Globetrotter Mike De Kock has saddled the winner in three of the last six runnings of the Tibouchina and Headstrong, his sole representative here, is the highest rated runner in the field
Mike de Kock trained Musir finished third in a blanket finish in the Gr1 BMW Champions Mile at Sha Tin on Monday.
Mike de Kock plans an ambitious raid on Europe’s biggest races from Abington Place stables in Newmarket this summer.
You all know I’m a bit soft in the head when it comes to horses. I grew up on a diet of Anna Sewell, Marguerite Henry and Elyne Mitchell. I graduated to Walter Farley, Mary O’Hara and Dick Francis. The stories may have varied a little, but the horses were always big and brave. The best ones had fire in their hearts and ran like sheet lightning. The horsey movies of my youth had wonderful slow-motion footage of the hero eating up the turf, or galloping across a beautiful English meadow. The best I’ve ever seen is Francis Ford Cuppola’s The Black Stallion where Alec Ramsay and The Black gallop on the beach. Suddenly the music fades and you are caught up in the rhythmic movement of the legs, those perfect hooves striking the ground, The Black’s mane flowing in the breeze. Alec lets go and throws his hands out, flying aboard his horse….
Mike de Kock has built up a truly amazing record in the Summer Cup, when you consider that the race was only reintroduced into the calendar in the late 1990s after a hiatus of nearly three decades.
Two South African star performers in Dean Kannemeyer’s Gimme A Prince and the Vaughan Marshall champion 3yo One Stripe, who runs in Sunday’s HSH Princess Charlene Big Cap, feature in the first edition of the LONGINES World’s Best Racehorse Rankings for 2025
The tongue-twistingly named sprinter was bred and is owned in South Africa, trained by a US-based Brit and will be ridden by a French-based Belgian
