Joey Ramsden always something to smile about
Ironically enough, the season has started off for us not with a barrow full of winners but with the annual stallion day being held at Klawervlei. They managed to cover the entire front lawn with a Bedouin tent the size of Wembley football stadium’s roof.
What a fantastic sight and a great venue for them to parade their stallions; some tried, some tested and some new kids on the block.
There was something for everyone and the future for Klawervlei must be golden. There are a couple, just on statistics alone, which are sure to make their way in this industry. For other breeders, if they have sold well, going to Klawervlei’s Stallion Day must be like standing at the front door of Grand West Casino with a couple of suitcases full of money, knowing they have to gamble and find which stallion suits them best and will bring them the best returns.
A frightening thought and good luck to them all. Thankfully that side of the industry is not my concern or worry as I only get involved at a later date. I wish them all well for the coming breeding season; both in stallion selection and all that follows. It was a wonderful day, very well organised and the food was fantastic. Congratulations to all at Klawervlei.
I opened my Cape Times this morning to see an extremely nice piece written by David Thiselton, the erstwhile ARCSA award winning walkabout journalist. The article was about Cape Trainers and was very complimentary – thank you, David. There was also a very nice piece on Highdown Stud – the Scott’s are still producing winners.
Summerhill Stud retained their breeders championship – for the 9th consecutive season. A fantastic achievement. I can just imagine Mick Goss now thinking to himself that he has been champion breeder 9 times in a row and singing along to that classic song “I get by with a little help from my friends”. Whilst Mick has done the business, he certainly does have an awful lot of friends. Klawervlei ran a close second and I am sure one day they will be able to get ahead of their old foe. However, I am sure even Mick Goss will feel that this year’s breeders championship win was a bit hollow with all the one sided competition coming KZN’s way in the form of KZN’s only bred races.
Thankfully the NHA has finally taken their heads out of the sand and decided to do something about it but only from next season. This year’s results stand. It was becoming a farsicle situation where any breeder in the country, whether he produced one or five hundred and one horses, if he put on enough money in stakes for a race then his stud farm or company could end up winning the championship.
Thankfully this now seems to have been stopped – and here I must thank John Freeman who has put in a huge effort to get this changed. However, it is rather annoying and does seem strange that this had to be pointed out in the first place rather than people investigating and trying to keep pace with the times and what is going on around them. Maybe this is another topic for another day?
Whilst I have been banging on about the magnificent weather in the Cape – we had 6 days which felt as if we were back in summer – it clouded over on Tuesday morning and there was some rain about and it is threatening to get much worse.
The Cape rain is not really my game; I am so used to being in Natal for the winter and then going overseas to Europe, that the cold and wet is not something I usually experience. But I will just have to pull out my winter woollies and lump it for the next month or two; either that or start doing home schooling for my girls. Having reached the extremely high education of 6 O-levels, I am not entirely sure that I am qualified to coach those 2 little monkeys at home. I am already struggling with “I like green ham and peas” or something like that from Dr Schultze. So it looks as if I will just have to stick the winter out, buy another heater and crack on.
We seem to have a ton of unraced talent this year and I am not really sure why (and this is without including the 2 yr olds which still have to come in). I am really looking forward to getting stuck into them. Hopefully a couple should poke their heads out and be decent. They have good pedigrees so I am hopeful we can start bringing home the bacon. The only problem is that every time they are ready to gallop, it buckets down with rain and we are caught short. Hopefully this will soon change and we can start getting some of these horses out. I do believe we have some smart ones around, both colts and fillies.
