A former jockey, trainer and bloodstock agent, widely respected Cape racing personality Colin Palm has passed away on 3 January at his Milnerton home after a short illness at the age of 82.
Colin Palm was born on 31 March 1939 and was the 12th of 14 children – 6 sons and 8 daughters.
Colin Palm
His father, Bennie Palm was a jockey and three of Colin’s older brothers followed in their father’s footsteps and became jockeys, Oscar, Earnest and Robert (Bobby) – who was associated with the mighty Riza.
When it was his turn, Colin followed suit and was originally apprenticed to his elder brother Ernest in Durban.
A newspaper cutting from December 1955 reported that Colin was one of a handful of schoolboys in the country who earned more than his teachers. They described the life of the only schoolboy in Natal at the time that was licenced to race ride and said his single pleasure was an early movie on a Saturday evening.
After meeting the visiting trainer in Durban, Colin joined the powerful Cookie Amos yard in Cape Town at the age of 17. That was to be a turning point.
Amos was at the height of his considerable powers at the time and the two formed a very successful partnership.
Mr & Mrs Phillip Hill lead in Colin Palm on Bulbul
He rode the first of his two Met winners for Amos in 1958/9 on a horse called Bul Bul.
With Cookie’s brother, the legendary Stanley Amos riding for Syd Garrett, the young Colin got another Met chance in 1964 and won the race on The Giant.
Colin told the Sporting Post some years ago that he believed that he had experienced a golden age of great jockeys.
“Tiger Wright was simply poetry in motion. Often the instructions from the trainer would be to ‘just follow Tiger.’ But there were other top men – my memory is fading but guys like Shorty De La Rey, Johnny Westwater, Raymond Rhodes, Duncan Alexander, Peter Kannemeyer and Johnny Cawcutt. Top, top jockeys. And you know what – there was an innate respect between trainer and jockey – you wouldn’t get a jockey in those times having a big say and spinning the owner a story.”
While Colin had no weight problems, he told us that it still required a lot of sacrifice as even lightweight jockeys had to maintain their weight.
He had tired of the lifestyle, but wanted to stay in the game with the horses and so became a trainer, with the likes of Harry Hotspur, Over The Air and Fly By Night in his care.
It is a little known fact that he was instrumental in the matings of two of our great performers and Horses Of The Year of the nineties, in Flaming Rock and the late Peter Kannemeyer’s Met winner Pas De Quoi.
Pas De Quoi wins the Met under Garth Puller
In 1983 Colin Palm made the decision to focus on bloodstock and handed in his trainer’s licence.
“I didn’t enjoy the socialising after racing with owners. I used to leave as soon as my runners were done and go back to the stables. I was being paid to look after their horses, yet they wanted me to drink and socialise after races. That’s not my scene,” he told us.
But despite his lack of appetite for the social and direct marketing side of things, he said that horse racing had been good to him and he would never change anything that he had done.
“Life is all about experience and taking the good with the bad. I have met some great people and trained and bought champions. It is a great sense of achievement.”
Another old school soldier of the game has gone.
Our sympathies go out to his wife of over 60 years, Marlene, and their family.
Colin Palm pictured at his Arnhem Milnerton home in 2014 during a Sporting Post interview
