It’s the stuff dreams are made of. A horse bought for peanuts sweeps all before him in his first four races and winds up favourite for the Jonsson Workwear Gr1 Cape Derby.
But the unlikely named Kommetdieding is rather more than an equine David lining up against the Goliaths of the racing world.
Can Kommetdieding win the Derby? (Pic – Chase Liebenberg)
Michael Clower writes that his owner was brought up in the Cape Flats, his jockey has spent 20 years trying to get anywhere near the big time and his trainer, like an international batsman without a century to his name, has gone through the whole of his 45 year career without a single Gr1 victory.
It was in June 2019 that Ashwin Reynolds received a call from Harold Crawford. The trainer was at the Klawervlei Farm Sale near Bonnievale, he had spotted a nice horse and wanted to buy him. “OK,’ came the far from enthusiastic reply. “But not more than R80 000.”
Crawford got him for R55 000 even though the Elusive Fort colt was out of a three-parts sister to the top class Captain America. “He was a fuzzy little horse and the first dam hadn’t produced much,” remembers Crawford’s daughter Michelle Rix who now shares the training licence.
Construction boss Reynolds, 47, is a product of the school of hard knocks. He was eight when his father died and, as the eldest of six, he had to start work at 16 to support the others. He spent two years on UK building sites before starting up his own company. The name he chose for his purchase “is Afrikaans slang among the Cape Flats coloured community. It means ‘Bring it on’ as in I’m not scared, bring it on.”
The fuzzy bay was one of the few to benefit from Covid19 as it delayed the valuable Klawervlei Farm Sale Graduate Race by three months. “He is a November foal so he wouldn’t have been ready had it been run in March as planned,” explains Michelle.
Sihle and Michelle unsaddle their star (Pic – Chase Liebenberg)
On the eve of the race jockey Sihle Cele informed the owner: “This is a special horse.” Reynolds had heard this before about other horses who turned out to be far from special but he decided to back this one at 25-1. The horse, now a gelding, also collected R135 000 in prize money.
A setback kept him out of the Guineas but he quickly resumed winning ways and he has now won almost six times his purchase price. The form line with third placed Rascallion in last time’s Politician Stakes suggests he could have won the Guineas as well.
Cele reported that the horse didn’t give him quite the same kick in the Politician as previously, raising doubts about the extra furlong of the Cape Derby.
” I have no concerns about the trip and you will see the best of him in the Derby that I can promise you,” he now insists. “This horse is a jockey’s dream and all he wants to do is win. He is by far the best I’ve ever won on.”
That includes the high class Searchlight. For decades Harold Crawford, 68, was proud of never having asked anyone to send him a horse even though his string was sometimes down to single figures. His daughter takes a different view. “You have to have goals in life, and try to improve yourself,” she reasons. Her marketing has seen the stable numbers reach 40 and her input became even more vital when her father suffered a stroke early in 2019.
Dream team are set for the Derby (Pic – Chase Liebenberg)
In a way, though, it is Reynolds whose story of the underdog-come-good is the most fascinating. “I don’t like to be in the limelight,” he admits. “I just love racing and, before I was an owner, I would bet religiously. I would be there at the bottom of the stands, meeting after meeting, shouting the horses home.”
His company has expanded and prospered to such an extent that he now has 23 horses, spread among nine different trainers. But Kommetdieding is the only one he owns outright and the almost inevitable tempting offers have not been greeted with open arms.
“Please. Wait until after the Derby,” he has informed the would be purchasers. “Every owner would love to win a Gr1 if they don’t why are they in this business? And the Cape Derby is on my bucket list.”
David was a 1001 chance when he loaded his sling on that fateful day in the Valley of Elah.
At Kenilworth on Saturday you will be lucky to get 100-30!
Read more about the Derby – click on the image below
