Maestro trainer Dennis Drier was based at Summerveld but has taken a string down to cape Town for the Cape Summer season every year for over a decade (Hamish Niven Photography).
Dennis Drier’s decision to retire, announced earlier today, was not an easy one and he did it with a heavy heart having loved what he had been doing for 55 years.
The stresses of training racehorses is partly due to the complex relationship between trainer and owner, which begins through a shared love of horses and can extend to friendship, but it is ultimately a business relationship, meaning the trainer will continuously be experiencing highs and lows.
There was a famous saying about one of the country’s most famous racing families, the Lairds, of which Dennis is a member, “When we win we cry, when we lose we smile.”
This was seen in Dennis, who visibly shed tears after almost every Grade 1 event he won.
However, keeping up the smiles when losing must have become difficult in the last couple of years when economics made it tougher and tougher for trainers to buy new horses.
The Laird family’s history in the game traces back to Dennis’s grandfather Alec Laird, who in 1911 won the July in the saddle on Nobleman, the only two-year-old to ever win the country’s premier race.
Dennis’s great Uncle Syd Garret was a legendary horseman known as “The Wizard of Roamer Lodge” and he won two Julys as a jockey and three as a trainer.
Garrett passed on what he knew to his nephew Syd Laird, who won a record-breaking seven Julys and is South Africa’s only Hall Of Fame trainer.
Syd Laird was Dennis’s Uncle and mentor.
Dennis joined Syd as an assistant trainer in the late 1960s and thus learnt from the best.
Dennis won the July once and his cousins Alec Laird and Charles Laird have each won it once apiece too.
Dennis became a maestro of his trade and this was reflected in his phenomenal run of Grade 1 success in an eleven year period from 2010 to 2020, but this golden time was not reached without many earlier trials and tribulations.
He had spent nine years as assistant to Syd Laird and this period of his career was packed with the highlights brought by greats like Mazarin, Politician, Yataghan, Archangel, Ocean City and others.
There was also one memorable lowlight when a disgruntled punter attempted to attack Syd Laird in the parade ring after the 1972 July because of Mazarin’s unplaced run. Dennis intervened and was smashed in the face with a pair of binoculars.
Laird’s insight into horses and his legendary intuition became deeply ingrained in Dennis and even today when faced with a tough decision he takes his mind back in time and considers what “Uncle Syd” would have done under the same circumstances.
Dennis started out on his own with about six or seven horses.
He married Gill, who was the daughter of the Oppenheimer’s trainer John Breval, and this might have been one reason why he later became the Oppenheimer’s trainer.
He trained for the Oppenheimers for twenty years with success, including winning the July.
However, the biggest single blow to his career came when they decided on a change of trainer and he lost 32 horses in one morning.
However, he certainly bears no grudges and said he gets on famously with Mary Slack and Jessica Jell today and added, “They have been very good to me.”
He said about the blow of losing those horses, “My owners buckled down and I was able to make a recovery.”
It was more than just a recovery because he became the perennial KZN champion trainer this millennium, and was often locked in a ding-dong tussle for the title with Mike de Kock and later with Duncan Howells.
Drier’s career best achievement will be go down as his phenomenal success in Grade 1 races at Hollywoodbets Scottsville.
His first Grade 1 success there was with Spook And Diesel in the 1990 Smirnoff, today known as the Gold Medallion.
Twenty years later Drier began dominating this two-year-old Grade 1 winning it with Link Man in 2010, Potent Power in 2012, Captain Of All in 2013, Guiness in 2014, Seventh Plain in 2015, Sand And Sea in 2017 and Tempting Fate in 2020.
His other Scottsville Grade 1 victories were with Sound Of Rhum, Val De Ra and Sommerlied in the 1994, 2011 and 2018 SA Fillies Sprint respectively and with Captain of All in the 2015 Tsogo Sun (Golden Horse) Sprint.
So that was a total of twelve Grade 1s at the Pietermaritzburg course, ten of them within that amazing eleven year stretch.
However, Drier’s personal best moment was when winning the country’s biggest race, the Durban July with Spanish Galliard for the Oppenheimers in 1992.
The two most successful horses he has trained have been Beach Beauty and Val De Ra, both of whom have wonderful stories attached to them.
Beach Beauty was chosen by Dennis from Trevor Armitage’s farm and she was to race for the “Shanks Syndicate” in memory of Trevor’s late son Mark.
The tiny Dynasty filly was viewed by Mark’s family and best friends, who formed the syndicate, as more of a cute pet to pat when she first arrived at the Drier Summerveld yard … that was until she displayed an eyecatching burst of speed to win over 1450m on debut at Clairwood.
She went on to become a five time Grade 1-winner and “the darling of the South African turf”, because in every one of those Grade 1 wins (two Paddock Stakes, two Garden Provinces and one Majorca Stakes) she was regarded as the meeting banker and never once let the public down. She would have won more Grade 1s had she not tackled the Met twice and the July once. She was twice the Equus Champion Older Female in 2012/2013 and 2013/2014.
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Val De Ra was a phenomenal sprinter with exceptional natural speed coupled with a turn of foot, but she first had an epistaxis incident as a two-year-old and later was critically ill with peritonitis. She came back from death’s door to win three weight for age Grade 1s, the Computaform Sprint, the SA Fillies Sprint and the Cape Flying Championship, and was named Equus Champion Sprinter of the 2010/2011 season.
However, Drier regards the unsound 1992-born Harmony Forever (Foveros) and current successful sire Master Of My Fate (Jet Master), whose career was cut short by injury, as the potentially best he ever trained while he said Spanish Galliard was the “gutsiest”.
Owners have enjoyed being with the Drier yard over the years not only for Dennis’s meticulous professionalism and fine horsemanship, but he is also a gregarious personality, so clients became good friends.
However, as mentioned earlier, this also made the ups and downs harder to bear.
Gill is a fine horsewoman in her own right, so added immense value and did a lot of the admin.
Stuart Ferrie had a great grounding in training, including a stint in Dubai, and was a hardworking, trustworthy assistant whose friendly demeanour fitted in perfectly.
Loyal jockeys like Sean Cormack and Sean Veale were also vital cogs.
In Drier’s letter to his clients he saluted “Menz” and “Nxys”, his longtime loyal grooms, and said there were too many others to thank to mention.
Dennis Drier’s popularity can be summed up by him being known throughout the industry today simply as “Uncle Den.”
He said about his pending retirement, “There are many who are under the impression I will be training a small string in Cape Town, but I will not be. I am handing over the reins to Stuey (Stuart Ferrie) and have no doubt he will be a success.”
He explained, “I am 77, have been in this job for 55 years, and the game is not like I used to know it. There is too much politics and too many ego’s and I also battle these days to deal with the disappointments. I have appreciated what Greg Bortz and Hollywood have been doing for the sport and hope they succeed in taking it back to where it was.”
