Sansa Stark Takes Piet To Cusp Of Century Of Winners

Piet Botha doesn’t need Heritage Day to come round once a year to have a braai. Every Sunday is his braai day. It’s Botha’s happy place, around a fire, tongs in hang and turning his signature seasoned chicken wings on a raised grid above hot coals.

It’s also where he dares to dream, which is also the name of his stable and the syndicate of which he is the nominee.

Gary Lemke writes that he dreams of Liverpool winning the English Premier League and dominating football’s club landscape, he dreams of one day winning the Cape Guineas and he dreams of another Rockin’ Ringo.

As Botha took a step closer to his 100 career winners as a trainer when Sansa Stark made it 99 at Hollywoodbets Durbanville on Saturday, he is on course for this to be his most successful year since saddling his first runner in 2018.

That runner was Head Of The Pack, who also became the yard’s first winner, when William Bambiso won a work riders’ maiden on him that October.

A month later Bambiso won another work riders’ maiden, this time on the 12-1 shot Rockin’ Ringo. Who could have predicted at the time that the son of Rock Of Rochelle would go on to win 11 races, earning nearly R700,000 in stakes and take his place against stars like Kommetdieding and Jet Dark in the Cape Town Met.

“Rockin’ Ringo was a once in a lifetime type horse,” Botha says. “He wasn’t the best horse that I had (the one-time winner Warrior Tiger holds that distinction), but he was the most courageous that I’ve ever had. From day one he never saw the vet. He was just so strong and his nickname was Skollie, because he was like a real street fighter. He ran against the best horses of his generation. I don’t think I’ll ever have another horse like him.”

Then again, his stable syndicate is Dare 2 Dream, and in racing, dreams do come true. Rockin’ Ringo duelled it out for a 54th and final time in February 2023, and it was time for the old gunslinger to move on. He’s now enjoying himself on a farm in Yzerfontein up the West Coast.

“Rockin’ Ringo was the third and final foal out of Tisane, and the first two foals were by Gimmethegreenlight and Jay Peg, but they were useless,” Botha says. “He was a tiny, horrible looking horse, so David Hepburn at Hemel ’N Aarde decided to not take him to the sale. Owner Barry Nel asked me to find the horse a home, and sent him in. And when he came in, I just loved his attitude. He wasn’t scared and from day one took control of the whole yard. I said, ‘Barry, let’s have a go at this horse, please. There’s something about him which I really like’. And so he said, ‘Okay, fine’. And he got his best friend (Ron Caris) to partner with him.

”He was a real character. He got loose like every day. Somehow he’d break free and you can’t catch him. But if you just left him, eventually he came back, walked into his box, and that was it. And eventually, we got to know, ‘okay, Rockin’ Ringo is loose again, don’t worry about it, he’ll come back’.”

Botha’s 10 wins this 2023/24 season has put him on track to better the 19 that he saddled last season and the 23 he had in his best campaign in 2021/21. “I’m just a very positive person. I like to just stay positive all the time. I try to avoid negativity and negative people. I do believe that this will be our best season.”

It’s well documented that the 48-year-old has had his fair share of ups and downs in this industry, winning 202 races from 3100 rides.

In 2013 he was medically boarded after enduring excruciating pain from an undiagnosed broken rib and his life spiralled into a six-year depression. He was hauled out of it by his son, Aiden, who encouraged him to get back in the saddle in 2017.

“|I begged Glen Puller to let me ride one horse for him and then I got my second chance.” Botha rode 14 winners in 2017 and 2018 before exchanging his jockey’s licence for his trainer’s and after winning the last race of his riding career on Jay Rock for Puller, he won his first race as trainer with Head Of The Pack just 91 days later.

And then Covid-19 struck, which was devastating for all and had a severe impact on the coffee business that he’d started while incapacitated. That was then, this is now. We’re sitting across from one another at Botha’s bar counter at his stables in Koeberg Road, enjoying an Illy coffee.

Being a bar, the obvious things stand out, including a variety of delights to suit his visitors’ tastes.

“My philosophy is that my door is always open – except for Wednesdays. I enjoy it when it’s busy here, I find that horses enjoy it when their owners come round to see them. Horses must be happy. If they’re happy, they only want to run,” he says. However, four other things catch my eye. One is a kiddies’ size Liverpool replica kit, shirt and pants, on a hanger. “There’s always football banter here so this adds to the debate.”

Another is a small winner’s trophy, the only one behind the bar. It’s from when Baratheon gave Dare 2 Dream Racing their first feature race winner, the Listed Woolavington Stakes at Hollywoodbets Kenilworth nearly two years ago.

“That’s one of three feature race winners, Montien being my first graded race winner,” he says.

Above the trophy is a bank note. For one billion dollars. Fake, obviously? “Actually not,” says Botha. It’s Zim dollars and is an actual note that my farrier gave me. But it’s not valid anymore, it’s expired.” Such is the volatility of the Zimbabwe economy. At today’s rate $10,000 is equal to R5, tomorrow is anyone’s guess. Still, the billion dollars is balancing nicely on the blue and white Dare 2 Dream Piet Botha Racing sign which dominates the background. It is a reminder of what might be in a sport that is as unpredictable as the notorious Cape weather.

Two horses that could have been contenders for feature race black type were Warrior Tiger – “if he was a sound horse, he would have been very, very good” – and the five-time winner Ragnar Lothbrok. “When I worked Ragnar I said, ‘this is a superstar’. But he also had problems. And he could only run in the soft. In the soft, he could beat the best but on harder ground he couldn’t beat the worst.”

As we run through Botha’s career wins, and counting, we stop at a few names. Radicchio, Tyrion Lannister, Das Gute, Avignon … four winners that added to Richard Fourie’s record-breaking 2023/24.

In total Fourie contributed 10 winners to those 98 – Mxothwa had 25 – and one of them was a relation to Warrior Tiger, Captain Mike.

“They were both owned by Michael le Roux,” Botha says. I point out that Captain Mike won his maiden by 6.25 lengths at Kenilworth in 2021 and didn’t win again until being sold to Mauritius, where he won first time out. “Richard actually apologised when he climbed off after that win. He knows that I don’t like it when my horses wins by far, because the handicappers get stuck in. (They raised Captain Mike from a 72 to an 81 after that maiden win in what was already his eighth start).

“Before the race I said, ‘Richard, just be careful, because you think that you’re going to win by five lengths the way he travels. But when you ask him to go, he stops. And so Richard took no chances. When he got to the 400 he didn’t look back to see where the other horses were. He won by six lengths!”

 

Botha’s total of 99 winners is so far spread across 43 different horses, and it’s obvious that every win has a story.

Which in itself is what connects racing as a community.

We could go on reminiscing for ages but it’s Wednesday. That’s when he closes the door and spends time on his own, surrounded by his 43 horses in their boxes of course.

“You get to learn a lot in the afternoons about how the horse thinks. In the mornings, they go out and they work. A lot of them are just working because they have to do it. But when you see them in the afternoon I feel like you learn so much when you spend quiet time with them.”

And, more often than not he will also light himself a fire, slap some signature chicken wings on the grid and dare to dream of training a Cape Guineas winner.

• Originally published on www.caperacing.co.za