Rebel King’s progeny are unusual entries in SA racing these days, but he was still going as a stallion recently and he had a two-year-old filly appearing in the first race at the Vaal Classic track today (Tuesday), the Robyn Klaassen-trained Jailhouse Rebel.
This filly is out of the Mike de Kock-trained Australian-bred Shamus Award mare Jailhouse Jazz, who looked to have potential when scoring second time out as a juvenile by 2,25 lengths over 1450m, but she failed to build on that.
The Rebel King filly who ran in today’s first race was bred by Schalkie van der Walt.
Rebel King stood at Gelykfontein after leaving Klawervlei Stud.
Gelykfontien is a Karoo farm that has been in the Van der Walt family since 1884, where they originally farmed cattle and sheep and trained cart horses.
In 1935 JC “Boer” van der Walt began breeding thoroughbred racehorses.
In the late 1960s his twin sons Schalk and Jannie joined the farming activities and by this stage the farm bred thoroughbreds, had a small Dairy, and farmed with Boer Goats, sheep and South Devon Cattle.
Schalk continued on the farm after his father’s passing in1977 and currently the 6th generation family farms with Nguni Cattle, Rubicon Merino Sheep, indigenous Veld Goats and Thoroughbred Race Horses.
Ormond Ferraris lamented in his book Thoroughly, “I was always a Karoo man for horses, a place where breeders like the Birch Brothers were renowned for raising the young horses tough in a rough environment. Their horses, and most other Karoo-breds, stood up to training. But the Karoo has long fallen out of fashion, most of their wonderful bloodlines have run their course, and fewer and fewer come to the sales these days.”
Evidence of how unfashionable Rebel King, a former Klawervlei Stud stallion, became is that his only two runners so far this season have an age difference of six years – the gallant Erico Verdonese-trained Nordic Rebel who won a race as a nine-year-old this season off a merit rating of 89, and the three-year-old JS Roux-trained Northern King, who has earned only one place from nine runs.
It is not known whether Rebel King is still at Gelykfontein, but this last season they began standing the underrated sire Visionaire.
Rebel King produced five individual stakes winners in all.
Visionaire has produced nine individual stakes winners, including two individual Grade 1 winners.
Hopefully, he can boost the fortunes of a once famous breeding region.
