November Rain excelling in his second career (photo: Fine Photography)
John Finlayson is one of the more prominent members of our ownership ranks. He is also one of the most generous, always being among the first to volunteer for any fundraisers or charitable events and racehorse aftercare is a subject close to his heart.
John originally got into racing by working for local bookmakers to earn money to put himself through university. “I used to be a runner. I had to miss Wednesday afternoon lectures and had to buy notes off a guy on Thursdays! I used to run for some very wealthy people and they used to give me tips if they won. That paid for my varsity fees and a car, so I was very happy!” he grins. “That sort of got me in and when I finished the army and my internship, the first paycheque I got, I bought my first horse. I think I was 32. I said I would never buy anything that won’t fit in a suitcase – I guess horses count,” he laughs.
November Rain
A few years ago, John got a call from Jono Snaith. “I was driving to the Supreme Court at about 11am. On my way there, Jono phoned to say his mom and him had found this horse. I was in the middle of Joburg where things are a little rough, so I didn’t want to talk on the phone, but I know Sue is brilliant at picking horses so when they asked if I wanted to buy him, I said yes.”
Bred by Gary and Jacqui Jolliffe’s Golden Touch Thoroughbred Services, the colt was by Greys Inn out of the Strike Smartly mare Tinder Box, and knocked down to John Freeman for R110k at the 2011 BSA Cape Regional sale at Sandringham. “It must have been a Friday, because Supreme Court is only on a Friday,” continues John. “On Monday Jono sent a message to say the horse is called Grey Scout. I asked ‘is it a grey horse?’ and Jono said no, it’s a Greys Inn, so I asked them to name him November Rain, because it’s my favourite song and Guns N’ Roses are my favourite band. Jono said ‘very good, we’ll do that now’ and the next day it was done. You know the Snaiths.”
Sprint Surprise
“Being out of a Strike Smartly mare and by Greys Inn, he’s bred to go about 20km, so I didn’t expect a call for at least a year and a half, but within six months Jono called to say they were going to run him. Over 1000m. I said surely that’s too short? Jono just said it seems this one’s a sprinter!”
November Rain winning on July day 2013 (photo: Gold Circle)
November Rain finished 2nd first time out and won his second start over 1200m by a short head. He had a very solid 3yo season, capped by winning a 1000m Handicap on July day 2013, beating some good sorts, including Mike de Kock’s Merhee.
John says, “I usually don’t go to the July, but I’ve got a box at Turffontein and all my mates went there for the races. November Rain was in race 10, right at the end of the day. By then we had no money left, but he was 10-1 and we all backed him and he won, so I was very happy! Justin and Jono moaned that I wasn’t at Greyville, because very few people have a winner on July day, but I’d had 25 friends screaming him home and would trade that for Greyville any day.”
John says proudly, “I bumped into a big name trainer after one of the feature race meetings not so long ago and I was talking about the horse and he said, ‘November Rain? That was a good horse!’ It’s funny, I actually didn’t realize it. I had quite a few horses at the time and I used to Whatsapp a group of about 6 mates whenever my horses won. One day one of my mates messaged back and said ‘hey, that horse of yours has won 7 or 8 races’ – I had to go and look it up and he was right!”
Accident
A year after his July sprint triumph, November Rain was again called on to do July day duty and was part of the last of the Snaith string to leave Durban that season. Sue Snaith remembers, “There were just a few left and Justin wanted them to travel directly. The only thing going was the ‘milk run’ to Cape Town, which can take 48 hours and Justin said there was no way he was going to send his top horses home that way, so he hired a raider with a driver and co-driver. Just outside Laingsburg an animal jumped in front of them and the driver swerved, hit a dip on the side of the road and rolled the vehicle. I took the call at 4 in the morning. You know when the phone rings at that hour it’s nothing nice, but I thought maybe a burglary – the raider didn’t even cross my mind. It just shows you, you can have all the best intentions and things can still go wrong,” she says sadly. The accident claimed the lives of three horses as well as one of the transport grooms.
John got the call shortly afterwards. “When you get calls from the trainer or transporter at that time of the morning, you get worried. It was one of the boys from New Turf to say ‘Your horse is fine, he’s alive’. They tell me he crawled out of that float on his own, that’s how strong that horse is. Just incredible.”
Recovery
It took the best part of a year for everyone to put the incident behind them. John transferred November Rain to PE’s Dorrie Sham for his last few runs. Sue noted that none of the horses that survived the accident had issues with loading afterwards and Dorrie agrees. “November Rain was not mentally affected by the accident. There was some quite ugly scarring on his legs and so on, but nothing that affected his movement or anything. Racing-wise, we didn’t have him very long, but he ran a couple of nice places. One of John’s bucket list items was to be part of the Jockey International and in 2015, they had one leg in PE and Hayley Turner rode November Rain, so that was quite special.”
“He’s one of those horses that if you kick they go and if you pull they stop. If you took him to work, he did what you wanted and when you stopped, he’d eat grass. Honestly, he was such an easy horse to work with, he ate well, he had no issues. I wish I’d had him longer, but John is very good at listening when a trainer says a horse has done its time. I said he could win again, but it would take 7 or 8 months and he’d need to run to get his merit rating down and after everything he’d done, we recommended retiring him. I’m just happy we managed to make sure his after life is right.”
Second career
Dorrie sent November Rain to close friend Jean Linden’s Thornhill Stables in Johannesburg where Jean did a bit of basic schooling and spent about a year just playing around with him. “He was quite strong to begin with and being a sprinter, liked to take a bit of a hold, but they were just very quiet and slow and now he’s gone to Jean’s niece Brea Bergh and is doing a bit of eventing,” says Dorrie.
Brea takes up the last leg of the story. “Dorrie always tries to find horses good places when they finish racing. She often sends horses to Gauteng and November Rain came to my aunt. She had a few riders on him, but didn’t have anyone dedicated to him. I didn’t have a ride at the time and Dorrie recommended that I try him out.”
November Rain now lives at home with Brea at her yard near Lanseria. She is incredibly warm and friendly and it’s clear that she’s very fond of Nova already. “It’s still very new and I haven’t had him very long, but he’s just such a sweetheart. And he’s a cuddle pot. The first message I sent John was to say he’s a real ladies man – all the girls like him!”
Brea has ridden competitively all her life, although mainly focused on equitation and show jumping. “I love bringing on young horses. It’s a lot of fun and very rewarding when they come along and learn so quickly. I started eventing because most horses love it. It’s good discipline to have the dressage, but you need a brave horse for the cross-country. I’m not as brave as I used to be, but I feel brave on Nova and don’t doubt for a second that he’ll go.”
Brea is riding Nova for John and the pair compete under John’s name. “Very few owners have anything to do with their horses after racing, but what I really liked is that because he’d been a good racehorse, John decided to keep him instead. And of course it’s nice for me, because I get to ride a lovely horse!”
Show success
Brea and Nova in the country at Fourways (photo: Fine Photography)
At their first show together they finished second. “I was very pleased with him. He’s only just starting, but he’s got a great attitude. He never spooks and doesn’t have a mean bone in his body, plus he is absolutely fearless cross-country. Having been a good racehorse, he sets a good pace. He is strong, so I’m pretty tired after the cross country, but he’s getting better all the time.”
Brea put him up a grade for their second outing at Fourways. “We were walking down to the start and then he realized this was going to be fun and got quite excited. I put my legs on and he took off like we were jumping out of the starting stalls, but we cruised around after that. There were some really scary jumps he hadn’t seen before and he didn’t even blink. The only thing he wasn’t quite sure of was getting his feet wet.”
They had 1 pole in the jumping and went home with a 2nd rosette, but when Brea opened her mailbox the following day, she found a letter from the show organisers to say there had been a miscalculation and they had in fact won their class! When I rang to congratulate her, she said, “I’m smiling so hard my cheeks are hurting!”
John is enjoying having an interest outside of racing. “I pay for everything. I was horrified at the price of a saddle!” he jokes, “but I don’t mind. I don’t have kids or any family left and these horses are like my children, so that’s how I treat them. That boy did me proud and I’m happy to look after him forever.”
Marianna Haun did some excellent work on the ‘large heart’ gene in her book, The X Factor. The only detail she missed is that the condition occurs in owners as well.
