History, tradition and achievement. The l’Ormarins Queen’s Plate is the benchmark and pinnacle of excellence in South African thoroughbred horseracing. Whether seen through the nostalgic recollections of the wife of the late legend of the saddle, Johnny Cawcutt, or in the passionate and extremely educated reminisces of our leading racing and breeding expert, Charles Faull, it is truly a great race in all senses of the word. Beyond great wine and the magic of good music, I cannot think of anything that captures the soul and imagination more than real people and their brilliant horses.
There are many who may remember, but sadly modern horseracing has probably largely moved on and forgotten the heroic exploits of seventeen times Cape Champion jockey, Horace John Cranston Cawcutt, who died prematurely at the age of 55 in 1989. An engraved whip presented on the occasion of his 1961 winning ride on Appeal Court, in the centenary year of the Queen’s Plate, enjoys pride of place amongst the silverware and trophies in the spacious Milnerton Flat – occupied today by his wife and ironically in the very same block that the young couple moved into in 1953, the year of their marriage.
At age 76 Jean Cawcutt is a great grandmother and a gracious lady with an amazing memory. She has rubbed shoulders with stars and politicians of yore and met the likes of the late heart pioneer, Dr Chris Barnard. She has also warmed the bottles and changed the nappies of trainers Charles and Alec Laird and Dean Kannemeyer and his siblings, but she talks most fondly and without hesitation of the evening sixty years ago when she first sat next to her future husband in The Grand Bioscope in Maitland. Johnny, who never cared too much for the name starting with an ‘H’ that his parents had imposed on his birth certificate, had arrived at the regular Saturday evening Jockeys and Apprentice movie ‘jol’ with Rita, a friend of Jean. Rita asked Jean to sit next to the quiet Johnny as she had her eye on a guy named Charles Purchase. In a lovely twist, Rita and Charles, who rode for years for the immortal Syd Garrett, are still happily married today – having spent their honeymoon in the Cawcutt’s flat. They eventually moved on to Johannesburg where Charles rode with success before making Rhodesia their home. They remain lifelong friends of the Cawcutt family to this day.
Royal Affair
Johnny Cawcutt rode three Queen’s Plate winners. The first in 1959 on a horse he described as ‘the fastest I have ever ridden’. Jean recalls that Royal Affair was owned by a gentleman name Doodie Silberwitz who gave them an ‘extremely generous gift’, which came in very handy. He then won the 100th running of the Queen’s Plate in 1961 on the six year old Appeal Court, whom he labelled ‘the toughest and gamest horse I have ridden.’ Appeal Court beat Time To Shine who went on to run fourth in the race in 1962. Then Time To Shine , rising eight years of age, won the 1963 running – with the only three year old filly ever to compete in the Queen’s Plate, Majorca, running a gallant third, beaten just a length. Trained by Theo De Klerk and owned by Sir Foster G Robinson, Time To Shine was a son of Goodasgold, and was highly rated as a dual Guineas and Queen’s Plate winner by the astute Phillipi trainer, who, together with his glamorous wife Lavinia, was probably the original architecht of introducing well-heeled English patrons to the very attractive lifestyle of racehorse ownership in the affordable and beautiful surrounds of the Western Cape.
But back to the girls. Majorca then came out three weeks later to win the Paddock Stakes before running third in the Cape Guineas and then a half length second in the Cape Derby – beaten both times by the great Colorado King. I am indebted to the Form Organisation’s Charles Faull, a man who is currently managing the creation of a huge and long overdue electronic reference library on the sport of kings, called Thoroughpedia . Charles has kindly pointed out that contrary to statements made recently on Tellytrack, the galloping goldmine Empress Club, who won the Queen’s Plate in 1993 before going on to win the Met in the same month – beating the Chris Snaith trained Flaming Rock on both occasions – was not the only member of the fairer sex to win the Queen’s Plate. The great race filly Wainui, trained by the late Guy Rixon, won under Glen Hatt when the Queen’s Plate was run on 30 December 1989. She won the prestigious mile as the third leg of a genuine hat-trick that included the Diadem Stakes and the Majorca Stakes. Goodness knows where Ebony Flyer, our three year old female challenger, stands amongst all of this. Interestingly her jockey on Saturday, Felix Coetzee, has a fair record riding the fairer sex in the Queen’s Plate. He finished third to Yamani on the daughter of Royal Prerogative, Up The Creek, in 1985 , and then ran a great second in 1990 on Olympic Duel. The daughter of Dancing Champ finished second to the late Shirley Pfeiffer-owned, Flaming Rock. Sadly though, history seldom remembers the placed horses or the also rans in all spheres of life.
Fate
Johnny Cawcutt had to wait patiently for his third Queen’s Plate win. Run on 27 February 1971 for a stake of just over R20 000, he steered Chichester to victory to beat a youthful Garth Puller and Prairie Prince. By this time he had been Cape Champion Jockey for an unprecedented 14 years and his young family had grown by five beautiful daughters by then – Cheryl, Roslyn, Terry, Diane and Mechele. Terry sadly passed away some years ago and Diane is the only daughter directly involved in the sport today. She is well known to racegoers as the wife of master trainer Mike de Kock and a capable horsewoman in her own right. A lesser known fact may well be that Diane was a top amateur rider and won a race for Tellytrack presenter and semi-professional golfer, James Goodman, before becoming his assistant – across the way from where the then bachelor Mike de Kock plied his early trade for the late Ricky Howard-Ginsberg. Fate and history again!
Proud History
The Cawcutt family name is indelibly entrenched in Cape horseracing. Johnny’s Dad Chris rode the winner of the 1922 Metropolitan Handicap. His brother Leslie – the other six siblings were all girls in true Cawcutt tradition – was a top trainer for decades in the Western Cape. His uncle Wilfred, better known as Wolfie, was a top jockey and very successful trainer. He is credited with the famous phrase, ‘Cawcutt will walk-it!’ which echoed the hopes and dreams of the die-hard and long – vanished on course generation of Johnny’s halcyon days in the sixties and seventies. Apprenticed to Wolfie in 1951, Johnny rode his first Met winner that same year on a horse called DDT, when the stake of the big race was just R7500. Legend has it that Wolfie wanted to take the young Johnny off in favour ofthe great Charlie Barends, but Johnny refused – telling his uncle, rather cockily, that the horse had put up ‘winning work.’ He won the Met again in 1960 on Appeal Court. He won the July twice – on Excise and Java Head – as well as most of the other top feature races countrywide.
Dedication
On her life as a jockey’s wife, Jean is adamant that she would not change anything. She remembers the highs and the lows and all his major feature wins, although she admits that the Queen’s Plate then was very different to the ‘show’ of today. She recalls the drive to races on a Saturday where fellow jockey Peter Kannemeyer and her husband sat solemnly in silence in the driver and passenger seat. The two best friends both battled the weight bogey and were apparently a ‘whole lot happier and talkative’ on the drive home. She says Johnny was dedicated in the extreme – riding for a full two decades before he ‘risked’ missing a few meetings to take her overseas for a holiday. She recounts how he chased the jockey championship season in and season out for the pride and pleasure of being the best. There was, like today, no financial incentive. The fact that he won a South African Championship as a Cape-based jockey where racing was only run on Saturdays and every second Wednesday, is another acknowledgement of his prowess in the saddle. She recalls the good memories and friends made through the International Jockeys Challenges of the early seventies and how they met up with the likes of Lester Piggott overseas. She feels that the golden years and true glamour of horseracing, as she knew and enjoyed it, have been lost forever. Events like the glittering Met Ball, in which she was involved, have disappeared in the passage of time as the pace of modern life places greater demands on everybody.
Jean says racing has been very good to her and her family and she is justly proud of her late husband, daughters, nine grandchildren and two great-grandchildren, who are her ‘whole life’ now. While she has attended more Queen’s Plates than she cares to remember, she will be watching the big one on Saturday on Tellytrack with some of her grandchildren in the comfort of her home. The Cawcutt family still have a lifeline and connection to the sport of kings and to the 2011 l’Ormarins Queen’s Plate through Diane de Kock – even though it is now close to ninety years since Chris Cawcutt first won the Met – and there is no question where their family allegiances rest. In spite of the race being touted a straight shootout between the Bass and Snaith yards, Mother Russia is a big runner. Ignore her at your peril. And while the real history may be lost in the blue and white cloud of fantasy and reality that blankets Kenilworth on Saturday, another Johnny Cawcutts and further legends will be created. That’s just why we love this game and its heroes.
