Robyn Louw is one of my favourite writers. Had her passion been for news, politics, finance or another mainstream pursuit she would be a household name. Robyn, however, is besotted with horses, and although treasured within the equine community, is little known outside of it. My admiration goes way back. And it’s a source of great personal pride that “a Robyn Louw” was published on BizNews’s very first day – 4 August, 2013.  Her contributions since have been sporadic but my incessant nagging has finally paid off with this contribution which has all the ingredients required of a great story – a hard working underdog trainer; a modestly endowed but very loyal owner; a racehorse in the SeaBiscuit mould; and a horse by a name that could only come from SA. The equine focus of the piece, Kommetdieding, is a true Champion having achieved the rare double of winning the country’s two biggest horseraces, the Durban July and the Cape Met. Even if the closest you have come to an equine is a clothes horse, this real life tale is sure to move you. I’ll bet on that. (The pic above of Harold Crawford and Kommetdieding by hamishNIVENPhotography). – Alec Hogg   

By Robyn Louw

Much has been made of Cape Town’s racing darling, Kommetdieding and his owner, Mr Ashwin Reynolds. And rightly so. On July day 2021, Mr Reynolds became the first person of colour to hang his silks on Greyville’s July hall of fame. And when the cheap horse from the little stable owned by the Cape Flats boy done good walloped a high class field before their home town crowd at the 2022 Met, well, it was fairy tale stuff.

After all, the idea that horses don’t read form, real heart has no price and a good horse can change your life forever, are tenets buried deep in the foundations of our sport. It is the reason this seemingly crazy pursuit is worth any amount of effort and any amount of expense to those who love it, because it offers limitless opportunity to dream. And it’s a good story. A great one, even. But to think that’s all there is to it, would be selling it very short indeed.

It’s due to the creature the whole thing is built on, because there is a reason one feels good on a horse. Firstly, you are higher off the ground, so you get a better and broader view of your surroundings. You see things from a whole new perspective. They allow you to move faster and be stronger than you could ever be on your own. In short, it’s a little like pulling on a Superman suit. On their backs and by their side they afford us glimpses of bigger, better, more noble versions of ourselves and it’s pretty heady stuff. For most people, it creates a sense of responsibility and a drive to improve until you are worthy of occupying that saddle and holding those reins and in the moments that investment pays off, it feels as though Heaven has reached down and touched us personally. As I said, it’s heady stuff and horse people spend their lives obsessively in pursuit of that goal.

When it comes to the Thoroughbred, the blood runs blue and the courage runs deep and it is impossible to spend time in their company without these characteristics rubbing off. If the Thoroughbred truly is the noblest of its kind, then the race track is where the best do business.

While some people quantify ‘the best’ in terms of rands and cents success, it is the other kind that I enjoy most. Good people, doing what they do best, making their corner of the world a better place simply by being who they are.

We often put off telling people how important they are on the assumption that we have the luxury of time. We shouldn’t, because we don’t.

Which brings me to Harold Crawford. Harry is one of life’s gems, but if one were in the habit of judging a book by its cover, it would be easy to miss out on him. The small figure with the shock of white hair and heavy Swartland ‘brei’, occupies barn 12, the very last in the ‘old’ block at Milnerton, tucked so far in the corner that the manure removal crew sometimes neglects to collect his bags. One suspects the arrangement suits him – he prefers to mind his own business anyway.

Harry is a second generation horseman. His father rode in the Cape Hunt and Harry himself went to the SA Jockey Academy alongside the likes of Paddy McGivern, Garth Puller, Ticky Carr, Paddy Kruyer, Trevor and the late Bill Taylor, Vince Curtis, Kit Kinsley and Stuart Lennox. The heaviest apprentice of his year, he only got in because he could ride and would often spend Friday nights sleeping in the sauna to get down to the required 99lbs for the following day’s race meeting. He lost the battle with the scale in 1969 and after a varied grounding, took out his trainer’s license in February 1976.

Harry has never had particularly big, powerful owners or a fancy string, but racing is what he does and the simple pleasure of being around horses is what gets him up in the morning. His operation is of the old school, where feed is measured by eye and mixed by hand and each horse, no matter how quirky, receives individual attention. Because he is happiest in the company of his animals, no matter what time of day you drop by, there is always someone (usually Harry) to be found at the barn and a pot of coffee to welcome visitors.

He has an encyclopaedic memory for the racing facts and figures of days gone by, but also knows exactly what is happening in racing at any given time and if you ever want the real story behind a story, Harry is the place to go. As a retired rider, he cares about the characters that have graced our turf and hosts an annual get together for retired jockeys, which has become a calendar event.

HARRY IS ONE OF LIFE’S KINDEST AND MOST GENEROUS PEOPLE, WHO DESPITE LIMITED MEANS, HAS NEVER STINTED WHEN IT COMES TO HELPING OTHERS – AND HAVING BEEN AROUND AS LONG AS HE HAS, THERE ARE FEW HE HASN’T HELPED SOME WAY, SHAPE OR FORM, DESPITE IT OFTEN CREATING DIFFICULTIES FOR HIMSELF.

Yet even with his small barn, relatively inexpensive string and modest success, horses and owners have been taken out from under him, or at the first sign of having teased some potential out of an inexpensive purchase, clients have deserted him for larger, bigger-name yards.

In the last few years alone, he has had his horses set loose, been violently attacked in his yard, threatened with eviction from his stables, had a serious heart attack in 2017, followed by a stroke two years later, which prompted daughter Michelle to join him as his training partner in August 2019.

But despite everything life throws at him, Harry simply dusts himself off and gets back to his stables and the universe falls in love with a stubborn heart. So it was long overdue good karma to see him rewarded with the wonderfully named Kommetdieding, another of Harry’s shrewd finds off a small farm sale for a small price tag for a small owner. When the horse won his debut in the Klawervlei sales race in June 2020, people were pleased for Harry, but didn’t take it too seriously. When Kommet won a Progress Plate, then a Handicap and followed it up with a solid victory in the 2021 Politician Stakes, it suddenly got very serious indeed, resulting rather predictably in a string of people offering rather large sums of money to take the horse off his hands. So again, it warmed the heart when Mr Reynolds flew in the face of accepted racing wisdom and chose to stick by his horse – and trainer – to see where the journey might lead and thank goodness for that, as we are all the richer for it.

The late, great racing scribe Les Carlyon observed, “Racehorse owners are different. Most of them have an engineer’s sense of precision, a mind that gravitates towards the objective and the rational. They like to bring order and reason to complex matters. Horse people are seldom like that. We can be rational and pragmatic too, but we tend to rank those things behind matters of the heart.”

I think it is one of the things that makes us so gloriously appealing. However, it made it hard to be a racing fan during the Phumelela era, which tended to focus on big numbers, bottom lines and shareholder dividends, rather than safeguarding the sport we are all so passionate about. While that would have been fine, admirable even, if we were discussing ‘normal’ business policy, this is racing. Abandon logic all ye who enter here.

With Phumelela going into business rescue in May 2020, South African racing is undergoing seismic changes. A new operator, 4 Racing, backed by the Oppenheimer family, officially took over the reins on 1 December 2021. Although the task before them is an unenviable one, the new chapter promises a return to old school values, the guardianship of the sport’s core principles and an appreciation for the fact that logic is a small price to pay for magic.

To me, Kommet’s story is a sorely needed reminder that dreams do come true, that hard work pays off and good things do still happen to good people.  Best of all, it came at a time when racing, if not the country, needed it most.  Just the sort of heroes one needs for a fresh start.