My recently rejuvenated interest in the brilliant fare being dished up by the Western Cape’s Sizzling Summer Season took a sobering knock on Saturday afternoon. Treating one’s customers like desperado intellectually challenged palukas is a one-way ticket to oblivion and no amount of internationalisation and foreign investment is going to change anything until the right genuinely passionate horseracing people are placed in the key positions. We desperately need some input from the old school guys who really loved their jobs and the game, and even took their clothes off when the moment demanded it.
It’s the Cape’s showcase week and Thursday to Saturday probably represents the most strategically important seventy-two hours in the past decade. The Cape Premier Yearling Sale and the J&B Met are the two highlights and our very best shop window is on show for all the world to admire and hopefully patronise with big cheque-books and a spreading of the good gallop gospel to far and wide. When one contrasts these exciting events with the turnover decline and political turmoil of recent times, why is it that basic but key communication processes are just not being respected? How does the operator really expect to promote and boost turnover with the apathy that seems to abound in certain quarters? Where are the old fashioned guys of the Cape Turf Club and SA Turf Club when we really need them?
BAD DAY
This is an old debate but the same old disgraceful inefficiency – just a different race and a different day. I don’t believe Tellytrack and Gold Circle can defend the manner in which armchair enthusiasts and punters were treated – for the umpteenth time – after the running of the ninth race at Kenilworth on Saturday. It beggars belief, it really does. I sat at home the entire afternoon with a few like-minded punting associates – call us battlers if you choose – and enjoyed the racing. Joey Ramsden’s Trinity House. Dean Kannemeyer’s up-and –coming young sprinter Splash Gold. Mike Bass’ flying What A Winter. And Karl Neisius at his rejuvenated brilliant best. Top-class horseracing entertainment. Throw in a cheap but good old papsak, great company and decades of combined passion – and it doesn’t get too much better than that. But the mood changed after five o’clock and the ninth race.
Fareed Anthony rode what I thought was a brilliantly well-judged tactical race to win this event on the Piet Steyn-trained Eagle Squadron. He kept the son of Jet Master going in his mock Garth Puller riding style to hold off a flying Azeroth with Glen Hatt up. The provisional result flashed up on Tellytrack and Cecil Mthembu in studio confirmed the 14-1 shot had held on. The end of a nice afternoon, we thought. Let’s have another glass of this plonk. Then the head-on is shown with Cecil speculating that there ‘may be a race review..’. Fair enough. MJ Byleveld is all over the place on the big grey La Beau Jolais who is more boxed in than our wine. A bit of bumping and jostling here and there. Let’s wait a few minutes…. Nothing. Cecil pipes up: “ The data room are trying to ascertain details. It sounds like an objection. I wish we could decipher what is going on…”
PROZAC
Decipher? Seriously? Is this Turkish racing? No! Is it Ngong? No! This is the jewel of South African horseracing and we all speak basic english. We are sitting at home speechless and clueless – and it is not the wine. The race was run twenty minutes ago. No word from the track. The hardworking Cecil Mthembu, who coincidentally wears the most tasteful shirts on the chump channel, is now on his second Prozac. On the one hand he sounds absolutely frantic, helpless and desperate but always professional and friendly. I believe the data room boys took the precautionary measure of confiscating his belt and laces at this point. It is now some half hour since the race was run. And Cecil is a real racing man. He has a punt. He loves the game. He has empathy and knows how we run- of- the- mill punters feel. That is why he is sweating and caring. Suddenly there is news and a final result. Fareed and Eagle Squadron are placed fourth and Azeroth gets the race. Besides the fact that I did my PA and Pick 6 in cold blood, I had no fun in the end and feel like I was mugged. I have no qualms either with the Stipes decision – even though I think it was the most illogical stupid call I have seen in years. And who can blame me for thinking this way? I still don’t know who lodged the objection, what actually happened or anything else about it. So I watched the evening replays. And guess what? Yes, sweet nothing – just the race and the new result. And a few sound problems around the main race. The system, that runs week in and week out for the past ten years and more, just failed us, again, on all fronts.
The problem in Cape horseracing is definitely not the horses or the passion near the top of the tree. There is a real product delivery problem – and I don’t want to mention names or speculate. Maybe it is even beyond Rosmead Avenue and somewhere in Rivonia. I don’t quite know and unless whoever’s responsibility this was produces a valid signed hospital sick certificate or a death certificate dated prior to five o ‘clock on Saturday afternoon, they should be given the boot by the seat of their pants and told to find a job in a more sedentary environment like the civil service. It is not the first time – we have lost count and there are no apologies ever forthcoming. Does anyone care or understand the customer? Simply, no. Is communication a priority? Simply, no. They don’t make racing administrators like they used to.
SUPER MAN
It takes me back to a wonderful example of a Race Day Secretary, as they were then called, doing his duty beyond the call. It was October 1991 and some will recall the shocking incident of the Chris Snaith trained Midnight Run who dived backwards into an effluent dam at Milnerton racecourse during a racemeeting. Cape Turf Club Assistant General Manager Mike Louw , then in his early forties, was on duty when the two way radio crackled into life. He heard the words ‘dam’ and ‘horse’ and knew immediately. He sprinted up to the reservoir behind the saddling-up enclosure only to see a gaping hole in the asbestos roof-cover and the sounds of a horse thrashing around in the dark three metre deep effluent, that contained dead rats and all kinds of other health-threatening matter. Without consideration for his own safety , Louw stripped down and dived in as a bystander tied a rope around his waist. Mike takes up the story: “ I was very fortunate to eventually reach out and grab him by the halter as I held on to a rough concrete pillar. He was tired and his natural reaction was to stop swimming. I had to keep pulling him up as he dropped his head. With the help of a few others we managed to eventually get him out of there after about a half hour that felt like an eternity,” he said matter of factly. The other two heroes of this unique episode were the late Peter Howes, a handler and brother to jockey Gavin, and Gauteng trainer Clinton Binda, who in those days was assistant to Mark Watters, and probably a lot more agile than he is today. Louw was acknowledged by the CTC for his extraordinary bravery and courage at the same time that an award was given to Colleen Bethel, former Assistant to Bert Abercrombie, who safely recaptured the filly Dicey Mistress, who had escaped from the Milnerton stabling complex. The Ted Duyn owned daughter of Call The Guard had run all the way down Koeberg Road in the traffic over the N1 fly-over and down into Maitland where she ran over Voortrekker Road and over a bridge before stopping for a breather in the residential area. Bethel never stopped chasing her.
PUBLICITY
Now retired from racing administration, a modest Mike Louw was quick to downplay his heroic deed. He explained the healthy competition that existed then between the two clubs for both punter patronage and the support of owners and trainers : “ The inter-club competition was very good for racing as it kept us all on our toes. I loved my job and the horses but to be bluntly frank and honest, my initial thought processes as I leapt into the dam was also for the negative publicity that would follow the potential tragedy. The area was cordoned off and the horse pulled away from his groom – he should never have accessed it. Even then racing needed positive publicity and we didn’t own the mainstream racing pages like they do today. So the newsy truth inevitably came out,” he said.
As for Midnight Run, the son of Averof owned by Mervyn Golden and John Rycroft went on to repay the dedication of the folk that saved him by becoming a star of the Cape racing scene for many years thereafter. He ran 69 times for 14 wins and 33 places that included victories in the Frank Lambert Stakes, the Chairmans Handicap and the Matchem. He also ran in the 1993 Met when finishing unplaced behind the galloping goldmine, Empress Club.
I will be watching the Met on Tellytrack come Saturday. We don’t need a Midnight Run, a fire in the car park, a false start or television sound and technical problems. I hope the day runs very smoothly and whoever is doing the job just does it properly. If not, the time may well be ripe to call the old school out of retirement.
