are being met and that they are achieving their growth curves correctly. We believe that young stock should be raised as naturally as possible. We want them to run free and stay out as much as possible.”

Dr Freeman is considered one of the foremost reproductive vets in the country and still runs a very busy practice at his Ceres Veterinary Hospital. He counts Dr Marianne Thomson among his partners, so Boland tenants are assured of top notch veterinary care.

Son Eugene says breeding is where his heart and passion The list of track stars bred by the Freemans and loyal lie and he was always keen to continue the family business. patrons includes Harry Hotspur, Kiss of Peace, Foreign However, mom Tanya did not want him to do any kind of farming and he was told that he would not be allowed Agent, Welcome Boy, Rotterdam, Ovarownde, Corning to come and farm before he had a degree. He completed Touch, Peri-Peri, Craftsman and Senor Santa. a Bachelor of Commerce in Accounting Management at At Nationals Stellenbosch University which has stood him in good The Freemans have four yearlings at Nationals, by stead. Finishing his degree in 2002, he headed abroad Var, Captain Al and Argonaut. The latter keeps it in to work at Weatherbys where he did pedigree research the family with a half brother (#31) to Gr3 winner in 2003. The USA was next on the itinerary and in London Guest, their dam out of a Gr2 winning half 2004 Eugene headed to Kentucky to spend time at the sister to Senor Santa. prestigious Juddmonte and Mill Ridge farms.

Sandown Stud

To Zim & Back James Armitage is third generation horse breeder and says horses are in his blood. Grandfather Jim started breeding at Rathvale Stud when the family lived in Standerton and first registered the all-red racing colours, now in the name of his grandson, in 1946. Jim Armitage bred Home Guard, Gatecrasher, Shelter and Sun Tonic.

In 1964, his son Geoff and wife Ann moved to Zimbabwe. They settled about an hour out of Salisbury and lived and farmed there for 38 years.

They grew tobacco, maize, cattle, Rhodes grass / seed for export as well as running game on a separate farm. In 1972 Geoff acquired 4 mares and established a small breeding operation. He originally wanted to name it Trelawney Stud after the area they lived in, but there was an existing stud in New Zealand by the same name, so instead they christened it Sandown, in part after the farm’s sandy soil and in part after the beautiful race course in England.

As they did not have a resident stallion, Jim sent them Rathvale’s stallion Kirsch Flambee to help get things started. Later followed Court Gallant (also from Rathvale). Over the years the stud stood Quintipor, Nissr, Pochard, Goldkeeper, and Rabah.

Barring four seasons, Sandown were the leading Zimbabwean breeders from 1978–2004. They produced 24 classic winners, five Castle Tankard winners, and numerous Horses of the Year.James Armitage was born in Harare, and studied agricultural management at the University of Natal before travelling his way around the world. He gained some fantastic experience working for James Delahooke (Khalid Abdullah’s racing manager at that time) in the UK and USA, and with Richard Freedman in Australia. Back home in 1992 he took up farming next door to his parents, growing tobacco, maize, Rhodes grass seed and chillies, hay for the horses, cattle and ostrich products for export, as well as flowers for export. And still time left to go to Sandown every day to help with the horses!

James’ wife Joy is from Cape Town and went to Zimbabwe to teach in 1998. Her work permit was running out and James proposed just five days before she was due to leave the country. With the political situation looking ever more precarious, Goldkeeper was moved to Wilfred Koster’s Cheveley Stud in 2000, and a number of broodmares were sent to Mike Barnard at Daytona.

James’s farm was taken in 2005 and a year later James and his family came to South Africa. Mike Barnard went out of his way to help and was instrumental in Armitage leasing land across the road from Daytona

Stud. This enabled Sandown to begin a new life. After two years in Ceres, the Armitages needed room to expand and moved to their current premises near Elsenburg.

The new home of Sandown Stud used to be a dairy farm which James says has its pros and cons - the pros being that the farm is fresh for horses and the cons that there were no facilities, so everything has had to be developed from scratch.

They have systematically developed as they’ve gone along. The latest addition to their facilities is a horse walker which James built with his father in law. It’s 51m in diameter and 156m in circumference so in 6 revolutions the horses have completed 1km!

The farm currently has 60 mares with foals and yearlings, as well as two stallions, Goldkeeper and Ashaawes. The majority are privately owned, although there is the odd mare for friends and family.

Asking James to name the best progeny they have produced throws up Gallant Light, Matchwinner, Battle Maiden, Cerise Cherry, Secret Life, Royal Extravagance and Francois Bernadus - and a few more exciting prospects in the pipeline.

James says he enjoys the challenge of trying to breed a good horse. “It is even more challenging breeding in SA with my budget, compared to some of the bigger players, but I think that we are going in the right direction according to Sporting Post Sandown Stud (under the registered name of G J Armitage) was 2nd on % Stakes winners/runners. James is particularly hands on with his stock and at sales is most often found at the stables making sure that his sales draft are OK. “As my grandfather and father used to say: the more you look after your horses, the faster they run”.

At Nationals Sandown’s 2013 National Sales draft consists of four colts and four fillies. They include a ‘particularly striking son of Dynasty’ (#214), a ‘strong athletic Horse Chestnut filly who is a half-sister to Priceless Jewel and Royal Extravagance’, and an Ashaawes half-sister to the promising Chosen Goddess (#40) ‘who scored 9 with the inspection panel’.

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Clifton Stud

A Trainer At Stud Clifton Stud has a rich and colourful history. Clifton Farm, situated at Lothair, Mpumalanga was bought in 1916 by current owner Peter Blyth’s grandfather, and subsequently farmed by his son Tim Blyth (Peter’s father).

Tim practically grew up on horseback. The days were when people still travelled by horse and cart, and he and his brother rode the 75 miles to St Marks School in Mbabane in Swaziland at the beginning and end of each term. Tim was passionate about horses and riding and founded a polo club on Clifton called the New Scotland Polo Club (which is still in existence).

Having grown up with the Coetzee boys Loekie (jockey & trainer), Cookie (trainer in Jhb) and Hennie (trainer & father of jockey Felix), Tim had his sights firmly set on racing.

After the war, Tim purchased a few thoroughbred broodmares.

He applied for colours (black and white quartered, red sleeves and cap) at the same time. The breeding wasn’t commercial and most of the horses he bred were leased to trainer Loekie Coetzee.

Bush racing was very competitive in those days, and Tim Blyth always participated.

There were regular meetings at Carolina and Mbabane, with horses coming off the Jhb tracks to compete.

Of his dad Peter says “he was

mad enough to drive horses to Bloemfontein & back, 1200 km, just to get them measured for pony & galloway races, which were held at Jhb race meetings in those times”.

Peter inherited his love of horses and polo from his father, but a bad riding accident put paid to his polo career. He took out a private trainers licence and trained their home-breds for about eight years. “I won the Lonsdale with Royal Desire, and had memorable times, but relinquished my trainers licence as the distance to the race track from the farm proved too much and the farming operation was too demanding.”

Peter wife Jenny doesn’t have a horse-background, but Peter says “Jen can run the stud as well as anyone. She has foaled many and can IV and stitch well if needed”. Jenny’s younger sister Pam was a frequent visitor to the farm, got hooked on horses and ended up marrying David Ferraris, who trains in Hong Kong.

The breeding operation matured from a hobby to a fullyfledged commercial operation in

1984. Peter feels that his time as a trainer stands him in good stead. The stud has produced some leading turf lights. “I was fortunate to breed the 1998 Horse of the Year Classic Flag.

He won the July, and ran 2nd in the Met to Horse Chestnut.

He bumped Jet Master three times, winning twice, but losing the Cape Guineas to him by a short head. We bred Fort Vogue (a 2.2 million yearling) who was a multiple Group winner. He was sold to race in Dubai, but died shortly after his arrival. Jet Express who won the Jebel Ali Mile in Dubai.

With the government buying up land in the area for redistribution, they sold their farm to Lion Match in Mpumalanga and relocated to 137 hectares of land in Rosetta in 2007. They took the name Clifton Stud with them. “We built the new stud from scratch.

We have 27 stables including foaling boxes and crush facilities plus two stallion boxes. The farm has 24 paddocks which average 3.7 hectares in size and we run about 60 mares here.

Roughly half of them are ours, the rest boarders.“ The broodmare band includes Vogue (a half-sister to Warm White Night & Highland Night, dam of Fort Vogue), Kali Mist (half-sister to Yard-Arm), Love Leah (from the Lily family, dam of The Plunderer), La Sirenne

(half-sister to Splash Gold), Sauna’s Rose (family of Black Skimmer and Jungle Class), Golden Dancer (half-sister to Golden Taipan and Model Mam’Selle), Fiesta Fiesta (halfsister to Fearless) and True Lily (another representative of the Lily family).

“We found it necessary to stand stallions in Mpumalanga as we were isolated from all other breeding areas. When we moved to KZN we did not intend to have one. Then A.P. Answer’s pedigree landed on my laptop! I couldn’t resist. His first yearlings are on sale this year, we have six on Nationals. The selectors were impressed with them, two scoring nines, the other four all 8½.”

“Then the King of King’s syndicate needed a stud for him to move to after Alan Sutherland sold up and as our other stallion box was empty, we stand him as well.”

At Nationals Clifton Stud has a dozen yearling at the National Sale, and hopes are high for the six A.P. Answer youngsters. Buyer’s attention will also focus on the farm’s two Silvano’s, and colts by Var and Fort Wood – the latter a half brother to The Plunderer, from the Lily-family, and the very last lot in the catalogue.

TOP PERFORMERS by SALE YEAR National Sale Yearlings (MR 95 or over) SI= Sale Index - price vs. the average price of a yearling of the same sex at the same sale; *= Select Sale

NATIONAL SALE YEARLINGS of 2009 MR 113 111 111 110 110 108 107 107 107 106 106 106 105 105 105 104 103 103 103 102 102 102 102 102 101 101 101 100 100 100 100 99 98 98 97 97 97 96 96 96 96

price 550.000 230.000 700.000 100.000 250.000 700.000 160.000 175.000 600.000 160.000 380.000 300.000 220.000 275.000 375.000 200.000 100.000 200.000 110.000 425.000 200.000 2.400.000 2.000.000 750.000 100.000 800.000 200.000 350.000 500.000 125.000 75.000 350.000 300.000 800.000 300.000 425.000 1.000.000 600.000 200.000 550.000 600.000

select SI 1.57 0.66 2.69 0.29 0.71 2.00 0.62 0.50 1.72 0.62 1.09 0.86 0.85 0.79 1.07 0.77 0.38 0.77 0.31 1.22 0.57 6.86 5.72 2.14 0.38 2.29 0.57 1.00 1.43 0.48 0.21 1.00 0.86 2.29 1.15 1.22 2.86 1.72 0.57 1.57 2.31

sex & horse c Shea Shea c Run For It f Ebony Flyer c Cap Alright c Chesalon c Snowdon f Fragrant Al c Count Express c Sports Coach f Emerald Cove c Lake Arthur c Jet Jamboree f Chocolicious c Soul Master c Sage Throne f Without Malice f Romantic Moon f Frequent Flyer c Wealthy And Wise c Elusive River c The Mouseketeer c Uncle Tommy c Roman Wall c Il Saggiatore f Fair Rosalind c Western Front c Burmese Cat c Legislature c Always Al f Kalaam c Captain Harry c Kings Entourage c General Assembly c Zanzamar f Captain’s Emblem c Tender Twilight c The Assayer c Sky Marshal c Jack Hobbs c Vantage Point f Sting Operation

sire National Emblem Dynasty Jet Master Captain Al Fort Wood Western Winter Captain Al Count Dubois Jet Master Captain Al Jet Master Jet Master Kahal Jet Master Dynasty Jet Master Silvano Silvano Silvano Elusive Quality Kahal Kahal Count Dubois Galileo Count Dubois Western Winter Tiger Ridge National Assembly Al Mufti Kahal Captain Al King Of Kings National Assembly Fort Wood Captain Al Western Winter Galileo Jet Master Right Approach Var Captain Al

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#165

#303

#173

#208

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Cheveley Stud

Breeding Champions Business As Usual

The Koster history / dynasty if you like, is one of the most multi-faceted of our breeding fraternity.

Johan Peter Koster, a cigar roller by profession, came to South Africa in 1890 as part of the gold rush.

He returned to his native Germany at some point, but the South African experience left an impression and years later his son Ralph left Germany and made his way to Beaufort West.

Ralph had three sons: Peter, Werner and Wilfred. The youngest of the trio, Wilfred graduated in 1959 and joined his father on the farm. He served an apprenticeship in the UK at Cheveley Park Stud, Wetherby’s, and the British Bloodstock Agency.

Wilfred married Shirley,

and the couple left Klavervlei in 1980 for Ceres, where they bought 1000ha of bush, and named it Cheveley Stud (after the Suffolk village where Wilfred stayed during stint at Cheveley Park Stud).

It was many years before they had cleared enough of the land and could begin to see the fruits of their labour. Wilfred remained true to his dream and eventually built it up one of the premier breeding

establishments in the country.

Cheveley has produced hosts of Gr1 winners, several making it to stallions: National Emblem, London News, Badger’s Drift, Goldmark, Divine Act, Argonaut.

A few of them found their way back to the farm.

Goldmark won seven group races from 1200m to a mile and retired to stud in Natal in 1992 before moving to Cheveley the following

year. He sired July winner Trademark and Gr1 winning filly Sarabande. International Champion London News retired to Cheveley Stud in 1998 and was leading freshman sire in 2002, while Badger’s Drift was champion first season sire in 2007. The farm now has another home bred champion in Argonaut.

Wilfred’s son Vaughan, who currently runs the farm, had an extensive grounding in Europe. Agence Francaise’s Millennium Bursary Award took him to the Haras de Fresnay-le-Buffard of Maria Niarchos and, after breaking in horses for Fieldspring’s Somerset operation, he spent time at Coolmore. He worked with Montjeu, Rock of Gibraltar and Galileo, and with Hawk Wing and High Chaparral at Ballydoyle. Four months working on pedigrees at Weatherby’s rounded off his equine education.

In 2007, with Vaughan at the helm of Cheveley, the Equus Award panel crowned Argonaut as their National Champion Two Year Old Colt.

Wilfred passed away in 2008, but Vaughan says “My views on breeding are the same as dad’s, so we are carrying on pretty much as before.”

At Nationals Vaughan Koster has a solid draft of fourteen yearlings.

Resident stallion Argonaut is represented by eight well-related colts and fillies.

Two Jet Masters, a Western Winter, Dynasty, Black Minnaloushe and Count duBois complete the picture.

lot 453 Argonuat filly x Hunters Glen half sister to Ivory Trail

lot 303 Argonuat filly x Beautiful Piper half sister to Follow the Piper and Katy’s Lane

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Varsfontein Stud

Investing In Stallions Tony Kalmanson, a packaging firm owner, was an enthusiastic owner and amateur rider. He took part in races in England, South Africa and Rhodesia and won the first South African Steeplechase on Thunder Peal in 1969.

Having made substantial investments at Yearling Sales on fillies Indira (Paddock Stakes), Kendal Green (Fillies Guineas) and Singing Winds (Clairwood Free Handicap), Tony purchased Varsfontein, a 115ha wine farm near Paarl, to house the fillies that were retiring to stud. He enlisted the help of his friend and fellow riding competitor Hennie de Jager to manage the farm.

The first yearling sold under the Varsfontein name was Kings Rhapsody, who won ten races for Laurie and Jean Jaffee. Over the years big winners have kept on coming. The outstanding Marie Galante, Promisefrommyheart, Floatyourboat, Alexandra Rose, Duchess Daba, Irridescence and more Gr1 winners such as Jumpup and Kissme, Enchanting (the dam of Champion Harry’s Charm), This England, Tickets and Tax, Young Rake and Spook Express.

International Grade 1 winners Perfect Promise (in Aus), Dane Julia (in NZ) and Irridescence (in HK) were all bred on the farm. Recent flag bearers for Varsfontein include Covenant, Royal Bencher, Master Plan and War Horse.

When Tony Kalmanson passed away in 1979, the breeding operation was continued by his

widow Mette, and children John, Susan and Monique (although Monique has since relinquished her shares). Mette still keeps a firm hand on the farm, and the development and design of the buildings in particular, while Susan and John focus on the bloodstock-side.

Carl de Vos followed Hennie de Jager as manager in 1988.

His family bred Arabian horses in Beaufort West, and he was a keen showjumper. While in the army he was in the equestrian centre at Potchefstroom. After working with Frank Freeman at Boland Stud, Carl joined Derek Southey at Valley Stud. He followed that with a stint at Gainesway Farm and Mill Ridge Farm in the USA. On his return to South Africa he was with Hymie Maisel at Hyjo, and later took the reins at The Alchemy. This thorough

grounding stood him in fine stead when he came to Varsfontein.

Carl’s wife Amanda was a keen showjumper and rode work for Peter Kannemeyer at Milnerton.

She assisted her husband at Varsfontein for 20 years, managing the office and administration of the farm, but has since pursued other business and literary interests. Carl and Amanda in their own name are breeders of Gr1 performers Caughtintheslips, Floatyourboat, Princess Of Light, with promising 3yo Yorker (who has a half brother at the National Sale) in the wings.

Assistant to Carl was Hendrik Winterbach, who originally joined to focus on the farm’s vegetable farming. When Hendrik left to pursue his own stud interests, Jaco and Carolyn Erasmus joined Varsfontein in 2007. Both have diplomas in Equine Studies from

Pretoria University Of Technology.

Mexico II was Varsfontein’s first resident stallion. He was Champion Sire of 2 year olds in 1979/80 and 1980/81, sire of Champion Sire Harry Hotspur, and a leading broodmare sire.

Fair Season was imported by Sir Mordaunt Milner in 1982 and produced the likes of Jungle Warrior, Tickets and Tax, La Mancha, Turbo Star and London Season, amongst other good performers.

Nureyev-stallion Caesour was selected for Varsfontein by Alexandra Scrope and arrived on the farm in 1996. His first crop included Classic winner Caughtintheslips, and Gr2 winners Hail Caesour, Kiss Me Quick. Caesour is South Africa’s winningest sire internationally, through daughters Irridescence, Perfect Promise, Dane Julia and Alexandra Rose. His influence as broodmare sire is equally impressive, with Champion mare Dancewiththedevil, Emerald Cove, Tales Of Bravery and SA Derby winner Royal Bencher.

Varsfontein had for quite some time been looking for successor to Caesour (who at age 22 still covered last season) and at one stage their sights were on Judpot’s full brother Mingun. This horse was a smart performer for Aidan O’Brien, but he ended up at Lane’s End Farm in Kentucky.

Knowing about the Mingun interest, bloodstock agent Tom Goff contacted Carl when the news broke that Judpot would be coming out of training with Henry Cecil. Susan went to see the horse and began negotiations with owner Niarchos’ racing manager Alan Cooper. The latter is nephew of the late Basil Cooper, who trained for Tony Kalmanson, and it was Alan’s brother Patrick who first introduced De Vos to his future wife!

The deal was concluded and Judpot’s freshman crop are current 2yo’s.

The Varsfontein team were great fans of Gimmethegreenlight during his racing career and were particularly keen on him as a potential stallion because of his sire More Than Ready. The latter is sire of Breeder’s Cup Juvenile winner Pluck, a son of Varsfontein-bred Secret Heart, whose family is well represented on the farm. When they realised Hassen Adams was looking for a partner for Gimme’s stud career, they approached him and were delighted when he accepted. The stallion’s first foals will be on the ground later this year.

John, Susan and Carl built up the broodmare band from 15 mares in the mid-eighties to some 70 today, with a small number of boarding mares for clients. The majority of yearlings are put up

for auction, although a few fillies are kept each year to race in the Varsfontein red and white silks.

Along with these, fillies with top class pedigrees are purchased to freshen the gene-pool.

The broodmare band now boasts a strong variety of families.

Secret Pact, sister to London News, and her daughters and granddaughters.

Promisefrommyheart, Covenant and Justthewayyouare. The Young Polly family which produced Rubirosa, Young Rake, Comebackanddance and Master Plan.

Susan says “These are families that Varsfontein has made, having originally bought the dams at the start of their breeding careers – very satisfying that they now fill a catalogue page!”

At Nationals Varsfontein have a bumper crop of 33 yearlings for the 2013 National Yearling Sale, including five from the final crop of Champion Sire Jet Master, two each

by Western Winter and Captain Al, and fifteen by the farm’s promising freshman sire Judpot. Yearlings by another promising newcomer Rebel King, and Gr1 producing Dynasty and Black Minnaloushe complete Varsfontein’s assault on future black type.

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Scott Bros.

If The Shoe Fits Heroes of the Isipingo flats. Robin Scott and George Rowles were boyhood friends, galloping George’s father’s racehorses across the beach, and taking part at the local gymkhanas.

At age 22, with some financial assistance from his mother, Robin opened the first Scotts shoe store, at the bottom of Berea Road in Durban. Brother Des joined in running the retail business, which flourished into a national chain of 120 shoe and clothing stores, four shoe factories, and three clothing factories.

Robin bought his first mares during this period and kept them with George Rowles at Ivanhoe Stud. Robin and Des also had a few horses in training. In 1967, the property across from Ivanhoe came up for sale and the Scott brothers snapped up the 400 hectare farm. Situated in the Natal Highlands approximately 12 miles from Nottingham Road, Highdown lies 5000 feet above sea level. It enjoys a summer rainfall of 35-40 inches with winter temperatures frequently falling below freezing.

Originally a dairy farm, the brothers studied the layout of successful international studs before designing and building the Highdown facilities.

The farm did not have the Karoo climate, or the soil and trace elements that at the time were believed to be essential for breeding high quality thoroughbreds. The Scotts compensated by taking advice from the agricultural colleges like Allerton and Cedara, and supplementing the missing elements into the soil. Third brother Neville (a Cedara agricultural graduate) managed the farm for approximately 20 years, while brother Robin and Des ran the retail business.

Highdown Stud has 170 stables, 8 stallion boxes, 4 foaling boxes, and two barns with an additional 47 loose boxes. The stables are specially designed to be cool in summer and warm in winter with roof ventilators in every box. There is a sophisticated veterinary area including 6 isolation boxes, a knock down room and a fully equipped theatre for the on-call vet. There is also a horse walker for yearling sales prep.

The farm is planted with Italian rye, Kentucky fescue, hay, eragrostis, oats and kikuyu.

Lot 286 - full brother to international star The Apache (who earned almost R12 million to date!)

The original broodmare band consisted of 30 mares, including the likes of Leta (grandam of Steiger), Baccarat (grandam of All The Aces), Night Jar (dam of Rise And Rule), Arctic Sweep (dam of High Frequency, Forever Amber; grandam of Goldenflo, great grandam of Foverflo and Flobayou), Rhine Maiden (dam of Pilsener), Elegant Miss (grandam of Chiffon Drive, great grandam of Basic Instinct and Heat of the Moment), Faenza (dam of Finney) and a number of imports, including Ofa (dam of Politician).

At some point, Scotts Stores experienced a cash-flow problem. With the business

having supported the stud for so many years, Highdown returned the favour and held a dispersal sale. Des sold out his shares, and Robin bought over a number of the mares. In 1980 Neville sold his shares in the farm, and Highdown fell solely in the hands of Robin.

In 1990, Robin decided to sell up, and held a number of dispersal sales in 1990 and 1991. He then had a change of heart, sold his Durban home instead, and Robin and his wife Joyce moved to Highdown full time. The farm was soon on the up again and 1996 was one of their most successful sale years to date, prompting Des to buy back into the

breeding operation again. Terrance Millard has been a close family friend and frequent visitor to the farm over the years, dispensing invaluable advice on feeding and foal development.

A large number of stallions passed through Highdown over the years. Kimberley Kid, Ambiopoise, Jungle Cove, Foveros, Concertino, Father Rooney, Spaceship, Gold Press Dolpour, Sapieha, and Hinton Wells. The current stallions are Mogok, Miesque’s Approval, The Sheik, Overlord and Atso.

The current mare band is 150 strong, the majority of which are privately owned.

The Scott Brothers famous silks have been carried by a number of great racehorses over the years including Sunera (before she was sold on), Jungle Class, Devon Air, Bold West, Illustrador, Prontisimo and Spanish Pool.

There have been numerous breeding highlights, with the champion Politician an obvious standout. Politician very nearly didn’t happen, says Robin. “At the time the chap who was doing our matings said we should put Ofa to Oligarchy. Neville had a fit, because Oligarchy was defunct at the time – he only had about three mares a year – and Neville asked why he had to put a mare of Ofa’s calibre to one of the worst stallions in the country. The guru had told us to go to the Alibhai line of Hyperion, and use the line through Ribot, Ofa’s sire, which is a significant cross in America.

We did it and got Politician, who won 13 Gr1 races.”

Scott Brothers were also responsible for Arctic Cove and Jungle Rock, and more recent stars Eton Square, Orbison and The Apache.

At Nationals Twenty-one yearlings have been catalogued for the National Sale under the Scott Bros banner, with resident Highdown stallions Mogok and Miesque’s Approval taking the lion’s share. Standouts, certainly on pedigree, are the full brother to international star The Apache (who earned almost R12 million to date!) and a half brother to another hero, locally and in Dubai, Hunting Tower (who earned over R5 million and still raced at age ten!). The yearlings come in all sizes, contemporary in style and colour, and true to tradition will again be competitively priced – something for everyone. So if the shoe fits, buy Scotts!

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Rathmor Stud

Big Impressions Rathmor is very much a family enterprise. Purchased in 1998 as a property investment by Michael and Tanya McHardy, the farm was run by Michael’s parents, Bernard and Wendy.

Bernard’s father was a Scotsman and at one time mayor of Dundee, his mother was Irish. A former equine insurance broker and sheep farmer, Bernard competed successfully at three-day eventing, going on to ride for South Africa. Son Michael ran the successful Cape Currency Traders and likewise inherited the horsey gene, being a keen showing, showjumping and dressage rider. “Getting into breeding was a hell of a new venture. We were looking for a place to start a farm, although not necessarily a stud farm, when we bought Rathmor.”

The property was previously known as Kingswood Stud, established by Dr Alan King, and was renamed. Says Michael “There is a little town in Ireland called Rathmore and we just liked the sound of it.”

They began with four mares of their own, but the population has increased significantly.

There now are a dozen private mares, 40 boarding mares and two resident stallions.

Mike put the private broodmare band together with the assistance of Robin Bruss and Brian Browning. Robin

was also instrumental in the McHardy’s acquiring their first stallion Woodborough. The idea of taking on boarders was to try and cover the costs of their own breeding operation.

Woodborough died early in 2013, leaving Strategic News and Bezrin as current resident stallions. Australianbred Strategic News won the Gr1Summer Cup and a mile-race in Dubai, and came to the farm in 2011. Danzigson Bezrin came when Craig Ramsay left for New Zealand, and is sire of a host of good winners including Celtic Fire, Thunderflash, Tetelestai, Tandragee, Filly Bushwacker and Jimmy Choo.

Rathmor hasn’t taken long to make an impression. The McHardy’s got the 2008 Equus Award for Champion 3yo Filly Wendywood (whose career was tragically cut short), and 2011 Equus Breeder Award For International Achievement for Gypsy's Warning, as well as several KZN Breeder Awards.

In terms of breeding philosophy, Rathmor matches mare and stallion on conformation, then pedigree, and take into account what they

are trying to achieve in the foal (sprinter or classic horse, for instance). Successful nicks are carefully noted, and replicated where possible.

The stud’s most famous offspring to date are Gypsy’s Warning, Wendywood, Malteme and Surabi.

Rathmore Stud comprises 200ha with approximately 30 ha under irrigation and another 20 ha under eragrostis. There are 88 stables, including 3 stallion barns and paddocks.

The southern border of the farm lies against 2.5km of the Umgeni River. Summer rainfall is high, allowing for plenty of water and grazing throughout the year, while winters are cold and dry.

Rathmor offers a complete service, from boarding mares, to foaling down, to having mares covered, to weaning and raising young stock. They also do sales prep and will present horses at sales as required, but rather unusually, prefer to sell their progeny off the farm. It is not an easy route and requires a lot of word of mouth and marketing, but Mike prefers to spare their youngsters the rigours of the sales process where possible.

Tanya is from a nursing background, specialising in neo-natal care. She has taken to the horses exceptionally well and plays a huge part in all aspects of the Rathmor business.

Michael and Tanya’s son Bradley is a third generation horseman. He’s been a successful competitive rider, selected for the KZN Junior Show Jumping team and KZN Young Rider Show Jumping Team.

Bradley also runs the Quest for Success pre-training programme from the farm, and preps horses either for racing or as sport horses. He also work rides at Summerveld and Ashburton.

Although Mike says it’s more of a hobby, Rathmor is rapidly gaining a reputation for breeding high quality competition horses.

At Nationals Rathmor’s National Sales draft consists of seven colts and fillies. The eye-catcher is the “great white” Gran Blanco (#74), who Mike says is typical Kahal. Also on offer is a half-sister to international Gr1 winner Gypsy's Warning by Fort Wood (#438), and an exceptional Var colt, first foal from a winning daughter of Rattlebag (#110).

Top Performers by Sale Year National Sale Yearlings (MR 95 or over) SI= Sale Index - price vs. the average price of a yearling of the same sex at the same sale; *= Select Sale

National Sale Yearlings of 2006

MR 116 116 112 110 110 108 108 107 107 105 105 105 105 105 105 105 105 104 104 104 104 103 102 102 102 101 101 101 101 100 100 100 100 100 99 99 99 99 99 98 98 98 98 98

price 375.000 300.000 600.000 120.000 360.000 300.000 320.000 450.000 400.000 220.000 260.000 120.000 80.000 325.000 240.000 575.000 500.000 325.000 170.000 200.000 160.000 225.000 60.000 475.000 2.000.000 45.000 300.000 400.000 80.000 150.000 60.000 375.000 1.600.000 800.000 200.000 260.000 650.000 500.000 115.000 220.000 320.000 340.000 180.000 1.600.000

select SI sex & horse

sire * 1.22 c Rudra Parade Leader * 0.97 c Smart Banker Strike Smartly 1.94 c Kings Gambit Silvano 0.39 c Sayadaw Mogok 1.17 c Galahad

Captain Al 0.97 c Arabian Mist Muhtafal 1.04 c Red Rake Rakeen 1.46 c Russian Sage

Jallad Western Winter 1.30 c Argonaut

0.71 c Lion’s Blood

Dominion Royale 1.00 f Gilded Minaret Al Mufti 0.39 c Strike Paradise Strike Smartly Woodborough 0.26 c Thandolwami

National Assembly 1.05 c Kings Troop

0.92 f Miss Turbulence Jet Master * 2.20 f Mochachino Silvano * 1.62 c Senor Versace Parade Leader Jallad 1.05 c Time And Love

National Assembly 0.55 c Wethreekings

0.65 c Cyber Case

Casey Tibbs 0.61 f Captain’s Lover Captain Al 0.73 c Thundering Jet Jet Master Wolfhound 0.23 f 04concetta

1.82 f Urabamba Fort Wood

* 6.48 c Lubricator Jallad 0.15 c Gliding High Rambo Dancer 0.97 c Water Jet

Jet Master * 1.30 c Air Combat

Jet Master 0.31 f Joshua’s Mistress Joshua Dancer 0.49 c Speed For Gold Goldkeeper 0.23 f Picadilly Miss London News 1.22 c Heraldic Seal

National Assembly * 5.19 c First Honour Fort Wood * 3.07 f Wendywood Fort Wood 0.65 c Mainbrace

Captain Al 0.84 c Master Landing Jet Master 2.11 c Judged Excellent Jallad * 1.62 c Nevvay Western Winter

0.44 f Cleome Muhtafal 0.71 c Miller Time Almushtarak 1.04 c Malcolmino

Joshua Dancer 1.10 c Lostintranslation Muhtafal Jallad 0.69 f Kiss For Kate

* 5.19 c Field Event Western Winter

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Lammerskraal

Class Will Tell Mike Rattray’s interest with horses goes back to his teenage years.

His father started a local polo club and bought a lot of horses off the track as polo ponies. The teenaged Mike managed to get his hands on a few such as Epic, Daring Lose, Daring Boy and Royal Dandy and had a lot of fun competing them at local gymkhana races. He eventually followed in his father’s footsteps and also took up polo. Well, “took up” is somewhat of an understatement.

He was a six handicap and made the South African team!

In the early 80’s he was invited to become a steward of the Durban Turf Club and developed an interest in the breeding side of the industry at about the same time. In 1983, with the help of John Kramer, Mike Rattray purchased 3500 hectares of land a few kilometres outside Ceres. Rattray named it Lammerskraal Stud.

Mike and wife Norma were heavily involved with their Mala Mala game farm, and Lammerskraal was initially managed by their son Chris.

The farm was developed with an emphasis on developing good irrigated mixed pasture and a practical infrastructure.

Sally Jourdan grew up just south of Durban and remembers her grandfather taking her to the infield behind the Greyville Drill Hall for obedience training classes with her German Shepherd. Whenever there were race meetings, she always found her attention wandering to the horses. She read the racing

page of her father’s newspaper every evening and got the SA Racehorse to study pedigrees.

Sally’s family were keen for her to have an office job, so she completed a year of secretarial college and then worked at Standard Bank for two years, but was desperately unhappy and professed that the only thing that kept her going was the horses she kept on the commonage for two rand a month. She finally packed it in to take up a job at Juddmonte in the UK. It took a long time for her visa to be approved and Juddmonte were not prepared to wait, so she returned to South Africa.

More determined than ever to pursue a career with horses, she worked for Terry Silcock at Starston Stud, and at Daytona’s quarantine station in Ceres. She met Chris Rattray at a social evening at Lammerskraal and asked him for a job. “I was very keen to give it a go as I could see there was so much to be done and the farm had the potential

to be developed into a good stud.”

A few years later Chris decided he wanted to concentrate on his Zululand sugar farm and the search began for a replacement manager. When Sally applied, she was told they needed a man. She promptly sat down and wrote Rattray junior a long letter setting out why she was the person for the job.

Chris spoke to his father.

“Do you trust her?” he asked.

“If you do, we should give her a chance.” Sally took over the management of the stud in 1987 and Rattray proudly says “Sally has become like a daughter. She now is a director of Lammerskraal, as well as a substantial shareholder.”

Sally relished the challenge.

Stables, sheds and paddocks were built and irrigation systems laid to establish mixed perennial pasture.

At the time the stud’s broodmare band consisted mainly of modest Argentinian

mares which were soon culled to make way for well performed South African ?llies and a handful of top quality imported mares. “I told him that if we wanted to become leading breeders we had to work with the best available genes and racing performance.”

The time came for standing an own stallion. Charles Faull recommended Western Winter who had just recovered from a serious leg injury. When Sally flew out to see him, he had finished a short head second to Champion Sprinter/Miler Langfuhr in the G1 Met Mile. Sally was impressed with what she saw, but Rattray was reticent. “I was dead scared of standing a stallion because if you have one, and he’s no good – and only three percent are really good – it takes you four years to find out. I felt it was better to use other people’s best stallions, but then I found that I couldn’t get the services I wanted.”

“It was against my principles and I was very nervous about him” – but even so Rattray took the plunge. Western Winter stood his first season in South Africa in 1997. A commercial return on the purchase price would have been a fee of around R80.000 but Lammerskraal stood their new sire for an initial fee of R10.000. “I sometimes charged only R5000 if people had a good mare. I wanted to prove the stallion.”

It was not until the first three Western Winter two-year-olds won in quick succession that Rattray’s fears were put to rest. In his first season Western Winter produced 48 runners,

40 winners, 8 stakes winners and 19 stakes horses in total.

Rattray soon realised he had struck gold. Set Afire came from his first crop, Horse of the Year Yard-Arm from the second and another Horse of the Year Winter Solstice from the third. Those cheap deals became a thing of distant memory!

More stallions followed. Jet Master’s sire Rakeen (on his return from the USA), Parade Leader (sire of Pierre Jourdan) and G1turf Millionaire Go Deputy – the latter specifically as a mate for Western Winter mares.

Sally does not wrap the young horses in cotton wool, preferring to leave them out in the large paddocks for as long as possible to mature naturally. The stallions and mares also enjoy large paddocks and an abundance of fresh air and good feed.

A meticulous pasture management programme ensures that the horses get high quality nutrition. Yearlings are conditioned with long uphill walks on the farm roads, whilst careful schooling under the saddle on light tracks ensures that Lammerskraal two year-olds are well prepared for training.

Sally supervises every horse’s pre-training. “They don’t go to the trainers until they are doing strong canters because we believe this gives them a better foundation, and most of the year the horses here are out 24 hours a day. They seem to stay sounder for longer as a result.”

The easily recognizable red and white quartered body, red sleeves and quartered cap were first granted to Mike in 1970

and transferred to Lammerskraal in 1993. When asked why he chose red and white, the answer was quite simple: they are the colours of Michaelhouse.

Rattray keeps around 20 horses in training. “I don’t like having too many. What we aim to do is keep ourselves a colt or two for fun and sell the others, as well as all the fillies we don’t regard as possible keepers. ” It’s a policy that has resulted in an impressive Grade One record, notably with Yard-Arm. “Winning the Met with him in 2004 was my best moment in racing.”

“I’ve always maintained that we must breed winners to winners, using running families with as many winning genes as possible. It’s no good them being a distant relation to Uncle Joe or whoever. It’s got to be in the first two generations. Our aim is to breed good horses.

We don’t lose money, but we don’t make it except when we win a race like the Met and the figures end up more in the green than usual. What we are always aiming for is a high percentage of stakes winners to runners. We set high standards for ourselves.”

“I’ve always said to my pals that I’m not going to die until I’ve won the July. I used to be chairman of Greyville, it’s my old home course. I’ve had two seconds and a third, so I reckon I’m due to win it.”

At Nationals A potent small draft of four, including a half sister to Cape Guineas & Derby winner Capetown Noir, two Western Winters, and a Trippi. Class all-round.

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Supplement to SPORTING POST • FRIDAY 19th - SUNDAY 21st APRIL 2013

Reinels Stud

Three Decades - And Going Strong Reinhard Hass grew up in Germany and was about 15 years old when the war ended. Times were difficult and in order to spare him the deprivations of Hamburg, he was sent to a farm where he worked for board and lodging. One day, a horse needed to be brought back from a field and young Reinhard offered to fetch it.

To his surprise, he found it easy to work and connect with the animal and from then on, took care of the horse on a regular basis. “That’s really where my interest and connection with horses started”, he says.

Reinhard was keen to study engineering and his family encouraged him to get into the electrical contracting business.

The war had caused him to miss some of his schooling, and although he managed to catch up, it seemed engineering was not meant to be, and at 24 years old he started his own business. In 1973, Reinhard sold out and he and his family

moved to South Africa. “I’d had the opportunity to visit South Africa and Namibia, where my parents lived, and this part of the world really fascinated me.”

The move also allowed him to pursue his interest in horses. In 1983 he purchased a smallholding on the Klein Dassenberg Road between Philadelphia and Atlantis.

The area was a very popular

thoroughbred breeding area at the time, boasting the likes of Brian Schonwold’s Klein Dassenberg Stud, Loretta Krein’s Windy Way Stud, Gernot Eckert’s Highflyer Stud and Harold Siren’s Green & Gold Stud. Reinhart acquired Mrs Blackwell’s riding school, Montana Farm.

He added some foaling stables and staff accommodation and renamed it Reinels Stud.

Today the farm boasts a main house, 18 stables, 6 foaling stables, and a variety of staff quarters.

Hass acquired his first two mares (“in foal to unfashionable stallions!” he chuckles) and says he decided to give the venture 5 years and see what happened.

“Well, as it happened, Lady Wilma was the first foal the farm produced and she just kept on winning! It encouraged me, it was difficult to stop, and I was buying and breeding more horses. In our time we had up to 75 horses on the farm!”

1993 was the glory year of the wonderful race filly Vesta, Champion 3yo Filly for the 92/93 season and Champion Older Mare in 1993/94. Reinels Stud still has a Vesta granddaughter

named Mala, who Reinhard says has been throwing some good looking foals, including a 2012 Tiger Ridge colt named Tiger Torque.

Matings are designed using a combination of the eye, Tesio, G1 Goldmine and that ‘certain gut feel’. Hass believes in raising his young stock as naturally as possible, but tailoring their development to each individual’s needs, to ensure each horse gets the right amount of individual attention.

Their philosophy is to provide a good quality diet, and regular, balanced exercise, allowing the horses to develop naturally.

Reinhard Hass says his wife Else has been the biggest support throughout his life, running the farm with him and being head office, bookkeeper and general executive, and “so many other things I can’t even name them all!”

Although he has considered selling the farm over the years, that changed when his daughter Brigitte returned from the UK after 22 years of having run a thriving complementary therapy practice. She had developed a therapy technique that showed significant success in healing trauma and stress conditions on the cellular level, and this grounding has helped her enormously in taking over the reins at Reinels stud. “We were short on help at the time; she just jumped in ... as time went by she made the work her own, and year by year she has taken on a bit more from me. She seems to enjoy the continuing and varying challenges of farm life and breeding.”

Today the Reinels Stud is managed by Brigitte, Ronnie de Kock is the farm foreman, and they have an additional three grooms and general farm workers. Local vet Dr Anna Peggram sees to all the veterinary work, and Raymond Heneke takes care of the farriery side of things. The farm was originally situated on 87 ha, but Hass decided a few years ago to subdivide and develop the property. A portion of the property now consists of 7 ha lifestyle units of which 3 have recently been sold.

Having been in the breeding business for some four decades, Hass says “I’ve had so many winners I’ve stopped counting”, but lists Lady Wilma, Really Strong, Montana Girl, Dicey Mistress, Golden Dice, Theo (out of Lady Wilma), and Ritter Sporn among the best he has produced.

At Nationals Reinels Stud comes with two yearlings to the National Sale, consecutive lots early on the first day. The first (#57) is a Parade Leader half sister to two winners, one stakes placed. “She’s a well-proportioned filly with good balance and a lively, determined temperament.”

Next in the ring (#58) will be a Silvano half brother to 2 winners, which Hass says has “beautiful conformation, big heart and spirit, and a very nice temperament.”

Riethuiskraal Stud

Riethuiskraal Stud is owned by Adv Altus Joubert and situated on the banks of the Goukou River just outside Stilbaai.

Adv Joubert used to holiday in Stilbaai since he was a child and when the opportunity arose, he bought a set of five farms from author Wilbur Smith and the breeding operation was set up there in 2001. The number of (very small) farms, as Joubert describes them, was later extended to seven and now also comprise a fairly substantial olive operation.

The stud infrastructure has been developed since 2001 and the farm soon grew to a meaningful commercial venture, with its own resident stallions and some high quality mares. In 2007 the stud acquired Daylami (IRE) as its foundation stallion. A half-brother to Arc winner Dalakhani, the 1999 Cartier Horse of the Year and Eclipse Turf Award champion was the highest Timeform rated horse to grace our shores at a TFR 138. Daylami started his stud career at the Aga Khan’s Gilltown Stud, then moved to his Haras de Bonneval stud in France before being sold to Riethuiskraal Stud at the end of 2006. He stood his first season at stud in South Africa in 2007, but Riethuiskraal didn’t have him for long. The demand for his progeny in Europe proved strong and he returned to Ireland in 2010, where he currently stands at Coolagown Stud in County Cork.

Next to join the stallion roster was the Scottish Derby (Gr2) winner Imperial Stride (GB), TFR 127. He stood his first season at Riethuiskraal in 2008 where he has remained, apart from the 2010 season when he stood at Highlands Stud. Adv Joubert was a large shareholder in the French Derby and Arc winner Saumarez (GB) and although the stallion did stud duty at Odessa, he moved to Riethuiskraal once he retired and spent the rest of his days at Stilbaai. He died last year and is buried on the farm.

Despite considerable sales and racing success, Riethuiskraal scaled back its commercial operation in 2010 and is now a boutique private stud run by a small but dedicated team, many of whom have been with the Stud since its inception.

The broodmares are a collection of the stud’s foundation mares, Joubert’s best race fillies and a few additional acquisitions. Perfect Guest (dam of Crimson Palace Gr1) still stands at Riethuiskraal. Rainbow Cake (dam of National Colour Gr1) died the year before last, but her last two Daylami (IRE) fillies have been retained by the stud. Adv Joubert tries to keep daughters of his good race fillies to retain the farm’s familiar bloodlines. It is not unusual for the farm to have three generations of the same family; significant for such a small and young stud. The horses all live out in very large lucerne and grass paddocks with lots of room to stretch their legs.

Over the years Adv Joubert has bred a number of outstanding horses, including Lambarina (winner of the SA Oaks), Crimson Palace, (winner of the Beverly D Stakes Gr1 in the USA and Middleton Stakes Gr3 in England), National Colour (2006 Equus Champion Female Sprinter and Horse of the Year who also successfully campaigned in Dubai, England and France) and Flirtation (winner of the Summer Cup Gr1). Adv Joubert was Chairman of the TBA from 2005 – 2011 and during his tenure at the TBA he co-founded Racing South Africa in August 2005. He later became Chairman of Racing South Africa and has been a director of the National Horseracing Authority for several years. Adv Joubert is a former Chairman of the Johannesburg Bar, by far the largest Society of Advocates in South Africa.

Adv Joubert still maintains his racing colours. The most recent horse to carry his silks is Zemfira, a halfsister to National Colour. He has a full-sister to Zemfira going into training shortly. The Western Winter sister of Crimson Palace, now a yearling, has also been retained.

Riethuiskraal will be presenting 3 colts at the 2013 National Sale. Lot 55 is a Silvano colt out of Northern Guest mare, Northern Duel. Lot 292 is a Western Winter colt out of Arctic Circle, a daughter of Lambarina. A third colt, Lot 500, by Antonius Pius ex Kokkewiet, (Gr3 winner by Elliodor and a daughter of the first mare Joubert ever bought) is sold through Highlands Stud as agent.

Supplement to SPORTING POST • FRIDAY 19th - SUNDAY 21st APRIL 2013

Natioemperors palace Sale nal Yearling

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Supplement to SPORTING POST • FRIDAY 19th - SUNDAY 21st APRIL 2013

Backworth Stud

Avalon Stud

Recipes For Success Swan Song from Mam’selle Toffee to Crème Caviar Chocolicious. That about sums it up. Keith Russon and Ian Todd’s passion for food & fun matches that of their breeding. Judging by their recent successes, they’ve certainly found the right recipes.

Described by Jimmy Lithgow as “arguably the most beautiful stud farm in South Africa”, Backworth Stud is situated in the midst of the KZN sugar cane fields on the road to little known Ntimbankulu in the area of Eston. Taking its name from the Northumberland town, Backworth was originally bought by Colonel Fawcus in 1902 on his arrival in Natal. He bequeathed the land to his sister, Mrs Charles Leftwich, who in turn left it to her son Peter Leftwich.

The three generations established and developed a homestead of extraordinary charm. The original wood and iron structure was replaced in 1924 with the thatchroofed stone and brick version which still stands today. The gardens contain a collection of wonderful trees, many of which were originally propagated from seeds dating back to the early 1900’s. The tennis court and strategically placed fountains and ponds lend an old-world, colonial feel.

Keith and Ian bought the property from the Estate of Peter Leftwich in 1993.

Keith has a lifelong passion for horses. He grew up in Durban and first got onto a horse at the age of 6 at the Muriel Higgs School of Riding in Ridge Road. He soon talked his parents into buying him a pony – the one-eyed M’amselle Toffee, bought for R70 from a farm in Hibberdene!

Keith produced her to become the first pony ever to win the SA Junior Show Jumping Championships and he achieved his Natal colours for show jumping.

After 4 years at Onderstepoort, Keith found veterinary science entailed far too much work with people who owned the animals rather than the animals themselves.

He moved to Zimbabwe, ostensibly to keep an eye on a family business there, but in 1982 acquired a farm on the Borrowdale Road outside Harare and established Clouds End Stud from scratch.

His first crop of yearlings was sent to the 1986 sales and earned him the distinction of top vendor having consigned the top priced colt, as well

as the champion judged colt and filly. The young stud was well on its way, and quickly earned the support of many established patrons. At its peak, Clouds End had 80 mares and boarded an additional 40. The stud also stood five stallions, including Esplendor, Welsh Harmony and Pheidon.

Unfortunately a family illness called Keith back to South Africa.

He dispersed Clouds End, but managed to keep a small number of mares and fillies with a view to rebuilding his stud. In 1993 he found that Backworth was on the market.

Keith had known the farm as a child when visiting his school friends and was delighted to be able to acquire it from Lorraine Leftwich (sister of Graham Ellis of Hartford fame).

Not only did he take over the stud from her, but her secret recipe for Crème Caviar too! Keith and Ian love cooking and entertaining and have a most unusual centre piece for their dining room table - the trophy for the 1932 Gold Cup. They spotted it at an auction a few years ago and were thrilled when it was knocked down to them at “a very acceptable price!”

Originally purchased as a weekend retreat, the decision was made to develop Backworth into a boutique thoroughbred stud in 1999. John and Janette Bescoby joined the Stud partnership for a few years at its inception, but this partnership was dissolved in 2006, and Keith and Ian have continued since then.

Situated 1100 metres above sea level, the farm enjoys very low temperatures at night, and in winter.

Good rainfall ensures lush and fertile pastures, and being some way off the beaten track the horses avoid a number of the fast moving viruses that affect more densely populated areas. There are 25 stables of which 15 are large foaling boxes, while a Velox walker is used for yearling sale preparation and their mare fitness programme.

The broodmare band now stands at over 30. Owning some of the families for several generations

means that they know their strengths, weaknesses and idiosyncrasies intimately and design the matings themselves – with help from Tesio.

They do their own foaling down and believe in very strict horse management regimes. Young stock is meticulously checked on a daily basis, the added benefit that they are well handled and educated from an early age.

To maintain such hands-on care, Backworth has a horse to staff ratio of 5:1. The horses are brought in and fed on an individual basis twice a day, to ensure controlled intake.

Temperatures are checked twice a day to detect any imminent problems as early as possible. A knee high dip is used daily for tick prevention against Babesiosis and Piroplasmosis. Says Keith “all that hard work pays off, and we are always complimented on how easy the horses are”.

The stud doesn’t having any resident stallions, but has shares in Var, Crusade, Miesque’s Approval, AP Answer, King’s Chapel and Atso (among others). A dozen of their mares visit Cape stallions every year.

While Keith focusses on the horses, Ian has an accountancy background and involves himself in the marketing and commercial side. Backworth is extremely proud of their racing statistics.

From a small band of broodmares, they consistently produce a high percentage of individual Winners to Runners, averaging over 60% (and over 80% placed).

The successes include Gr2 winner First Again (23 starts for 8 wins and 13 places) and Chocolicious, winner of the 2010 Gr1 Allan Robertson.

Next on the list are multiple winners including Gliding High, Hedonist, Faire La Fete, Private Collection, Aquavit, Mogul, Miss Charlize, and Rambo’s Fantasy.

The stud is currently managed by Johan Alberts who has been with Backworth for the last 5 years.

At the National Sale Six fillies and two colts, including Gr2 winner First Again’s half brother.

Named Big Ambitions, he’s the son of Backworth’ foundation mare Going Places – what’s in a name?!

The two yearling fillies prepared by Sue Winter for the 2013 National Sale will be the last draft from Joe Jackson’s Avalon Stud. It’s been a rollercoaster ride since the stud came into being just over a decade ago. Now the tough market conditions have taken its toll.

Joe Jackson was born in the UK and came to South Africa in 1975.

Having ridden when he was a child back in England, he took up riding again about 20 years ago, and both he and his wife are keen eventing riders.

Joe got involved in racing via a business partner in 1995. He ended up owning quite a few horses and enjoyed success on the track, but eventually found that he was more intrigued by the breeding side than racing and purchased what was the old Somerset Stud from Roy Meaker in 1999. With Sue Winter as stud manager, the Avalon name went on the gates shortly afterwards.

Joe relates that there was a little infrastructure when they arrived, and essentially they had to start from scratch. He owned 4 mares who had been boarding at another stud at the time and they formed the basis of his broodmare band. The private broodmare band gradually expanded, and boarding clients joined, eventually growing the numbers to 10 private mares and 40 boarders.

The stud consists of 150ha, with a main house, manager’s cottage, 36 loose boxes, 3 stallion boxes, and a couple of barns.

Avalon stood several stallions over the years, including All Fired Up, Travel North, successfully managed Joshua Dancer and his fertility problems for 3 seasons, and subsequently Lion Tamer.

One of the best horses produced at Avalon is Texan Summer. A 7-time winner, she won the Gr3 Poinsettia Stakes at Scottsville over 1200m, was twice winner of the Gr3 Southern Cross Stakes, 4th in the Gr1 SA Fillies Sprint and was named ARCSA champion sprinter in 2003. When asked about the breeding, Joe says he loved her sire, Houston Connection and bought shares in him before he even arrived in the country. She’s out of a Harry Hotspur mare and Joe laughs when he recalls “She was quite a small filly. I don’t think Sue was too impressed with her as a yearling.”

Sue says “She was an ugly yearling with big open knees, and I said to Mr Jackson that it was not worth taking her to the sales. We would either get the R5000 minimum bid or nothing at all”. In fact, she went so far as to suggest that the filly be sold as a riding horse. But Jackson was taken with the way she moved, so he and a partner thought they’d give her a chance. He sent her to Alistair Gordon to have a look. Gordon came back a few months later with the report “This filly can really run. You’ve got a good one here!”

Stud manager Sue Winter was brought up in England, in Weybridge in Surrey, but her parents discouraged her ambition to work with horses because it was so poorly paid. Initially earning £1 a week with only one day off every fortnight, Sue was eventually persuaded to go for an office job. She came to South Africa in 1968 with the intention of having a year’s working holiday before moving on to New Zealand. However, fate intervened and she started a riding school with her first husband in Johannesburg, purchased an Arab stallion and began breeding purebred Arabs. In 1990, after a divorce and a second marriage, she was offered the job of managing the Rondebosch Stud outside Mooi River for Penny Davies and her husband Pip, a former chairman of Scottsville. She joined Avalon nine years later.

There are two Avalon fillies at Nationals. A Dynasty half-sister to a multiple winning stayer, their dam half-sister to KZN Derby winner Western Prospect, out of Clodagh Shaw’s Ginger Cake. This is a solid stamina family, to which Dynasty will add. The other filly is a Miesque Approval half-sister to Avalon’s Equus Champion filly Texan Summer.

The youngster has six other winning sibling, two of them full brothers to her. Nothing like going out with a bang!

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Supplement to SPORTING POST • FRIDAY 19th - SUNDAY 21st APRIL 2013

Arc-en-Ciel

Pot O’Gold There’s a pot of gold at every rainbow, so the saying goes. You’d better believe it and take to the chase. The buyers of Kapil, Tobe Or Nottobe, Major Bluff and Biarritz know all about the power of colour in the sky. tasked with turning Shirley’s hobby into a business. The stud expanded to include boarding mares, pre training, spelling and sales prep.

The Carey’s, who now own the mares and business in partnership with Shirley’s daughter Suzanne, have enjoyed great success in terms of both breeding and racing.

Currently the farm stands 7 stallions. “When we arrived the stallions included Cordoba who has been here for most of his life. Tara’s Halls was also here. Shirley bought his dam in-foal in england, and he was foaled down here. He was unfashionable to begin with and for the first three seasons he had only 10 or 12 mares, but they included Gr1 filly Tara’s Touch.

“Rob Knuppe, who raced him and stood him here, was also instrumental in us getting Indigo Magic. Then there are Nysaean and Stagelight, which belong to Fieldspring Racing, as well as Stage Call, Kirsten Rausing’s Alado and our Craig and Amanda Carey newest boy, elusive Fort, who joined Arc-en-Ciel in 1998, is syndicated.”

Arc-en-Ciel (meaning “Rainbow” or “Arc across the sky”) is a magnificent 700 hectare property at the foot of the Limietberg Mountain Range in Wellington. Named after the family business Rainbow Chicken, which was started by her father in the late 50s and built up by her brother, Arc-en-Ciel Stud was founded in 1989 by the late Shirley Pfeiffer. Trainer Chris Snaith and his brother Jan Mantel found the site. It was originally two separate farms – the lower one was an old wine farm and the top was an old sheep farm which also had some vineyards on it.

The farm was kept as a going concern while the stud was developed. They built a dam, put in irrigation, a house, and state-of-the-art stable blocks.

The stabling areas were all designed for proximity to the paddocks, based on earlier plans Shirley had had drawn up for a potential training yard in Noordhoek.

Arc-en-Ciel’s Group winning hall of fame includes the likes of Kapil, Major Bluff, Tobeornottobe, Tara’s Touch, Biarritz, Sevillano, Jet Danza and King of Pain.

Joey Ramsden is the principal spelling client, while the breaking in and training of the yearlings is done by renowned horse behaviourist Malan du Toit.

Craig was born in Zimbabwe where his english-born father and South African mother bred horses at Windsor Stud.

They moved to South Africa and founded a stud of the same name in Gordon’s Bay where they bred the 1989 July winner, Right Prerogative.

Craig’s parents also helped manage the fledgling

Avontuur Stud. Amanda was born in Herefordshire in the UK, as daughter of George Shorter, who rode over jumps in england. Amanda showjumped as a junior and achieved her WP colours.

She married Craig in 1993 and they have 3 children, Justin, Jemima and Oliver.

At Nationals Arc-en-Ciel offers three yearling colts on behalf of clients. They include a Tiger Ridge half brother to 4 winners, out of NZ-bred stakes winner Cantorist (#324).

The colt’s two grandams have much in common in terms of their pedigree elements – he ought to make a few shortlists.

lion l a t S r u o Y s I Entered?

South Africa’s SIRES ANNUAL is being prepared for 2013 contact: Kiki Miedema kiki@sportingpost.co.za

TOP PERFORMERS by SALE YEAR National Sale Yearlings (MR 95 or over) SI= Sale Index - price vs. the average price of a yearling of the same sex at the same sale; *= Select Sale

NATIONAL SALE YEARLINGS of 2007 MR 114 112 112 109 108 107 107 107 106 106 106 105 105 103 103 102 102 102 101 101 99 99 98 98 98 98 98 98 98 97 97 97 96 96 96 96 96 96 96 96 96 96

price 1.800.000 300.000 160.000 2.200.000 500.000 200.000 325.000 200.000 1.000.000 400.000 250.000 170.000 500.000 250.000 800.000 500.000 250.000 500.000 160.000 50.000 90.000 420.000 800.000 400.000 600.000 200.000 800.000 200.000 350.000 340.000 260.000 2.100.000 300.000 150.000 450.000 300.000 70.000 150.000 400.000 120.000 500.000 1.000.000

select SI * 4.81 0.80 0.43 5.87 1.33 0.53 1.10 * 0.68 * 2.67 * 1.35 0.67 0.57 1.33 0.67 * 2.71 1.33 0.85 * 1.33 0.54 0.13 0.24 1.42 2.71 1.07 1.60 0.53 * 2.14 0.53 0.93 1.15 0.88 * 5.61 0.80 0.51 1.52 0.80 0.19 0.51 1.07 0.41 * 1.33 * 3.38

sex & horse c Warm White Night c Martial Eagle c Regal Ransom c Fort Vogue c Rushing Wind c Jinzo f Zirconeum f Sandy Beach c Master Blaster f 05ballad Of Reading c Aslan f Gypsy’s Warning c 05snooty Lady c Kings Cross f On Her Toes c Rudi Rocks f Consensual c Sealed With A Kiss f Reconcile c Robinson Crusoe c Master Of All f Precedent f Rock Concert c Test Pilot c 05pied Beauty c Ant Of Agasta c Iron Wood c Dealsdunn c Thanks John f Wild On Tara f Kiribati c Target Acquired c Imperial Fox f Tuvana Silva f Sweet Theresa c Sir Lowry c Broadsword f Scripture c Space Captain f Servilia c Airbus f Winterinthewoods

sire Western Winter Silvano Caesour Fort Wood Windrush Qui Danzig Jallad Count Dubois Al Mufti Western Winter Silvano Mogok Muhtafal Silvano Western Winter Silvano Camden Park Jallad Silvano Strike Smartly Qui Danzig Model Man Lecture Jallad Tamburlaine Rich Man’s Gold Fort Wood Rakeen Jallad Tara’s Halls Model Man Western Winter National Emblem Silvano Strike Smartly Windrush Jallad Requiem Captain Al Caesour Jet Master Western Winter

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Supplement to SPORTING POST • FRIDAY 19th - SUNDAY 21st APRIL 2013

Bush Hill Stud

Middlefield Stud

At Your Service Pick Of The Bunch Bush Hill Stud was founded by Gavin Walker in 1975.

The stud is now in the hands of husband and wife team Warwick and Karen Render. Warwick cut his teeth at Mallorca Stud and Karen worked at Summerhill, before they moved on together to manage Stoneleigh Farm. In 2000 they struck out on their own by purchasing Bush Hill Stud.

THe FARM borders on the Little Mooi River which provides water for the irrigation of winter pastures and allows for quality grazing year round. There are many large old trees which provide safe and effective natural shelter for the horses throughout the year.

While it is primarily a boarding farm, Bush Hill has enjoyed its own share of success in producing stakes winners including Sparkling Nymph, Merchants winner Super Home and top class stayer Wolf Whistle whose dam Certainly is still owned by the Renders. More recently The Mouseketeer (emerald Cup) and Tetelestai (Umngeni Handicap).

The farm offers a full range of services from general spelling, to the boarding of mares (permanent and seasonal), foaling down, weaning, and yearling sales preparation.

Both Warwick and Karen are believers in adopting an alternative approach when called for, and Karen is building a reputation for getting horses back on track that have perhaps lost their way a little.

The main stable complex consists of forty five stables, allowing for individual attention for all horses. Adjoining the stud office on the stable yard is the maternity unit with a specialist foal high care facility, making for easy

management and monitoring of all new born and/or problem foals.

The stud has plenty of stallion fire power, with successful Kahal, Curved Ball, King’s Chapel, Malhub, and Tawny-owned Toreador and Irish Flame, the latter standing his first season in 2013.

Bush Hill Stud is a tightly run family business with the Render’s son Jason becoming increasingly involved in the activities on the farm. Irishman Charles Byrne has a wealth of international racing and stud work experience and has recently joined in a managerial capacity.

Long serving head groom Maxwell Mchali assists with the day to day farm management and care of the horses, while Hlalfang Molefe is the senior foaling assistant.

At Nationals Bush Hill will enter the sale ring with six yearlings, by Kahal, Mullins Bay and King Of Kings. One with distinct paddock value is a Mullins Bay filly (#33), whose dam (by Machiavellian) is full sister to an Irish stakes placed winner, with the next dam a winning half sister to Champion Urban Sea (dam of Galileo and Sea The Stars); the filly is inbred 2x2 to Machiavellian.

“I could ride almost before I could walk”.

Rob Pickering has horses in his blood for generations.

His grandfather won the Beresford Cup / SA Polo Championship 3 times in the 1930’s, his father was a Springbok polo captain. Rob was a 5 handicap player and has captained the Natal Polo Team, as well being captain of the Mooi River polo team when they won the SA Championships in 1995. Rob used to race with his father and had his first winner back in 1990 when he was 20 years old.

ROB and Michelle Pickering started breeding commercially a decade ago when they bought Anton Proctor’s Burwell Stud. They improved the farm, then sold on - and repeated the process, while retaining the stud name and client base all the time. Middlefield is currently situated 20km north of Mooi River, quite close to Bruce le Roux’s Spring Valley Stud. The mare population numbers about eighty, of which 25 are their own.

The Pickerings have built up a loyal client base, of which their most prominent patrons are David Makins, Ashley McNab, Elias Milliotis, Ian Katz, Len Lewison and Rob DukoffGordon.

When choosing a broodmare, Rob first considers the physical conformation and then looks at

the pedigree. His broodmare band includes Crystal Clear (dam of Kings Cup winner Thunder Creek), and Red Kaschka who produced Red Barrel (the winner of the 2011 Ready To Run Cup). Kal Sufi (who they sadly lost last year) produced Kalami (2nd to Bambina Stripes in SA Fillies Classic). One from an old family Rob really loves is Lavishly, from the family of National Currency. Six foals, all winners, three with black type. “We’ve still got her and she’s never let us down, you can put her to a Jack Russell and it will run! She’s a real favourite.”

Stallions play a big role at Middlefield. Carpocrates, Spanish Harlem (by Danehill; first crop are 2yo’s), Antigua Island (Black Minnaloushe out of champion racemare Jamaica - he did a tendon and never raced), Rocky Street (by Rock of Gibraltar; first crop are yearlings). Newest arrival is Byword, a striking Gr1 winning chestnut, rated 126 by Timeform. There are understandably very high hopes for him.

Rob plans his matings by the eye and feels that conformation has to come first and foremost, but uses Tesio to check the pedigree side. However, with Byword’s arrival, Rob says he’ll be sending all his mares to him for the foreseeable future!

He helps Michelle and between the two of them they handle all the foaling down. Michelle is hands on with the fertility side of things and handles all the veterinary work. “I couldn’t do it without Michelle. In terms of buying, she’ll check the history, conformation, etc. Evelyn in the office does all the bookwork and we have some really top top stud grooms in Toets and Mundle who are an integral part of the operation.”

Middlefield produce their own hay, maize, maize silage, rye grass and oats and run the mares on the veld in summer. They have relied on Equifeeds as their standard hard feed for the last 10 years.

The Pickerings like to run their horses out as much as possible and will keep them out until 3-4 months before they start sorting and selecting individuals for the forthcoming sales. Then they divide them into groups of about a dozen, with colts and fillies in separate groups. Once it’s been decided who is going where, they start prep work. Rob does not believe in lunging and yearlings are hand walked for 3-4 hours a day, alternating inclines and declines in order to build fitness and muscle tone.

At Nationals Middlefield has eight yearlings at the National Sale, of which four are on behalf of clients. Middlefields’own include a Muhtafal half brother to Ready to Run Cup winner Red Barrel (“a strong bull of a colt”) and a Kahal half brother to Kalami, Rob’s pick of his draft.

Standout among the client’s yearlings, certainly on pedigree, is a Fort Wood full brother to Gold Cup winner and SA Derby runnerup Thundering Star. Rob says this is ‘a really smashing colt’.

Uncover The Hidden Truths THE BUYERS GUIDE

on the Sporting Post website!

• South African racing performance • aptitude • sale prices of all previous offspring of mares catalogued.

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Supplement to SPORTING POST • FRIDAY 19th - SUNDAY 21st APRIL 2013

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Supplement to SPORTING POST • FRIDAY 19th - SUNDAY 21st APRIL 2013

Wicklow Stud

Sunland in the Sundays River Valley in the Eastern Cape is the home to Wicklow Stud and the legacy of the Price Bros.

This famous breeding family were among the first breeders inthe country and in the Eastern Cape. “My family has been breeding horses for generations and for some time they operated as Price Brothers under the banner of the Sherwood Forest Stud.”

They also have a long family association with the Elandskraal Phillips’ and the Birch Bros.

RENNIE PRICE was brought up on a sheep and cattle farm in Queenstown and attended St Andrews College in Grahamstown. At the age of 22, after completing his national service, Rennie bought a farm from his father and farmed for 7 years, then sold up and became a financial trader in Johannesburg.

However, the lure of horses and country life proved too strong. In 1992 Rennie bought into one of the farms that they are now on and then acquired a few more after 1996. Most of the original Price Bros farms

have been incorporated into the homelands, so the current Price farms have only been under their ownership for one generation. “My brother named this place the Wicklow Stud after visiting Ireland and falling in love with County Wicklow.”

It is very much a family enterprise. Stepmother Beth and Father Norman, 81, live on a neighbouring farm and Norman still does all the feeding of the horses. Rennie handles the citrus and the rest of the horsey enterprise.

He is married to Alison and they have 3 children.

Eldest Natalie studying law at Stellenbosch University, Caroline is completing matric at Collegiate and son Blaine is in Grade 4. “Thankfully our kids are not bad around their studies. But they have to go out and do it themselves after varsity .... and if they want horses, they buy them!”

Rennie has had horses all his life and was a keen polo player. He started breeding with a couple of mares when they extended the property interests in 1996. In 2001, Rennie and friends Peter Blaauw and Vincent Moore

went into partnership to upgrade the mare band and purchased several top quality mares from the Tattersalls sale. They were assisted by BBA Ireland director Patrick Cooper, nephew of the late Mooi River trainer Basil Cooper.

Their purchases included Ankara, an Elusive Quality eight-year-old who raced for Sheikh Mohammed.

And they got the first foal of the smart Nashwan mare Maeander, who is out of a sister to Kingmambo’s brilliant dam Miesque. Little Grey Wolf is by Indian Ridge out of a winning daughter of the Irish 1000 Guineas winner Arctique Royale.

L’Amour is a fourteen-yearold who won for Henry Cecil and is by Gone West out of Cecil’s 1991 May Hill winner Midnight Air. Ingeburg, a Hector Protector mare out of Inchkeith, was a listed stakes winner in France. You get the idea.

Today, Wicklow has 32 private mares and one or two boarding mares for friends.

Rennie feels that their niche is in standing very high quality mares and he has been selectively upgrading and adding to the mare band at his own pace. In purchasing a broodmare, Rennie says he

looks for particular families that he knows, or has been exposed to. He sets a lot of store in the broodmare sire, and has built his mare band on pedigree, conformation and performance - although he admits philosophically that you cannot always afford all three! He also has half a dozen fillies in training.

There is a loyal and very experienced contingent of staff, made up from the old Phillips and Price Bros operations. Rennie says he doesn’t like stables much and leaves his horses out as much as possible. “We try and do it the old way. We know our mares, and our conception rates are very high.”

“You can’t overspend on feed, farriery and veterinary services.”

They feed Capstone, and specialist farrier Rainier van Rooyen flies down from Johannesburg once a month to ensure the young horses’ feet are shaping up correctly. Dr Ashley Parker is a good friend and attends to the veterinary side of things.

Rennie believes that prepping a yearling starts at conception and their small, dedicated team pride themselves in a lot of individual attention as well as attention to detail. “It is one of our major selling

points. There is a 10-strong contingent of stud staff and this year we are sending a eleven yearlings to Nationals.”

With such solid foundations, the stud has built a loyal support base, with a number of buyers purchasing from them year after year. So far the best horse bred on the farm is Kal Sufi, a Listed winner who was third to Arabian Lass in the 1996 Cape Fillies Guineas, but Rennie says the Big One will come!

Although they do not stand any resident stallions, Rennie has an enviable variety of stallion shares including Sail From Seattle, Bold Silvano, Mambo in Seattle, Rebel King, Kings Apostle, Jay Peg and Trippi.

At Nationals Wicklow’s consigns a particularly eye catching Jet Master colt out of Little Grey Wolf. Rennie is also keen on his Mambo in Seattle yearlings (which all scored very highly with the inspection panel). The draft is completed by three Sail From Seattle yearlings, and fillies by Silvano and Tiger Ridge.

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Supplement to SPORTING POST • FRIDAY 19th - SUNDAY 21st APRIL 2013

“IF Micky ran for president I’d vote for him!” That’s an enduring quote from former Daily News racing editor Robyn Ramsay, made back in the early ‘Nineties – the days when racing used to be frontpage news and Summerhill’s assault on the summit was barely in the planning stages. Mick Goss hasn’t made it to the highest office yet, but with eight consecutive national Breeder Championships for Summerhill, life at the top is no longer a dream.

The story of Summerhill Stud is woven together by a number of varied and brightly coloured threads and it traces its roots back to several different families and several different parts of South Africa, and indeed the world.

The Goss fables began six generations ago, when Michael Goss arrived as part of the 1820 settlers’ Irish contingent. Mick’s great grandfather Edward was a noted horseman, and Mick’s grandfather, Pat Goss, founded Isihlito Stud in East Pondoland in 1937. Two years later the stud transferred to “The Springs” in the Cedarville district of East Griqualand. Pat Goss famously owned St. Pauls (by Asbestos II out of Seraphine, an old Vogel Vlei family) who won the 1946 Durban July Handicap in record time.

St Pauls remains the smallest ever winner of the race.

He was 14.2hh, and won several Pony and Galloway handicaps on his way there.

Pat Goss passed away in 1948 and the farm and family trading business passed into the hands of his son, Bryan. Unfortunately a heart condition forced him to choose between farming and trading. The trading business was profitable, while the horses weren’t, so the decision to give up breeding in 1966 wasn’t difficult. Bryan sold the farm, but continued his trading activities at Lusikisiki. Mick grew up the son of a farmer and a trading station proprietor, which did nothing to dilute his love of horses.

“Whilst I didn’t inherit their worldly goods, what I did get from my father and grandfather, was the ‘disease’. For as long as I can remember, horses were in my blood, and it developed into an obsession. I knew most of the racehorses in the country and their pedigrees. I knew the names of all the July winners from the ’40s onwards, and I was addicted to Duff’s Turf Guide from the time I first sat on a potty.”

Mick attended Durban High School and excelled both academically and on the sports field. He played Natal Schools

rugby and won a scholarship to Stellenbosch, where he studied law. While at ‘varsity, he represented Western Province under 20’s and under 25’s. After graduating, he completed his articles in Pietermaritzburg. He qualified as both an attorney and as an advocate, and established his own practice. And then, 17 years later, he gave it all up for Summerhill. There is no known vaccine for horse-disease!

Mick and brother Pat (Jnr) decided to breed horses part time on a small scale. Their first purchase was the mare Cosy Rosy in 1977 and the Goss name was first tied to Summerhill when the brothers sent broodmares to board there.

They also had racing interests.

Mick and Pat’s father bequeathed them an unraced horse called Heliotrope, a R900 purchase, who won his second start in 1978. Mick recalls “At that time I’d just been awarded a scholarship to the USA. At the interview confirming this, I was asked, ‘Is this the best day of your life’. I had to answer candidly, ‘No, that was yesterday, when I had my first winner.” Their next purchase was the filly Pagoda, who became a seven-time winner. “If I wasn’t hooked on racing by then, that was tickets and tax,” he chuckles.

Despite his keen interest in racing, Mick had no serious visions of going into the bloodstock business, but that all changed over lunch one day in 1979. Mick was discussing the future of Summerhill, which was a client in his practice, with some pals, including the mortgage holder on the farm. A restructuring was in progress, and he was looking for investors. By the time the coffee and cigars were on the table, the bond holder was convinced to convert his loan to equity, and Mick put together a syndicate to purchase the farm.

It is an occupational hazard of the profession that nobody wants to pay legal fees, so Mick was persuaded to convert his bill into a 6.25% equity, too.

Elder brother Pat, a successful

businessman, had brought in a much-needed injection of cash in 1981 and each year in the early 80’s, Mick and Pat bought two fillies to race with a stud career in mind. Of their first eight acquisitions, five produced stakes winners. Among the foundation mares were Coconut Ice, who got the useful Bianconi; and Final Wonder, who got Bloodline Million winner Last Watch. These foundation mares have family at Summerhill to this day.

In 1983 Summerhill received its greatest blessing in the form of stallion Northern Guest. Mick and Pat had gone to England to buy a mare from Queen Elizabeth (“We didn’t bugger around”), tagging on a trip to Ireland, to find a service for the acquisition. Mick spotted “the most charismatic animal I’d ever set eyes on”.

The brothers bought Northern Guest for a whopping R400.000, way beyond their means, but persuaded themselves (and the vendor) that they would syndicate the animal back home. No such luck. Mick then dreamed up the idea of a lavish party, inviting every (monied!) person he knew, and with the aid of the fabled Irish jump-jockey Tommy Stack, eventually managed to sell the shares. However, they bought back as many as they could whenever they could afford it.

Northern Guest became champion sire of South Africa in 1985 and again the following year.

He was twice champion juvenile sire and champion broodmare sire ten times. “There is not a pebble in the road nor a pane in a window at Summerhill that Northern Guest didn’t contribute to!” In 1987 Pat launched a store chain, Mick bought out his shares in Summerhill, and moved to the farm full time. “I had 90% of my worth invested in Summerhill, and was giving it only 10% of my time, while I had 10% in my practice, and I was giving it 90% of my time. It wasn’t difficult to realise that I had to look after my interests in the farm, and since my emotions were more on the farm than they were in the

practice, the next step was easy.”

He acquired the adjacent property almost by accident. “I was at Summerveld one day, mediating in a dispute between the turf clubs and the trainers.

It got a bit heated, so we took a break for some tea. I went to the loo during the recess, and I was standing at the urinal next to Steve Lapin, Hartford’s financial director, when he asked me for the umpteenth time when I was going to buy the farm. I told him I didn’t have five bob to rub together, there was no inheritance here, and it was unlikely ever to materialise. Then the penny dropped. This was 1989, South Africa was in turmoil, perhaps anything might “go”.” Mick and Cheryl were the owners of a venerable old home in Hillcrest, built by the Ellis Browns of coffee creamer renown. “With tongue in cheek I said to him, Steve why don’t we just swap the two properties, mine in Hillcrest for Hartford. He didn’t even wash his hands, we did the deal right there.” Cheryl was abroad at the time. It took him two weeks after her return to break the news, by which time he had given up his practice and was completely reliant on racehorses for a living.

It might have taken longer to tell Cheryl, but another development forced his hand, something which had the potential to drive them to insolvency.

In June 1989, Barend Du Plessis (Minister of Finance) met with Mick and several of racing’s biggest decision makers, “He broke the news to us that Chase Manhattan and Citibank had withdrawn South Africa’s international credit facilities and that the Government was advising racing to reposition itself. It was a time of political uncertainty, the country would be on a cash basis and was technically bankrupt, and racehorses represented the top end of the luxury goods business.

There would be little discretionary money left in SA. The Minister swore the gathering to secrecy, promising that the government was about to release Nelson Mandela and negotiate an orderly transition to a democracy. This was no time to be giving up a lucrative career in law for a horse farm.

Inspired by a suggestion of his wife to turn their new home into a hotel for their international clients, Goss confided the Minister’s advice to the TBA’s Chairman, Lowell Price, and offered to lead a mission abroad to share the joy of

Mandela’s release with the world.

By November 1989, the airwaves were alive with “Mandela” conjecture, and suddenly it was fashionable to hand in an SA passport at Heathrow again.

This was South Africa’s time. He contacted the sister to Queen Elizabeth’s Lady-In-Waiting, and asked her to assist in hosting a gathering at racing’s headquarters of the English nobility and anyone else with money to invest in racehorses. That was scheduled for December, and 220 people turned up. So did SABC TV, SATOUR and several of our top wine estates. Goss made the speech of his life. “We reminded them of the lives South Africa had lost in the Empire’s cause, how 500 000 horses had left our shores to fight in the Colonial wars, never to return. And we said, chaps, we are in trouble and we need you. Listen, we were desperate. There was no great boardroom strategy in that.

Everything we did here was really a response to the situation we were in. We didn’t have a lot to lose.”

The response was incredible.

Racing in the Cape had long been popular with a number of British owners, but the Goss speech produced a huge increase in expatriate ownership, which has lasted to this day. It also produced something every bit as important because the following morning, Sheikh Maktoum’s bloodstock manager, Michael Goodbody, met with the Summerhill boss and Graeme Hawkins.

He asked how they could assist and offered to send a stallion to help the cause. Much to Goodbody’s surprise, Goss was hesitant. He explained that he couldn’t absolutely trust his country’s government to honour its pledge to release Nelson Mandela, and he was afraid of dragging the oil-rich ruling family of Dubai into a political minefield, considering that as “brown” people they would be victims of the system in place in South Africa. Respecting his honesty, they waited until a few days after Mandela was released the following February, and soon Braashee was on his way to Summerhill. It was a relationship that lasted over 2 decades.

When the Gosses arrived at Summerhill in 1979, there were six staff members, with few skills. Unemployment in the district exceeded 80%. Thirtyfour years later, the farm employs

370 people, Hartford House is a household name in hospitality with a restaurant proclaimed recently by the senior critic at the Wall Street Journal among the top three country eateries on the planet, a horse-feed factory, a school of equine management excellence, and a deep social responsibility commitment.

Mick famously sets huge store in investing in his team and devolving responsibility to key staff. Some, like Annet Becker (broodmare and foal care manager), and Tarryn Liebenberg who is in charge of the pre-training of 100 horses, arrived in their early 20’s. Stallion manager, Greig Muir, has been at Summerhill for 26 years – “I came to South Africa for a holiday, visited Mick and never left.” Linda Norval, who sells the stallion nominations and is responsible for client relations, arrived shortly after the gates opened and apart from a brief interlude, has been there ever since. Heather Morkel, now head of the School Of Excellence, came as Mick’s PA 17 years ago, and has since occupied the positions of the first CEO to the Equine Trade Council, and Group Business Manager.

Another pillar is agriculture, in particular a decision to go organic. Artificial fertilisers were banned, cattle were put on the land and the average birth weight of foals increased by seven kilos.

Prior to this reversion to nature, 11 mares died within a fortnight, attributed to contaminated feed.

“Never again,” swore Goss who, on John Slade’s advice, resolved to switch to ingredients from the stud’s own feedmill. The end result was Vuma Horsefeeds, which revolutionised the feeding of horses in South Africa through an alliance with the celebrated “chicken kings” of Australians, the Ingham brothers, who famously developed Woodlands Stud (now Darley), and owned the legends, Octagonal and Lonhro.

At Nationals Summerhill has 28 yearlings catalogued for the National Sale, of which sixteen are colts and fillies by Kahal, among them a half sister to champion filly Icy Air, and half brother to Pierre Jourdan.

The others include a filly by Australian champion sire Encosta de Lago, whose dam is by Danehill, from an Irish Gr1 female line, and a Dylan Thomas colt.

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Digteby Stud

Digteby Stud, owned by Hans and Judy Stegeman, nestles in the picturesque mountains of the Breede River Valley.

Judy describes Digteby as a boutique stud and is particularly proud of their pristine surroundings, the pure mountain water, unpolluted air, and soil totally free of pesticides and chemical fertilizers.

Because the farm is fed by a different river to the rest of the nearby studs and there is no through road or horse traffic other than their own, the farm is remarkably disease free, and is spared the infections and viruses that are a fact of life on bigger studs.

HANS Stegeman was born in Holland. After graduating from business school in his early twenties, he travelled to West Africa and worked in Sierra Leone and Ghana for 4 years in shipping and the consular service. It was during his stint in Ghana that Hans learned to ride and play polo. He settled in Cape Town, doing some amateur racing through the old Cape Hunt and Polo Club (serving as the Chairman of the racing section and later Chairman of the Club for many years) and eventually went into business with Roy Rixon, setting up the old Pet O’Tel and Cape Saddlery.

Judy says the decision to get into breeding, and more or less all decisions about their enterprise, are based on buying into the dream and trying to produce a really special horse. They met early success, breeding horses like Dance On Wood and Major Hero. Judy also enjoyed spelling and pre-training horses for Eric Sands and a number of other trainers and owners.

Mike Sharkey advised them that horses, vines and roses do well on the same soil, and the red clay of Digteby is very similar to the Robertson area. Judy says that the farm produces horses with particularly good feet. They boarded mares for a number of years, including champion racemare Jamaica, and Judy is also proud to have foaled and raised Galanthus.

Today the stud has around 20 private broodmares and a small number of boarders.

Meticulous care has been taken in assembling the broodmare band and Judy says she has tried to accumulate mares from the best possible families. They have mares from the E family, the Lily family, the Let Kiss line and the Blushing Dove family.

They have also retained progeny of Millwood (dam of Dance on Wood), a daughter of the Yearning family from Highlands, and one of the daughters of Hot Seven.

There is no resident stallion, but they have a number of stallion shares and like to spread their matings equally across established commercial stallions and promising young sires (Judy is particularly excited about the new young Maine Chance sire Gitano Hernando).

At Nationals Digteby have two fillies. One an attractive chestnut by Argonaut out of sprinter Hot Seven (Harry Hotspur – Seven Stars), who clocked up 6 wins including the Gr2 Concorde Stakes and a second in the Gr1 Cape Flying Championship.

She is from the family of Hill Fifty Four. The second filly is by Silvano out of Hot Number (Sportsworld – Hot Seven) and Judy describes her as a high quality, well-balanced filly.

Hadlow Stud

Hatching Big Plans Hadlow Stud is situated on 240ha out on the Giant’s Castle road near Midlands Saddle & Trout. It consists of 2 properties, one housing the chicken quarantine facility and the other the hatchery and rearing houses, with the horses split over both.

THE STUD is owned by Jonathan and Cathy Martin.

Cathy is from the Eastern Cape and has been a competitive rider all her life. Jonathan grew up in Natal and rode for most of his school life. At Rainbow Chicken Farms she was the labour law manager and he the poultry manager.

They met over an industrial dispute!

Cathy bred warmblood horses on a small scale, but it was Craig Ramsay who was responsible for talking the Martins into thoroughbred breeding. “We started by pin hooking a weanling. The horse had gone through the ring unsold and the vendor came out and said “would anyone just pay for the transport?”

Jonathan said yes and that’s how we got our first weanling! We sold it quite well and success encourages more, so one mare became five, and it’s just grown over

the last 12-15 years. We started boarding horses and today we have in the region of 200, about 75 of which comprise the broodmare band”.

Cathy is quick to point out that only about 20 of those are private and the rest are boarding mares. They stand a number of mares and stallions for St John Gray and other clients, including Mr Chow from Hong Kong (of The Apache fame).

The farm housing the quarantine facility also contains most of the breeding infrastructure for the stud.

The first stallions to stand at Hadlow were Jam Alley and Sarge for St John Gray.

The Martins currently also stand Modus Vivendi, who last season covered Dancewiththedevil’s dam, her 2 daughters and a halfsister. Other residents are Announce, and young sire Call To Combat.

The Martin’s private broodmare band is made up of favourite families and bloodlines including Jalladmare Platinum Lass (dam of Platinum Ruler), Be My Buddy from Jet Master’s female line, Centenary mare Polonaise (dam of Swarming and Formation) and Celtic Bunny (dam of Celtic Fire).

They design their matings with the help of the Tesio and Gr1 Goldmine programmes, but they also take the individuals’ conformation into account, as well as trying to emulate previously successful crosses.

Cathy and Jonathan are very much hands-on. Their head assistants Michael Ndlovu and Picko Zondi have been with them for years and are their eyes and ears when they are not around.

Aside from foaling and sales prep time, the horses live out for most of the year.

The Martins believe in letting the youngsters grow up as naturally as possible.

Established pastures include cocksfoot, kikuyu and eragrostis. The main focus is on good quality feed and roughage and additional

pastures are planted biannually according to the horses’ needs.

The Martins have racing colours, but as most of their horses are for sale they do not usually have many runners!

The homebreds they are most proud of are Thunderflash, an 11-time winner who beat Lizard’s Desire in the EC Champion Juvenile Cup and subsequently won the PE Gold Cup, 7-time winner All Ablaze, 14-time winner and E-Cape Horse of the Year Celtic Fire, and Jimmi Choo, a leading Gauteng juvenile.

At Nationals Hadlow consigns two fillies. A half-sister to 13-time winner Celtic Fire by Brave Tin Soldier, who Cathy describes as tall and athletic, really stamped by her sire.

They like the Storm Cat x Centenary cross, and were so pleased with the result that they sent the mare back to Brave Tin Soldier the following season. The inspection panel scored the filly an 8.5, as was the case with the other filly, a strong, well-grown type

by A.P. Arrow out of Gr3 winner Syrian Sonja.

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Spring Valley Stud

Living The Fantasy “I’ve always been a farmboy. I grew up with horses.” Bruce le Roux comes from the Nottingham Road area in the KZN Midlands. One of the local KZN farmers was a Santa Gertrudis cattle breeder and had a connection in the USA, so following his national service Bruce went to Texas.

There he worked with Quarter horses.

Bruce returned to South Africa when his visa ran out.

He wasn’t terribly sure what to do next, but having grown up with the Slade family he turned to John (who was working at Scott Bros at the time) for advice.

John arranged for Bruce to go to the Southeys’ Valley Stud in De Doorns where he met his first wife, Nadine. After a year, he came back to Mooi River and took a job at Pip and Penny Davis’s Rondebosch stud.

After Rondebosch, Bruce got out of horses for a while, starting a timber business, but the horse bug just wouldn’t go away. He bought a small farm near Estcourt in 1995, but soon outgrew that, to move to his present location, on the main road between Mooi River and Estcourt, in 1998.

The farm was originally called Hawthorn Hill,

owned by Major Ivanoski who bred and trained Lipizzaners, and later by Basil Cooper, who developed it into a training center, producing many winners including Gold Cup winner The Malster.

The original 80 hectares has been expanded with the purchase of a neighbouring property and Spring Valley now extends to 150 ha. There are 45 stables and a newly installed horse walker for prepping the yearlings. Approximately 70 ha of the farm is under natural red grass grazing and the rest is under eragrostis for making hay, Kikuyu pasture, and oats.

Bruce says the breeding operation was established on what his budget would allow at the time, and they started with only a few mares. He bought shrewdly and the second mare he got was Fancy Fantasy, knocked down to him for

Lot 156 Trippi colt x Silver Fantasy

Lot 139 Silvano colt x Saintly Soul R2k. She went on to produce Gr1 winner Indiscreet Fantasy.

Another paddock superstar is KZN Broodmare of the Year Seal Of Office, dam of Superior Service (Cape Guineas runner-

up, before campaigning in Singapore).

“We had a bit of luck and managed to produce some nice horses. Things have really developed from there.” Spring

Valley currently has 35 private mares and an additional 20 boarding mares. Notable stud graduates include Cape Fillies Guineas heroine Indiscreet Fantasy, topclass stayer Yankee Blue Dill, and the three classic winning siblings Buy And Sell, Count The Money and Bedloe Island. Spring Valley has also had success on behalf of clients, including July-winner Dunford.

Today Bruce likes to try and buy into families that he knows, and which are currently active.

He makes use of the Tesio and Gr1 Goldmine programmes as a guideline, but says he keeps things simple. He doesn’t like to ‘outdistance’ mares, and likes to breed to proven crosses.

They try and support the best available stallions and currently stand Just As Well (AP Indy) for Greg RoydenTurner and Anton Proctor. He had a book of 40 mares in his first season and the first foals look promising. Muhtafal was relocated to Spring Valley last year and is doing extremely well. The farm has previously stood the likes of Requiem, Sarge, Copperbelt, and ill-fated Fort Beluga, who only stood for one season before having a fatal paddock accident. Of the latter Bruce says “He was magnificent horse and his yearlings are truly outstanding”.

Bruce and Nadine’s daughter (Keri) recently married the son of Aldora’s Mike and Jenny Smith. Bruce also recently got remarried to Delia, who he met through Peter and Karen Choice. Delia is Karen’s sister.

At Nationals Bruce is particularly proud of this year’s National sales draft. They have 5 of their own and another 5 as agent.

“I’ve got an outstanding Trippi colt (#156) out of Silver Fantasy (who is one of Silvano’s first stakes winners) – he got a 9 from the inspection panel.

There’s a Captain Al colt out of Vasilisa (our Fancy Fantasy family), a very nice Silvano colt out of National Navigator, and a Silvano filly out of an imported King of Kings mare Positive Thoughts.”

“I’ve got a truly magnificent Fort Beluga half sister to Run For It (#136) who scored a 9.5 with the panel. We are acting as agent for Aldora on a really nice Silvano half brother to Soul Master, a beautiful well-balanced Henrythenavigator colt, a Kahal full brother to Festival Of Fire, and a half brother to 3 winners by Fort Beluga”.

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Wilgerbosdrift

“My mother was mad about racing, my father fascinated by breeding. I was a real horsey girl, a riding loony. I loved going to the stud at Mauritzfontein to see the mares and foals, but my primary interest was riding. Racing came later, and breeding much later still.”

MARY SLACK is second generation of the successful Oppenheimer family which bred many champions on their Kimberley studfarm Mauritzfontein.

“Henry Higgins was the first horse I owned in this country, in partnership with Jim Joel. We raced quite a few horses together. The best was a wonderful colt called Lightning Path, given to me by my parents. We won the (1969) SA Derby. Jim said I could keep the racing colours for my runners in South Africa.”

It was not until she gave up riding in the early 90’s that Mary turned her attention to breeding. She acquired a small number of mares which boarded at Mauritzfontein.

Blakes Affair (dam of Gold Vase winner Sequoia and multiple Gr1 winner and successful sire Dynasty) was an early purchase. “I bought her for practically nothing on a funny little sale. Michael Clarke ran my stables in Johannesburg and I sent her to there to race a few times before she went to Mauritzfontein.”

When her parents decided to downsize, they asked

her to make alternative arrangements for the mares at Mauritzfontein. “I woke up one morning and decided it would be fantastic to have my own stud farm.”

After exploring all the available prospects in the areas conventionally regarded suitable for breeding thoroughbreds, Mary could not find one she liked. Then she heard of a 900 ha mixed farming prospect in the Piketberg area. It was love at first sight, but the farm was sold to a third party. Mary was distraught. Fortunately for her, the new ownership did not last long and she was able to buy it from the receivers.

“What a thrill. That was so exciting.” The year was 1997.

The new purchase had been a wheat and potato farm, so everything had to be developed from scratch for the horses. The original farm layout was planned

by Mary, Derek Southey and architect Haydn Ellis.

John Everett designed the American-style barns, which have three different layers of ventilation to cope with the severe summer temperatures,

as well as the shelters and sprinkler systems spread throughout the various postand-railed paddocks. Mary also credits Mike de Kock, Jehan Malherbe, Dr John McVeigh and daughter Jessica with valuable contributions.

“One of the major reasons for our success is that I’ve been lucky enough to have access to Fort Wood. I didn’t have a stallion then. It meant horse boxes and drivers, as well as stables and paddocks.”

Once the paddocks were laid out, the first broodmares arrived in 1998. Mary Slack started out as she meant to go on – a competitor in the sales ring and on the racetrack.

The mares arrived on the farm with Fort Wood weanlings, so Wilgerbosdrift consigned three yearlings at the 1999 Nationals, including a later smart stakes winning filly, Sepia. The farm’s 2001 draft included future Equus Horse Of The Year Dynasty, knocked down to John Freeman for R475.000.

Remarkably, despite the farm’s relatively short career, Wilgerbosdrift got an Equus Award for Outstanding Breeder in 2006.

“The first person who influenced me was Tremayne

Toms.

He managed Mauritzfontein for years and taught me the value of feed especially, as well as odd bits of breeding lore. Then thereis Jehan Malherbe, who instilled the importance of statistics and pedigrees and tries his best to temper my sentimentality about my horses. All of the people who I’ve mentioned already continue to influence me in positive ways, as well as my daughter Jessica, who insists that if horses are for sale they must be sold properly.”

Wynand Nel is the current manager, assisted by Gail Bulpitt and Karel Fredericks.

While one might expect a lot of hands-on attention, the horses live out day and night throughout the year, and normally only come in when the farrier travels from Robertson to tend to their feet.

From small beginnings, the broodmare band has swelled considerably and the inventory reads like an equine Who’s Who. Ilha da Vitoria, Mother Russia, Flirtation, Zirconeum, Emerald Beauty, Headstrong, Serra Negra (dam of Noordhoek Flyer), plus the dams of Asylum Seeker and Badger’s Gift.

There are daughters of English Group One winners, and of South African, American, Australian and Brazilian champions.

“The quest is to breed a better horse than last year” Mary says. How? “With

better blood, and I suppose that really comes down to pedigrees. I’ve got to keep upgrading my mares although that’s hard because it means getting rid of some.”

“I sell all the colts unless one gets hurt, and I usually keep some fillies, unless I’ve already got a full sister or whatever.”

The matings are designed

by Mary, Jehan Malherbe and the farm management with pedigree, conformation and temperament the deciding factors. There is plenty of sire-blood to choose from. In addition to resident stallions Tiger Ridge and Right Approach, the stud has shares in Var, Dynasty, Silvano, Trippi, and has access to Fort Wood.

“My main aim is to breed classic horses. I want to win the Guineas and the other top three-year-old races,” Mary says, with more than a trace of determination in her voice. “And I really don’t care a damn about the handicaps.”

Rich Man’s Gold was the first stallion for Wilgerbosdrift, in 2001, but died of heart failure after covering a mare in November 2005.

A year later came Right Approach, bred by the Queen and trained by Sir Michael Stoute. He’d heavily backed for the Derby, but was side lined due to a hairline fracture in a vertebra. He was offered at the Tattersalls

HIT sale in October2003.

Bought for 65.000 guineas, he was raced in partnership

by Mary Slack, Larry Nestadt, Bernard Kantor, golfer Lee Westwood and his agent Chubby Chandler. A son of Machiavellian, he went on to win the Gr1 Dubai Duty Free, and was multiple Gr1 placed.

“When he started to do so well I realised that he could be a stallion. So he came.”

“Then Rich Man’s Gold died and I said to Jehan Malherbe that I didn’t want to wait four years proving another horse. I wanted him to find me something that we knew was proven.”

Jehan found a likely candidate in Tiger Ridge, a Storm Cat half-brother to A.P. Indy and Summer Squall, standing in Florida. Despite not receiving the best mares, Tiger Ridge was churning out black type winners. He joined Wilgerbosdrift alongside Right Approach in 2006 and was champion first season sire in 2010.

Choosing the best Wilgerbosdrift has produced is pretty difficult these days.

Dynasty put the farm on the map, but they also produced two other Gr1 winners who now are stallions, Elusive Fort and Noordhoek Flyer.

Then there’s Wagner (Gr1 Summer Cup), Martial Eagle (Gr1 J&B Met), Kildonan, Ilha Bela, Kavanagh… all born in the first decade of Wilgerbosdrift’s existence.

At Nationals Wilgerbosdrift consigns 26 yearlings at the National Sale, the majority sired by resident stallions Right Approach and Tiger Ride, both Gr1 producers. Among the dams, Gr1 Cape Fillies Guineas winner Emerald Beauty has a Right Approach colt (#384), as does the dam of Gr1 winner Kildonan (#331) – the latter is himself represented as well, by a filly (#9). Gr1 Majorca Stakes winner Blueridge Mountain has an Argentine-bred half brother (#159) by Equal Stripes (sire in SA of Gr1 filly Bambina Stripes).

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Gr1 dams & Gr1 offspring Yearlings with Gr1 winning siblings

Gr1 winning dams of yearlings PACIFIC BLUE Gr1 Gauteng Fillies Guineas #62 Jet Master filly; half sister to 4 multiple winners Burwell Stud

LADY WINDERMERE Gr1 Allan Robertson Fillies, Gr1 Garden Province S.; Champion 3yo Filly #507 Jet Master colt; first foal Drakenstein Stud

PRIVATE RESERVE Gr1 SA Nursery, Gr1 Allan Robertson; Champion 2yo Filly #92 Western Winter filly; half sister to 4 winners Klawervlei Stud

ZAITOON Gr1 SA Fillies Classic #268 Jet Master colt; 2nd foal Maine Chance

SILVER ARC Gr1 Allan Robertson Fillies #155 Judpot colt; half brother to 2 winners Varsfontein Stud

BOLD ELLINORE Gr1 Garden Province S.; Champion Older Female #316 Trippi filly; 3rd foal Wilgerbosdrift

URABAMBA Gr1 SA Fillies Classic #233 Jet Master colt; 2nd foal Klipdrif Stud

EMERALD BEAUTY Gr1 Cape Fillies Guineas #384 Right Approach colt; full brother to 2 multiple winners Wilgerbosdrift

WONDERFUL WORLD Gr1 SA Fillies Sprint #263 Dynasty colt; half brother to Chave de Oura (Gr3 Cape Classic; 2nd Gr1 Cape Guineas) Drakenstein Stud

CONSENSUAL Gr1 Golden Slipper; Champion 2yo Filly #347 Jet Master filly; first foal Klawervlei Stud

BADGER’S GIFT Gr1 Paddock S. #299 Dynasty colt; half brother to a winner Drakenstein Stud

GEEPEE S Gr1 Allan Robertson Fillies #420 Captain Al filly; first foal La Berg Stud

CIRCLE OF LIFE Gr1 Garden Province S.; Champion Older Mare (2x) #342 Trippi colt; half brother to Mina Salaam (Zimbabwe Guineas) Drakenstein Stud

SLUMDOGMILLIONAIRE Gr1 SA Classic #8 half sister by Fort Wood; full sister to Cycad (Gr2 Gold Vase) Trade Specialist (Settler’s Trophy –(L)) Nutfield Stud JACKSON Gr1 Cape Derby, Gr1 Daily News 2000 #37 full brother Highlands ON HER TOES Gr1 Allan Robertson Fillies #141 half brother by Captain Al Highlands MASTER PLAN Gr1 Champions Cup #90 half sister by Judpot Varsfontein Stud ROYAL BENCHER Gr1 SA Derby #124 half brother by Rebel King Varsfontein Stud WAR HORSE Gr1 Golden Horseshoe #174 half brother by Judpot Varsfontein Stud ROXANNE Gr1 Thekwini S. #131 half sister by Trippi Rosedene Stud

HUNTING TOWER Gr1 Vodacom July, Gr1 SA Classic #177 half brother by Mogok Scott Bros

SILVER ARC Gr1 Allan Robertson Fillies #521 half brother by Sail From Seattle Ascot Stud

THE APACHE Gr1 Champions Cup, Gr1 Daily News 2000; Champion 3yo Colt #286 full sister Scott Bros

DIAMOND QUEST Gr1 Gold Cup #366 half brother by Kahal Summerhill

ORBISON Gr1 Champions Cup #315 half brother by Miesque’s Approval Scott Bros PIERRE JOURDAN Gr1 SA Classic #243 half brother by Kahal Summerhill LINK MAN Gr1 Gold Medallion; Champion 2yo Colt #249 full brother Riverton Stud CAPETOWN NOIR Gr1 Cape Guineas, Gr1 Cape Derby #278 half sister by Parade Leader; half sister to Across The Ice (Gr3 August S.) Lammerskraal Stud

BLUERIDGE MOUNTAIN Gr1 Majorca S. #159 half brother by Equal Stripes Wilgerbosdrift

TARA’S TOUCH Gr1 Garden Province S.; Champion 3yo Filly #308 half brother by Dynasty; half brother to Dance Of Diamonds (Gr3 Kenilworth Nursery) Ascot Stud

KILDONAN Gr1 Premier Champion S., Gr1 Golden Horse Sprint; Champion 2yo Colt #331 half brother by Right Approach Wilgerbosdrift

COPPER PARADE Gr1 Golden Horseshoe #349 half brother by Fort Wood; half brother to Copper Trader (E-Cape Nursery-(L)) Ascot Stud

LET’S ROCK’N ROLL Gr1 Golden Horse Sprint; Champion 3yo Sprinter #402 half brother by Western Winter Klipdrif Stud GYPSY’S WARNING Gr1 SA Fillies Classic, Gr1 Thekwini S., Gr1 Matriarch S. (USA) #438 half sister by Fort Wood; half sister to Surabi (Gr2 Camellia S.) Rathmor Stud IVORY TRAIL Gr1 Champions Cup #453 half sister by Argonaut Cheveley Stud AFRICAN APPEAL Gr1 Champions Cup #494 half sister by Right Approach; half sister to Mary Lou (Swallow S.-(L)) Narrow Creek Stud THUNDERING STAR Gr1 Gold Cup; Champion Stayer #520 full brother; full brother to Olympic Storm (Gr3 Jacaranda Hcp) Middlefield Stud SPICED GOLD Gr1 SA Fillies Classic #529 full brother Greenhill Farm

IN BRIEF Yearlings with Gr1 winning siblings FULL BROTHERS to Jackson, Link Man, Thundering Star FULL SISTER to The Apache HALF BROTHERS to Royal Bencher, On Her Toes, Blueridge Mountain, War Horse, Hunting Tower, Pierre Jourdan, Orbison Tara’s Touch, Kildonan, Copper Parade, Diamond Quest, Let’s Rock’n Roll, Silver Arc, Spiced Gold HALF SISTERS to Slumdogmillionaire, Master Plan, Roxanne, Capetown Noir, The Apache, Ivory Trail, Gypsy’s Warning, African Appeal

Gr1 Winning Mares with yearlings by JET MASTER: Pacific Blue, Urabamba, Zaitoon, Consensual, Lady Windermere WESTERN WINTER: Private Reserve JUDPOT: Silver Arc DYNASTY: Badger’s Gift, Wonderful World TRIPPI: Bold Ellinore, Circle Of Life RIGHT APPROACH: Emerald Beauty CAPTAIN AL: Geepee S

Seen Before

National Sale yearlings offered previously at weanling & yearling sales previous sale bk1 2013 bk2 2013 bk1 2013 bk1 2013 cms 2012 cms 2012 cms 2012 milk 2012 bk1 2013 bk1 2013 bk1 2013 milk 2012 milk 2012 cms 2012 cms 2012 milk 2012 bk1 2013 bk1 2013 bk1 2013 bk1 2013 bk1 2013 cms 2012 bk1 2013 bk1 2013 cms 2012 cms 2012 bk1 2013 bk1 2013 cms 2012 bk1 2013 bk1 2013 cms 2012 bk1 2013

lot # 1 # 7 # 10 # 16 # 27 # 28 # 30 # 41 # 65 # 72 #123 #126 #189 #201 #235 #265 #290 #296 #311 #353 #358 #370 #432 #447 #452 #462 #463 #466 #490 #506 #511 #526 #531

yearling Dark Abbot Triptothestars Zambezi River 11messila rose 11misstobe 11missy’s Thunder 11mochalette 11mostly Mischief Paco Pearl Emblem Icy Avalanche 11roman Treasure 11sunset Sails 11syrian Sonja 11val De Vie 11woodland Fairy Arabian Trip Jet Set Go Big Freeze Tripp Force 11cut no ice 11double Bluff Good Grace Captain’s Corner 11house Hunting 11imperial Rome Sebonac Thaler Point 11keen Review Love Token 11laughing matter 11little Fox Darling Rosebud

price 575k 400k 5k 5k 60k

40k 70k 27k 25k 170k 500k

75k 20k 250k 100k 70k 250k 25k 225k 10k 225k

prev. buyer not sold Mike Bass Drakenstein Stud not sold Rosedene Stud Moutonshoek buy-back Varsfontein Stud not sold withdrawn not sold Varsfontein Stud Todd A Kramer J Thomson Dr M Adams Racing Drakenstein Stud not sold not sold not sold Goodman JM Andrews T Maine Chance Farms withdrawn Todd A Murdoch G Drakenstein Stud not sold Avontuur Maine Chance Farms withdrawn Shepherd A Winterbach Stud

current vendor Nutfield Stud Drakenstein Stud (Agent) Drakenstein Stud Hemel ‘N Aarde Stud (Agent) Rosedene Stud Moutonshoek Maine Chance Farms Varsfontein Stud Maine Chance Farms (Agent) Nutfield Stud Klipdrif Stud (Agent) Varsfontein Stud (Agent) Ascot Stud Hadlow Stud (Agent) Ambiance Stud Hemel ‘n Aarde Stud Drakenstein Stud Avontuur Thoroughbred Farm Lammerskraal Stud Lammerskraal Stud Moutonshoek Avontuur Thoroughbred Farm (Agent) Maine Chance Farms Daytona Stud Highlands Farm Stud Mauritzfontein Stud (Agent / G Murdoch) Drakenstein Stud Lammerskraal Stud Avontuur Maine Chance Farms Gary Player Stud Farm Beaumont Stud Winterbach Stud

milk = Milkwood dispersal weanling • cms = Cape Mare sale weanling bk1/bk2 = Cape Premier Sale Book 1 /Book 2 yearling

Is Your Stallion Entered?

South Africa’s SIRES ANNUAL in print & on the web is being prepared for 2013 Deadline booking: 7 May 2013 contact: Kiki Miedema kiki@sportingpost.co.za call: 021 797 8678 or 082 878 2231

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Sires Statistics

HIGHEST PRICED LOTS

by SIRE

LEADING SIRES BY STAKES

National Sale 2007 - 2012 (SI 2.50 or more) SI= Sale Index - price vs. the average price of a yearling of the same sex at the same sale; *= Select Sale

season 2012/2013 • 1 August 2012 - 8 April 2012 stakes

sire

rnrs

AEPR

runs

wnrs

10,095,343 9,785,191 8,164,883 8,055,590 7,565,330 6,148,745 5,390,550 5,081,175 4,379,370 3,952,445 3,859,795 3,786,572 3,752,328 3,598,432 3,411,240 3,400,070 3,187,828 3,094,345 2,949,028 2,897,895 2,707,158 2,636,612 2,395,905 2,392,870 2,300,955 2,236,915 2,166,240 2,142,215

Silvano *Jet Master Var Kahal Captain Al Western Winter Tiger Ridge Dynasty *Victory Moon Spectrum Fort Wood Mogok Right Approach Black Minnaloushe Windrush *National Emblem King Of Kings *Strike Smartly Miesque’s Approval Jallad Toreador *Muhtafal Greys Inn Count Dubois Go Deputy **Rock Of Gibraltar Trippi Bezrin

183 206 152 167 173 129 85 92 128 126 113 127 94 120 117 131 113 72 116 73 83 79 71 72 49 27 57 72

55,166 47,501 53,716 48,237 43,730 47,665 63,418 55,230 34,214 31,369 34,157 29,816 39,918 29,987 29,156 25,955 28,211 42,977 25,423 39,697 32,616 33,375 33,745 33,234 46,958 82,849 38,004 29,753

919 985 753 933 884 638 427 459 669 669 542 611 494 539 610 661 593 359 622 411 405 453 336 393 270 125 229 441

61 86 67 60 67 50 30 30 41 39 42 34 33 45 39 36 34 19 36 24 30 23 25 28 23 10 26 20

4,149,250 3,999,755 3,838,580 3,574,105 3,486,720 2,818,860 2,815,835 2,261,965 2,248,085 2,005,490 1,907,225 1,803,595 1,727,090 1,572,770 1,431,350 1,389,925 1,381,985 1,381,978 1,369,235 1,352,615 1,249,815 1,234,000 1,208,343 1,111,025 1,085,005 1,028,120 1,003,462 945,685

Silvano *Jet Master Kahal Var Captain Al Western Winter Tiger Ridge Black Minnaloushe Victory Moon Trippi Mogok Spectrum Right Approach **Rock Of Gibraltar *Stronghold Mullins Bay Miesque’s Approval King Of Kings Fort Wood *Jallad Greys Inn *National Emblem Toreador Imperial Stride Dynasty Ashaawes *Muhtafal Albert Hall

620,900 483,100 405,775 399,150 361,275 254,000 239,150 217,100 216,725 215,625 208,375 208,250 173,300 160,750 150,625 142,350 140,425 111,275 110,925 109,375 107,150 107,125

Var King Of Kings Captain Al Sail From Seattle Antonius Pius **Dubawi Western Winter Judpot Jay Peg **Rock Of Gibraltar Rebel King Bezrin Windrush Trippi *Stronghold Count Dubois Miesque’s Approval Black Minnaloushe Mullins Bay Ravishing Right Approach Greys Inn

wns

100 131 112 96 92 74 49 49 60 54 59 46 48 56 54 53 42 32 42 35 34 31 35 32 33 16 31 28

wnr/ rnr%

33% 42% 44% 36% 39% 39% 35% 33% 32% 31% 37% 27% 35% 38% 33% 27% 30% 26% 31% 33% 36% 29% 35% 39% 47% 37% 46% 28%

SW SW SW/ wnrs wns wnr%

4 9 5 5 6 6 3 3 0 2 0 2 2 0 0 1 1 3 0 3 3 2 1 2 3 2 2 2

4 9 7 8 7 8 5 4 0 2 0 2 3 0 0 1 1 4 0 3 3 2 1 2 3 2 2 2

7% 10% 7% 8% 9% 12% 10% 10% 0% 5% 0% 6% 6% 0% 0% 3% 3% 16% 0% 13% 10% 9% 4% 7% 13% 20% 8% 10%

plcs

261 271 228 234 273 173 117 131 176 155 131 137 137 131 181 165 144 90 153 118 89 131 78 108 65 33 67 99

plc/ rns%

28% 28% 30% 25% 31% 27% 27% 29% 26% 23% 24% 22% 28% 24% 30% 25% 24% 25% 25% 29% 22% 29% 23% 27% 24% 26% 29% 22%

SP

15 14 11 8 9 4 3 11 3 3 1 2 2 3 3 0 3 1 1 3 2 2 2 6 0 0 3 2

top earner with stakes & % of total stakes

Martial Eagle Chave De Oura Variety Club Love Struck Hill Fifty Four Capetown Noir Wagner Beach Beauty War Horse Tuscan Lass Pylon Meadow Magic Whiteline Fever Wood Nymph Eye Of The World Sharp Design King’s Temptress Slumdogmillionaire Orange Blossom The Hangman Jackodore Showmetheway King Of Pain Roman Wall Pessoa Rock Of Arts Franny Jimmi Choo

1,555,080 488,125 869,700 1,450,000 952,000 1,159,450 1,285,200 1,115,625 323,225 194,000 278,250 450,000 591,875 156,500 217,525 366,500 213,875 725,625 152,250 421,550 300,250 245,250 302,500 211,500 296,875 1,134,800 238,375 201,750

15% 5% 11% 18% 13% 19% 24% 22% 7% 5% 7% 12% 16% 4% 6% 11% 7% 23% 5% 15% 11% 9% 13% 9% 13% 51% 11% 9%

1,144,525 488,125 1,450,000 429,375 202,500 1,159,450 1,220,925 156,500 323,225 238,375 218,750 194,000 314,650 1,134,800 595,625 329,625 152,250 213,875 141,600 421,550 302,500 121,350 144,975 221,450 177,935 192,500 158,550 124,675

28% 12% 38% 12% 6% 41% 43% 7% 14% 12% 11% 11% 18% 72% 42% 24% 11% 15% 10% 31% 24% 10% 12% 20% 16% 19% 16% 13%

153,150 172,375 89,725 119,675 96,375 76,000 124,375 50,000 181,875 165,625 79,150 201,750 82,625 146,750 58,000 66,000 54,750 49,125 42,375 64,250 50,000 50,000

25% 36% 22% 30% 27% 30% 52% 23% 84% 77% 38% 97% 48% 91% 39% 46% 39% 44% 38% 59% 47% 47%

LEADING SIRES OF 3YO’S BY STAKES 74 86 56 59 77 48 33 67 67 49 54 53 46 13 27 33 62 53 45 26 39 55 41 31 21 26 29 50

56,071 46,509 68,546 60,578 45,282 58,726 85,328 33,761 33,554 40,928 35,319 34,030 37,545 120,982 53,013 42,119 22,290 26,075 30,427 52,024 32,047 22,436 29,472 35,840 51,667 39,543 34,602 18,914

340 388 284 326 423 245 192 322 325 216 252 297 236 66 190 190 330 303 232 153 196 277 222 164 125 125 185 282

31 40 24 33 38 24 20 28 20 25 19 20 20 4 8 12 19 16 19 10 14 16 17 14 10 9 11 12

46 57 37 58 50 34 32 36 27 30 28 28 28 6 12 15 22 18 21 16 20 20 19 18 14 15 14 12

42% 47% 43% 56% 49% 50% 61% 42% 30% 51% 35% 38% 43% 31% 30% 36% 31% 30% 42% 38% 36% 29% 41% 45% 48% 35% 38% 24%

2 2 3 1 3 2 1 0 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 0 0 0 2 0 0

2 6% 2 5% 6 13% 2 3% 3 8% 3 8% 3 5% 0 0% 0 0% 1 4% 1 5% 1 5% 2 5% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 1 6% 0 0% 1 10% 1 7% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 0 0% 2 22% 0 0% 0 0%

101 102 64 96 140 57 51 78 86 61 56 59 59 23 52 57 68 71 61 41 34 66 43 35 40 30 51 71

30% 26% 23% 29% 33% 23% 27% 24% 26% 28% 22% 20% 25% 35% 27% 30% 21% 23% 26% 27% 17% 24% 19% 21% 32% 24% 28% 25%

7 5 1 5 5 1 1 3 2 2 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 1 0 2 1 0 0 1 2 2 1 0

Tellina Chave De Oura Love Struck Via Africa All Is Secret Capetown Noir Cherry On The Top Wood Nymph War Horse Franny Alcanina Tuscan Lass Fantastic Mr Fox Rock Of Arts Negev Gitiano Orange Blossom King’s Temptress Balse The Hangman King Of Pain Antigua Turbo Tom Nice Stride Dynamic Way Clear The Disciple Eagle Face

LEADING SIRES OF 2YO’S BY STAKES 21 11 24 15 18 4 4 16 9 2 15 3 16 8 7 7 10 15 12 5 8 10

29,567 43,918 16,907 26,610 20,071 63,500 59,788 13,569 24,081 107,813 13,892 69,417 10,831 20,094 21,518 20,336 14,043 7,418 9,244 21,875 13,394 10,713

50 29 39 42 29 10 7 24 15 3 30 11 27 13 13 9 24 25 23 15 22 19

8 4 6 3 6 4 3 4 1 2 3 1 2 1 2 2 2 2 1 2 1 1

10 6 6 5 7 4 5 4 2 3 3 2 2 1 2 2 2 2 1 2 1 1

38% 36% 25% 20% 33% 100% 75% 25% 11% 100% 20% 33% 13% 13% 29% 29% 20% 13% 8% 40% 13% 10%

1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

1 0 1 1 0 0 1 0 1 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0 0 0

13% 0% 17% 33% 0% 0% 33% 0% 100% 50% 0% 100% 0% 100% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0% 0%

16 14 13 20 10 5 2 4 4 0 10 3 9 6 7 3 8 3 8 3 8 5

32% 48% 33% 48% 34% 50% 29% 17% 27% 0% 33% 27% 33% 46% 54% 33% 33% 12% 35% 20% 36% 26%

0 2 0 2 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 1 0 0 0 0 0 0

LEADING SIRES BY AEPR 2,236,915 5,390,550 5,081,175 10,095,343 8,164,883 8,055,590 6,148,745 9,785,191 2,300,955 1,489,025 1,581,975 7,565,330 3,094,345 3,752,328

**Rock Of Gibraltar Tiger Ridge Dynasty Silvano Var Kahal Western Winter *Jet Master Go Deputy Goldkeeper *Stronghold Captain Al *Strike Smartly Right Approach

27 85 92 183 152 167 129 206 49 32 34 173 72 94

82,849 63,418 55,230 55,166 53,716 48,237 47,665 47,501 46,958 46,532 46,529 43,730 42,977 39,918

125 427 459 919 753 933 638 985 270 178 203 884 359 494

10 30 30 61 67 60 50 86 23 14 10 67 19 33

16 49 49 100 112 96 74 131 33 17 14 92 32 48

37% 35% 33% 33% 44% 36% 39% 42% 47% 44% 29% 39% 26% 35%

2 3 3 4 5 5 6 9 3 1 0 6 3 2

2 5 4 4 7 8 8 9 3 1 0 7 4 3

20% 10% 10% 7% 7% 8% 12% 10% 13% 7% 0% 9% 16% 6%

33 117 131 261 228 234 173 271 65 53 59 273 90 137

26% 27% 29% 28% 30% 25% 27% 28% 24% 30% 29% 31% 25% 28%

With 15 or more runners 0 3 11 15 11 8 4 14 0 2 1 9 1 2

LEADING SIRES OF 3YO'S BY AEPR 1,572,770 2,815,835 3,838,580 3,574,105 2,818,860 4,149,250 1,431,350 1,352,615 1,085,005 3,999,755 3,486,720 1,389,925 819,950 2,005,490

**Rock Of Gibraltar Tiger Ridge Kahal Var Western Winter Silvano *Stronghold *Jallad Dynasty Jet Master Captain Al Mullins Bay *Cataloochee Trippi

13 33 56 59 48 74 27 26 21 86 77 33 20 49

120,982 85,328 68,546 60,578 58,726 56,071 53,013 52,024 51,667 46,509 45,282 42,119 40,998 40,928

66 192 284 326 245 340 190 153 125 388 423 190 107 216

4 6 20 32 24 37 33 58 24 34 31 46 8 12 10 16 10 14 40 57 38 50 12 15 9 12 25 30 * deceased

31% 0 0 0% 61% 1 3 5% 43% 3 6 13% 56% 1 2 3% 50% 2 3 8% 42% 2 2 6% 30% 0 0 0% 38% 1 1 10% 48% 0 0 0% 47% 2 2 5% 49% 3 3 8% 36% 0 0 0% 45% 0 0 0% 51% 1 1 4% ** not standing in RSA

23 51 64 96 57 101 52 41 40 102 140 57 32 61

35% 27% 23% 29% 23% 30% 27% 27% 32% 26% 33% 30% 30% 28%

Normanz King’s Bay Only Emily Seattle Storm My Sanctuary Willow Magic Winter Fantasy Forest Indigo Olympic Owen Arcetri Pink Letas Bonnet Jimmi Choo Fly At Em For The Lads Buffalo Bill Lord Dubois Emperor Niarchos Kandahar Divine Will Ravishing Gem Estancia Grey Area

0 1 1 5 1 7 1 2 2 5 5 1 0 2

Rock Of Arts Wagner Beach Beauty Martial Eagle Variety Club Love Struck Capetown Noir Chave De Oura Pessoa Francois Bernardus Negev Hill Fifty Four Slumdogmillionaire Whiteline Fever

1,134,800 1,285,200 1,115,625 1,555,080 869,700 1,450,000 1,159,450 488,125 296,875 230,625 595,625 952,000 725,625 591,875

51% 24% 22% 15% 11% 18% 19% 5% 13% 15% 38% 13% 23% 16%

With 10 or more runners Rock Of Arts Cherry On The Top Love Struck Via Africa Capetown Noir Tellina Negev The Hangman Dynamic Chave De Oura All Is Secret Gitiano Corredor Franny

1,134,800 1,220,925 1,450,000 429,375 1,159,450 1,144,525 595,625 421,550 177,935 488,125 202,500 329,625 120,375 238,375

72% 43% 38% 12% 41% 28% 42% 31% 16% 12% 6% 24% 15% 12%

2007

price 2.600.000 2.200.000 2.200.000 2.100.000 2.100.000 1.900.000 1.800.000 1.500.000 1.400.000 1.400.000 1.300.000 1.300.000 1.200.000 1.200.000 1.200.000 1.200.000 1.200.000 1.100.000 1.100.000 1.100.000 1.000.000 1.000.000 1.000.000 1.000.000 1.000.000 950.000 800.000 800.000 800.000 800.000 800.000 800.000

sex & sire select SI c Western Winter * 6.94 c Fort Wood 5.87 f Jallad * 7.44 f Spectrum * 7.10 c Western Winter * 5.61 f Al Mufti * 6.43 c Western Winter * 4.81 f Montjeu * 5.07 c Jallad * 3.74 c Fort Wood * 3.74 f Western Winter 4.40 f Western Winter 4.40 f Silvano 4.06 c Fort Wood * 3.20 f Western Winter * 4.06 c Royal Academy * 3.20 c National Emblem * 3.20 c Silvano 2.94 c Rich Man’s Gold * 2.94 c Fort Wood * 2.94 c National Emblem 2.67 c Hennessy 2.67 c Rakeen 2.67 c Al Mufti * 2.67 f Western Winter * 3.38 c Jallad 2.54 f Caesour 2.71 f Lecture 2.71 f Jet Master 2.71 f Southern Halo * 2.71 f Al Mufti * 2.71 f Western Winter * 2.71

price 3.000.000 3.000.000 2.900.000 2.600.000 2.500.000 2.400.000 2.300.000 2.200.000 2.000.000 1.800.000 1.800.000 1.800.000 1.800.000 1.600.000 1.600.000 1.600.000 1.600.000 1.500.000 1.500.000 1.300.000 1.200.000 1.100.000 1.100.000 1.100.000 1.000.000 1.000.000 925.000

sex & sire select SI f Western Winter * 8.12 f Royal Academy * 8.12 c Jet Master * 6.84 c Fort Wood * 6.13 c Pivotal * 5.90 c Bernstein * 5.66 f Jallad * 6.23 c Fort Wood * 5.19 c Western Winter * 4.72 f Captain Al 4.87 c Smarty Jones * 4.24 c Fort Wood * 4.24 c Western Winter * 4.24 c Spectrum 3.77 c Fort Wood * 3.77 f Fort Wood * 4.33 f Al Mufti * 4.33 f Fort Wood 4.06 f Fort Wood * 4.06 f Spectrum * 3.52 c Alphabet Soup 2.83 c Strike Smartly 2.59 c Giant’s Causeway 2.59 c Fort Wood * 2.59 f Jet Master 2.71 f Western Winter * 2.71 f Jet Master 2.50

price 2.400.000 2.000.000 1.600.000 1.500.000 1.500.000 1.500.000 1.300.000 1.300.000 1.300.000 1.200.000 1.200.000 1.200.000 1.100.000 1.050.000 1.000.000 1.000.000 1.000.000 1.000.000 1.000.000 1.000.000 950.000 950.000 900.000 800.000 800.000 800.000 750.000 750.000 700.000 700.000

sex & sire select SI c Kahal 6.86 c Count Dubois 5.72 c Jet Master 4.57 f Solskjaer 5.77 c Royal Academy 4.29 c National Emblem 4.29 c Invincible Spirit 3.72 c Var 3.72 f Spectrum 5.00 f Goldkeeper 4.61 c Jet Master 3.43 c Western Winter 3.43 f Jet Master 4.23 f Fort Wood 4.04 c Red Ransom 2.86 c Jet Master 2.86 c Fort Wood 2.86 c Western Winter 2.86 c Galileo 2.86 c Al Mufti 2.86 c Jet Master 2.72 c Fort Wood 2.72 c Tiger Ridge 2.57 f Western Winter 3.08 f Al Mufti 3.08 f National Emblem 3.08 f Fort Wood 2.88 f Fort Wood 2.88 f Fort Wood 2.69 f Jet Master 2.69

2008

2009

47

Supplement to SPORTING POST • FRIDAY 19th - SUNDAY 21st APRIL 2013

HIGHEST PRICED LOTS

by SIRE

National Sale 2007 - 2012 (SI 2.50 or more) SI= Sale Index - price vs. the average price of a yearling of the same sex at the same sale; *= Select Sale

2010

price 4.000.000 3.600.000 2.200.000 1.900.000 1.900.000 1.700.000 1.600.000 1.500.000 1.450.000 1.400.000 1.400.000 1.300.000 1.300.000 1.200.000 1.200.000 1.200.000 1.200.000 1.100.000 1.050.000 1.000.000 1.000.000 1.000.000 950.000 850.000 850.000 825.000 725.000 700.000 700.000

sex & sire select c Jet Master c Singspiel c Fort Wood c Jet Master f Var c Fort Wood c Black Minnaloushe c Captain Al f Jet Master c Jet Master c Jet Master c Tiger Ridge f Black Minnaloushe f Jet Master c Dansili c Spectrum c Jet Master c Peintre Celebre c Western Winter c Captain Al c Hussonet c Jet Master c National Emblem f Captain Al f Captain Al f Al Mufti f Jet Master f Tiger Ridge f Western Winter

SI 10.72 9.65 5.89 5.09 7.10 4.56 4.29 4.02 5.42 3.75 3.75 3.48 4.86 4.49 3.22 3.22 3.22 2.95 2.81 2.68 2.68 2.68 2.55 3.18 3.18 3.08 2.71 2.62 2.62

price 3.200.000 3.000.000 2.100.000 2.000.000 1.700.000 1.600.000 1.400.000 1.350.000 1.250.000 1.200.000 1.100.000 1.000.000 1.000.000 1.000.000 1.000.000 1.000.000 900.000 850.000 800.000 800.000 800.000 800.000 800.000 750.000 700.000 700.000 700.000 650.000 575.000

sex & sire select SI f Jet Master 14.43 c Jet Master 11.41 c Trippi 7.99 f Giant’s Causeway 9.02 c Jet Master 6.46 f Nayef 7.21 c Silvano 5.32 f Fort Wood 6.09 c Giant’s Causeway 4.75 c Jet Master 4.56 c Silvano 4.18 c Western Winter 3.80 c Jet Master 3.80 c Jet Master 3.80 c Jet Master 3.80 c Tiger Ridge 3.80 c Western Winter 3.42 c Elusive Quality 3.23 f Jet Master 3.61 c Captain Al 3.04 f Captain Al 3.61 c Tiger Ridge 3.04 f Oratorio 3.61 c Jallad 2.85 c Western Winter 2.66 f Trippi 3.16 c Caesour 2.66 f Rock Of Gibraltar 2.93 f Go Deputy 2.59

price 1.700.000 1.400.000 1.250.000 1.250.000 1.250.000 1.050.000 1.000.000 1.000.000 1.000.000 1.000.000 900.000 850.000 800.000 800.000 800.000 800.000 800.000 750.000 750.000 700.000 650.000 600.000 600.000 600.000 550.000

sex & sire select c Jet Master c Captain Al c Trippi c Captain Al c Western Winter c Jet Master c Sail From Seattle c Trippi c Teofilo c Dynasty c Trippi c Black Minnaloushe f Trippi c Var f Captain Al c Trippi f Black Minnaloushe c Silvano c Trippi f Duke Of Marmalade f Captain Al f Jet Master f Orpen f National Emblem f Trippi

2011

2012

SI 6.39 5.26 4.70 4.70 4.70 3.95 3.76 3.76 3.76 3.76 3.38 3.20 4.35 3.01 4.35 3.01 4.35 2.82 2.82 3.80 3.53 3.26 3.26 3.26 2.99

Breeders Statistics LEADING BREEDERS BY STAKES season 2012/2013 • 1 August 2012 - 8 April 2012

stakes

11,099,445 9,564,513 7,364,075 7,084,378 6,481,877 4,416,345 4,000,308 3,652,275 3,428,040 3,026,640 2,848,389 2,789,665 2,651,098 2,389,595 2,235,970 2,173,380 2,163,325 2,091,105 2,058,155 2,022,877 1,982,535 1,952,222 1,886,905 1,878,155 1,539,753 1,516,160 1,452,085 1,447,070 1,398,757 1,382,115 1,330,350 1,316,190 1,302,825 1,231,800 1,186,700 1,182,175 1,157,675 1,132,930 1,091,725 1,070,325 989,863 978,625 966,505 960,025 901,888 889,801 883,950 829,795 827,590 811,575 798,115 764,125 761,550 755,215 720,765 719,080 714,130 691,310

sire

rnrs

AEPR

runs

wnrs

Summerhill Stud Klawervlei Stud Highlands Wilgerbosdrift Maine Chance Lammerskraal Stud Scott Bros Mauritzfontein Stud Varsfontein Stud Gary Player Stud Cheveley Stud Avontuur Farm The Alchemy Hemel ‘n Aarde Stud La Plaisance Stud Ascot Stud Graystone Stud Drakenstein Stud Daytona Stud Normandy Stud D Cohen & sons Oldlands Stud Moutonshoek GJ Armitage Ambiance Stud Arc-En-Ciel Rosedene Stud PJ Devine GW Schafer Beaumont Stud **bred in Brazil Yellow Star Stud T Armitage Bush Hill Stud Milkwood Stud B & Mrs Le Roux Bosworth Farm Stud CJ Saunders PJ & Mrs Garlicki Backworth Stud Riverworld Stud R & Mrs Pickering Danika Stud P du Toit Waterford Stud Tawny Syndicate Favour Stud Nutfield Stud WJ Engelbrecht GH Rowles CF & Mrs de Vos ND Page BH, AJ & ME Botha IR Heyns Zandvliet Stud Digteby Stud Riverton Stud AN Foster

260 292 159 106 139 85 158 64 85 79 69 62 101 79 79 64 58 50 38 63 50 50 52 53 47 72 61 45 9 37 19 63 5 56 44 40 53 62 18 34 31 59 28 18 43 22 32 25 38 36 7 7 43 19 28 21 34 17

42,690 32,755 46,315 66,834 46,632 51,957 25,318 57,067 40,330 38,312 41,281 44,995 26,248 30,248 28,303 33,959 37,299 41,822 54,162 32,109 39,651 39,044 36,287 35,437 32,761 21,058 23,805 32,157 155,417 37,354 70,018 20,892 260,565 21,996 26,970 29,554 21,843 18,273 60,651 31,480 31,931 16,587 34,518 53,335 20,974 40,446 27,623 33,192 21,779 22,544 114,016 109,161 17,710 39,748 25,742 34,242 21,004 40,665

1542 1392 839 539 624 445 763 275 502 463 376 286 456 431 365 363 288 248 172 332 300 276 245 282 253 354 326 210 55 165 105 377 41 294 195 193 248 347 127 150 136 269 148 124 248 115 197 148 160 180 42 52 183 95 155 107 152 103

85 104 65 45 52 41 39 21 33 24 28 22 24 20 24 24 20 26 12 21 18 17 22 18 14 16 16 13 4 6 8 15 2 17 16 12 13 11 8 12 12 8 12 8 9 10 11 9 8 5 5 6 9 7 6 8 7 8

wns

129 141 98 71 79 56 46 35 50 35 41 39 35 31 32 33 29 33 17 28 26 21 31 27 20 20 20 21 10 8 15 15 5 21 21 17 16 15 13 15 16 9 16 11 11 13 14 11 11 8 10 12 13 10 10 10 8 10

wnr/ rnr%

SW SW SW/ wnrs wns wnr%

33% 36% 41% 42% 37% 48% 25% 33% 39% 30% 41% 35% 24% 25% 30% 38% 34% 52% 32% 33% 36% 34% 42% 34% 30% 22% 26% 29% 44% 16% 42% 24% 40% 30% 36% 30% 25% 18% 44% 35% 39% 14% 43% 44% 21% 45% 34% 36% 21% 14% 71% 86% 21% 37% 21% 38% 21% 47%

3 4 5 5 2 4 2 2 1 2 3 3 1 1 1 3 0 2 2 1 1 0 2 2 2 1 0 0 2 1 1 0 1 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 1 0 1 0 0 0 0

5 5 5 6 2 5 2 4 1 2 3 3 1 1 1 3 0 2 3 1 1 0 2 2 2 1 0 0 2 2 1 0 2 1 1 1 0 0 1 1 0 0 0 1 1 1 0 0 0 1 0 2 0 1 0 0 0 0

4% 4% 8% 11% 4% 10% 5% 10% 3% 8% 11% 14% 4% 5% 4% 13% 0% 8% 17% 5% 6% 0% 9% 11% 14% 6% 0% 0% 50% 17% 13% 0% 50% 6% 6% 8% 0% 0% 13% 8% 0% 0% 0% 13% 11% 10% 0% 0% 0% 20% 0% 17% 0% 14% 0% 0% 0% 0%

plcs

386 375 232 157 183 115 173 81 146 125 112 85 116 122 111 93 90 68 35 81 89 73 54 59 59 69 75 57 15 36 26 81 14 50 37 44 52 67 38 37 34 54 38 38 40 28 56 39 48 39 10 18 34 27 30 22 41 30

plc/ rns%

SP

25% 12 27% 7 28% 10 29% 3 29% 10 26% 3 23% 3 29% 4 29% 3 27% 4 30% 1 30% 5 25% 2 28% 1 30% 2 26% 1 31% 2 27% 1 20% 2 24% 3 30% 2 26% 4 22% 0 21% 3 23% 1 19% 1 23% 2 27% 1 27% 1 22% 0 25% 3 21% 1 34% 1 17% 0 19% 0 23% 1 21% 0 19% 2 30% 0 25% 0 25% 1 20% 0 26% 0 31% 2 16% 1 24% 0 28% 2 26% 0 30% 1 22% 1 24% 1 35% 0 19% 0 28% 1 19% 1 21% 1 27% 1 29% 1

top earner with stakes & % of total stakes

Love Struck Hill Fifty Four The Hangman Martial Eagle Tellina Capetown Noir Meadow Magic Cherry On The Top Henry Higgins Chave De Oura Follow The Piper La Volta Jack Dan Demanding Lady Slip ‘n Slide Avenue Of Gold Formation Jeppe’s Reef What A Winter Cap Alright Louvre Parceval Albert Mooney Francois Bernardus Zambucca King Of Pain Africa Shimmering Jet Slumdogmillionaire Variety Club Ilsanpietro Penhaligon Beach Beauty King Neptune Muscatt Silver Age Aconcagua Flag Of France Pessoa Raise The Bar Swift And Strong Kalami Blue Nile Nice Stride King’s Temptress Beautiful Princess Lord Jonathan Empyreal Song Tequila Sunrise Knock On Wood Jet Aglow General Sherman Any Flag Seal Hammie’s Hooker Rodeo Dandy Secret Obsession Cherbourg

1,450,000 952,000 421,550 1,555,080 1,144,525 1,159,450 450,000 1,220,925 268,975 488,125 222,800 370,950 309,850 351,375 170,800 147,375 311,000 174,900 673,380 365,500 218,075 207,800 146,800 230,625 280,000 302,500 119,000 247,750 725,625 869,700 479,250 148,500 1,115,625 111,125 137,250 196,000 175,675 163,675 296,875 184,875 158,500 152,725 188,700 221,450 213,875 141,188 116,250 119,750 121,375 186,000 353,190 296,225 145,325 220,875 214,600 168,575 114,275 148,400

Uncover The Hidden Truths THE BUYERS GUIDE on the Sporting Post website!

South African racing performance aptitude sale prices of all previous offspring of mares catalogued.

L KEY #165 SPECIA Quest 1999 Special ity 2000 Special Emblem 2001 Special ecial Sp r the Ra 2002 r Key 2003 Thunde 2005 Keyman jor 2006 Key Ma y 2007 Royal Ke l Key 2009 Nationa Traveller 2010 Secret lly Fo t ee Sw 2011

3/107/93/-/1SW-6SP 10 55k Ns (SI 0.66) 68/-/-/-/s ilip Ph 0 er 28.59 Broth 62/76/68/59/12r 1w 50k Ns (SI 0.3) 15 f Shalford 72/74/63/-/32r 1w 130.6 nce 20k Ty (SI 0.44) 63.000 f Winter Roma 1w r 14 m 95k Ty (SI 1.05) -/c National Emble /-/ 01 4/1 10 7) m 250k Ns (SI 0.6 .694 2SW-8SP f National Emble 83/92/-/-/61r 10w 1.199 150k Ty (SI 1.82) 00 c Muhtafal 47/78/78/-/26r 2w 150.2 00 c Al Mufti 35/48/-/-/19r 2w 124.2 4) 300k Ns (SI 1.1 c Al Mufti 6r 81/84/-/-/1.13) I (S Ns 0k 30 fti 25 f Al Mu 8r 2w 137.1 mbly c National Asse t au on c Arg f Argonaut

www.sportingpost.co.za

13% 10% 6% 22% 18% 26% 11% 33% 8% 16% 8% 13% 12% 15% 8% 7% 14% 8% 33% 18% 11% 11% 8% 12% 18% 20% 8% 17% 52% 63% 36% 11% 86% 9% 12% 17% 15% 14% 27% 17% 16% 16% 20% 23% 24% 16% 13% 14% 15% 23% 44% 39% 19% 29% 30% 23% 16% 21%

48

Supplement to SPORTING POST • FRIDAY 19th - SUNDAY 21st APRIL 2013