Graham Beck
The Kenilworth meeting this Saturday honours one of South African horseracing’s great owners, breeders and benefactors of recent times. The feature event, the Gr2 Sceptre Stakes commemorates the memory of Graham Beck through a kind sponsorship by his wife, Rhona and her son Antony.
The Graham Beck Memorial Day honours Beck – an entrepreneur, coal-mining mogul, philanthropist, horseracing fan, vintner and noted breeder of top horses from Highlands Stud in Cape Town and Gainesway Farm in Kentucky, where Horse Chestnut started his stallion career
The Irish-bred Sweet Aria, trained by Brett Crawford and ridden by Karl Neisius, will carry the famous brown and white Beck silks in the feature event.
Beck was one of the last of South Africa’s rough and tough mining entrepreneurs and a self-made billionaire.
Beck Family
His wine interests and his huge investments in the other passion of a long life, thoroughbred horses, only came after the private billionaire had established his fortune. That came from his coal mining operation, the Kangra Group, born from a pioneering spirit which saw him acquire mines in KZN and initiate the export of their product through Richard’s Bay.
Apart from his wine farms, Beck also owned one of South Africa’s leading thoroughbred breeding farms, Highlands, and a property development company in Israel. His son Antony Beck, owns and runs the famous Gainesway Stud Farm in America’s thoroughbred capital, Kentucky.
Beck was granted his famous brown, white V bib and white cap colours in 1973 and owned and bred many champions and reportedly once described racing as ‘the only game in town’.
He twice won South Africa’s most famous race, the Durban July, with Bush Telegraph, who he co-owned with Laurie and Jean Jaffee, and more recently with the talented grey Dancer’s Daughter, who epically dead-heated with Pocket Power in 2008.
He also owned or co-owned horses like Free My Heart, Secret Service, Zatopek, Dambuster, Arctic Cove, Diorissimo, Hawkins, Ton-Up, The Rutland Arms, National Currency, Zooming Zellie and Overarching.
Beck’s passion for horseracing saw him serve as a steward of the Benoni Turf Club and later vice-chairman of the Germiston Sporting Club.
Graham Beck was diagnosed with advanced lung cancer two months prior to his death in July 2010 at the age of 80. He and Rhona had been married for fifty years at the time of his passing.
