First up! Annabel and Terry Andrews lead In Camera(Anthony in saddle) in with Pippa Mickleburgh
Taking the freakish dominance of Mike De Kock out of the equation, the national trainer leader board tells a very positive story about the effectiveness and performance of Cape trainers. With a few days left of the season, there is nothing between Justin Snaith and Mike Bass for the championship runner-up berth. Interestingly for punters and form-studiers, Joey Ramsden beats them both with the leading winning favourite percentage in the top ten. Could one actually choose a trainer to suit your personal needs from this maze of statistics?
Andrew Lang suggests that I could choose to use these statistics like a drunk man uses lampposts – for support rather than illumination. But analysing the trainer log performance figures certainly tells a story about productivity, performance and sometimes even efficiency and ability. That said, choosing one’s trainer is a little like selecting the right GP. You are going to have to trust his judgement, he is probably going to touch you in awkward places, like your conscience and pocket, at times and he is going to give you advice from time to time that you may not necessarily understand or agree with.
Training horses in the fairest Cape in the whole wide world is a privilege but it is not a profession for the weak at heart. There are few better places on earth to socialise and race at the height of the Sizzling Sunmer Season, but there are plenty of drawbacks too. We race less than the rest of the country, our stakes are under pressure and the training facilities are less than ideal. Add to this the prevailing climate of uncertainty and the dark unknown of the immediate future that is clouding the political and commercial horizon at present, and it doesn’t make for pleasant dreams and peaceful sleep. This is also the time of the year when trainers countrywide will be reviewing their fees and making the reluctant adjustments that will assist them to pay the ever spiralling costs of feed and to maintain a living wage for their labour, amongst other things. There can really be few businesses on earth with the level of overheads associated with running a racing stable. But in spite of all the doom and gloom, the Western Cape still boasts three trainers in the national top four. That’s not bloody bad going and hats off to the Snaith, Bass and Ramsden yards.
Little has been written or spoken about the trainer log with the magician or maestro Mike De Kock some R9 million ahead of his nearest competition. I just wish the media would come up with an original name for the wizard of winning, as this maestro, magician, master stuff is really so clichéd. Let’s see if one of the Tellytrack on course presenters can actually give him a new title after he wins his three or four features on this coming Super Saturday. And I actually had to double check that the maestro’s(there I go again) earnings didn’t include a few international Group races that he has won as the R9 million chasm between the first spot and the rest looks astonishingly wide.
All the attention and fuss has in fact centred on Steinhoff’s Anton Marcus and his mate, the Avontuur –sponsored Anthony Delpech, who have entertained us with their jockey log duel, while Captain Al and Jet Master squabble over the champion sire standings.
There are a few serious players behind De Kock on the trainer table, though. Milnerton- based Mike Bass is just R189 643 behind the three decades younger Justin Snaith who plies his trade from across the Peninsula in Phillipi. With just one Cape meeting left on this past Wednesday at Kenilworth, the Super Saturday meeting will most certainly be the decider for them. Let us not forget either that Snaith will be racing in PE on Friday, and he seldom leaves the track without a winner or three , although the stakes are not of major consequence. Bass has eleven runners on Super Saturday against Snaith’s admittedly weaker looking attack of six horses. Justin is probably realistically expecting the exciting Aussie Gimmethegreenlight to add to his tally by winning the R500 000 Premier’s Champion Stakes, but Bass just appears to have more varied options on the day. Mike has five runners in the R700 000 Champions Cup and two competitive runners in the R1 million Canon Gold Cup.
Joey Ramsden is snapping at their heels, although he is R3 million rand adrift as we go to print and unlikely to make up the leeway with his nine runners on Saturday. Ramsden’s winning favourite percentage of 40% stands out like a bright light amongst the top ten nationally and even beats his mentor Mike De Kock. At 128 winners for the season, he is actually five ahead of Bass, but 16 behind Snaith. Ramsden has won the baby races with embarrassing monotony this winter and goes into the new season with some decent sorts. This includes Saturday’s nice winner Master Mascus, a horse he labels a big rangy scopey fellow who will get a trip, and whose name is likely to be seen at the Super Saturday meeting in 2012. The big, bulky strong Langerman winner Variety Club will be aimed at the Matchem in the Cape Summer and the son of Var looks to have plenty of upward potential.
Other Cape trainers to feature in the national top twenty are Glen Kotzen and Dean Kannemeyer. Kotzen is fortunate to train from one of the prime private training establishments in the country out at Woodhill in Paarl and also runs a successful satellite yard in Summerveld. He currently trains our champion SA two year old filly Princess Victoria. Dean Kannemeyer is another man who has had a quiet season by his own high standards, and he in fact boasts one of the best records in the Cape of winning the classics and finding the Group winners. He has won an amazing seven Guineas in just over a decade of training for his own account. He has some promising unraced youngsters in his string and will be setting his sights on the Cape Guineas and the other classics come the 2011/12 season.
They say that statistics is the science of producing unreliable facts from reliable figures. The overall performance of the Cape trainers in the face of testing challenges though, still makes racing in the Cape a serious alternative for any owner.
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GOLD CUP FIRST GR 1 FOR ANDREWS
At the tender age of 22 and only in his third year of his apprenticeship, promising rider Anthony Andrews celebrates the biggest day of his short career on Saturday, when he rides in the R1 million Grade 1 Canon Gold Cup. He is the only apprentice jockey with the honour and privilege of a ride in the prestigious staying race and this will be Andrews first ever Group 1 ride.
He has ridden 29 career winners to date and he has the mount on the seven year old Port Elizabeth challenger Key Castle for Jacques Strydom. The former Joey Ramsden trained gelding is a PE Gold Cup and Glenlair Trophy winner this season and has come good in Port Elizabeth over marathon trips. As the most recent winner of South Africa’s longest race, he will definitely not want for stamina when the whips are cracking in the short Greyville straight, but has a fairly awkward 13 draw to overcome.
Another Port Elizabeth horse caused the biggest upset in the Gold Cup in the past two decades when Andre Hoffman steered the Free State gelding Stateway to an unlikely 33-1 win in the 1994 Gold Cup. He beat the Millard trained Surfin’ Home that day and overcame the adversity of a 15 draw in a twenty horse field. A worrying aspect of a glance at that year is the fact that the gross stake then was R500 000 and today it is just R1 million rand. That means in seventeen years it has effectively doubled. What was the average monthly keep of a racehorse in 1994 versus 2011? But I digress.
Anthony Andrews grew up around horses and hails from a family well-known in SA horseracing and breeding circles. His folks Terry and Annabel own the Sorrento Stud in Agter Paarl. Annabel is also a former well-known racing journalist in the Cape. Anthony has been a talented horseman from an early age and was given his first pony for his second birthday. That said, he was strangely always more keen on motocrosse and has completed a Lesotho Mini Roof Of Africa Bike Rally. He also earned pocket money early in his teens doing stunts on horses for movies and has also spent time as a carriage driver.
And how did he become a jockey? The young Andrews was working for David Hayes as a work rider in Australia, after a stint in Mauritius and Newmarket with endurance horses, when he phoned his Dad at the age of 20 with the news that his boss thought that he should try and become a jockey. He returned immediately and started making plans to realise a lifelong dream, that had been clouded at times by his passion for motorbikes.
He entered the SA Jockey Academy at Summerveld in KZN at the beginning of 2009, and had the distinction of winning his first race on the Glen Kotzen trained In Camera at Scottville on 8 Nov 2009.It was an emotional occasion for the family as besides being their son’s first winner in his first ride, the horse is trained by close friends in Glen and Kathi Kotzen and part-owned by another staunch supporter, Pippa Mickleburgh of Avontuur.
When contacted for an interview on Monday afternoon, Anthony and Key Castle were enjoying a frolic on the beach in anticipation of their trip up to Greyville. Mom Annabel tells us that his brother Justin is joining the supporters table at Greyville, which will also include Pippa from Avontuur. Win, lose or draw, it will be a proud day all-round for the Andrews clan.
General Eclectic
Tellytrack presenter Shaheen Shaw always has a silly tongue-in-cheek quip to brighten the afternoon. Referring to the quality of the Ngong broadcast on Sunday, he very aptly suggested that the cameras used in Kenya, were obviously those also used to film General Erwin Rommel’s arrival in Tobruk.
