What a fantastic week and weekend we have had. Plenty of celebrations along with some sadness when we had to say goodbye to Variety Club. The colt put his best foot forward as we knew he would and put in a magnificent effort. He really is a smasher and a horse one can also bet your life on that he will always do his best.
It was a great week in Dubai.
It was a lot of fun for me as my full brother, James, and my half sister, Emma, who works for Channel Four news were there with me. So apart from getting to see many South Africans, I also got to see plenty of the family and have a good laugh, giggle and a joke. One thing one does need in Dubai is an extremely good sense of humour as nothing is cheap – apart from the petrol and the unmetered taxi drivers.
It is the only place in the world where one has two sets of taxi drivers: ones with meters and ones without. The ones without the metres are 33% cheaper than the ones with. As for restaurants, I don’t think there are any meters. There is no limit to what they can charge for a meal. Whilst the food is of top quality, it really is credit-card-melting stuff.
We managed to see all four seasons in Dubai: the rain, the cold and the sun and it ended up being perfect racing conditions on the night where, by all accounts, everything ran well despite no other South African winners. I think both the winners of the Sheema Classic and the Dubai World Cup would have been extremely hard to beat on the night. It was a surreal evening and a great place to be. To use the words of the Talking Heads, it was a “once in a lifetime”.
It is good to be back home and back with my other horses. We are busy making the final preparations for the Durban string; what will be going and what will be staying and very much looking forward to that in the near future.
We have just had one sale and now also have the National Sales coming up in Johannesburg. There is a chance I could be jetting off to Sydney in a couple of days for the Easter Sales. I just have to decide which bank I need to rob first.
It will be truly special going to Sydney for Easter: I haven’t been back to Sydney for over 26 years when I worked there as a young “strapper” (as they call them in Australia) for champion trainer Brian Mayfield Smith. I had the best time of my life but also the hardest working time of my life. One has to get up at 3am and start mucking out stables and it is no joke. However, the work was hard but we had fun and it was a great period in my life. So I will be looking forward to being back in Sydney again. I shall have to get an iron to straighten out my credit card as I see Sydney was voted the 4th most expensive city in the world. Having just come back from Melbourne, I can certainly vouch for that.
The horses are all looking in good form. The weather is changing here and Dean Diedericks is doing his usual wonderful job of preparing our tracks for the winter storms ahead. They have really been working hard out there and it is really much appreciated.
It is the start of the flat season in England so that is something to look forward to. I like to follow the good horses closely and it keeps my mind motivated and sharp.
I would just like to end off by sending my condolences to the family of Wendy Clarke. What a terrible loss for them and for all of us. Wendy was always the light and soul of a party and was always cheerful. The terrible accident which befell her was not worthy of anyone. My thoughts and condolences go out to all her family and friends.
I was lucky enough to have had a very good working relationship with Wendy and will miss her very much.
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