Picture: The 2008/2009 season included one of the clashes of the century, the rematch between Durban July dead-heaters Pocket Power and Dancer’s Daughter in the Met and it was the Mike Bass-trained Pocket Power who prevailed by a quarter of a length.
The 2008/2009 horseracing season in South Africa will go down as one of the most intriguing of all time as it had it all from drama to dreams-come-true on the racetrack, instant success stories to record-breaking achievements in the breeding sheds as well as some upheavals and advancements in the administrative ranks.
The dreams-come-true were plentiful, as usual, but none more so than the incredible comeback of Andrew Fortune, who came from gone-and-forgotten less than two years ago to be crowned National Champion Jockey at the end of the 2008/2009 season.
Fortune’s gripping tale of how he rebuilt his life and then targeted the Championships to complete the resurrection has been told many times.
He did it not only for himself, but to set an example to others who had found themselves in the position he was once in, and also to make his beloved mother, Florence, who had stood by him in the hard times, proud.
His dedication to his cause is illustrated in that he is almost certainly the heaviest jockey to ever win the title.
He achieved it through hard work on the training tracks, a taxing travel schedule and, most of all, through a sublime talent.
The drama in the jockey ranks was provided by apprentices Derrick David and Karis Teetan.
It only came to light late in the season that the Zimbabwean winners, which count towards all National Jockeys titles, weren’t reflected in the published National Logs and suddenly David, who had ridden a few winners north of the Limpopo, had a chance of catching the seemingly runaway winner, Teetan.
In the last week of the season David rode seven winners, including two in the penultimate racemeeting at the Vaal.
He caught and overtook Teetan to claim the title by a single winner.
David’s taxing travel schedule, that secured him some 300 more rides than Teetan, had earned him his pre-season goal and this prestigious achievement would have thrilled his biggest fan, his father Eblan.
The fairytale story of the season was Big City Life, who repeated the feat of the great Dynasty by winning the Grade 1 Cape Derby, the Grade 2 KRA Guineas, the Grade 1 Daily News 2000 and finally, the big one, the Grade 1 Vodacom Durban July.
The three-year-old Casey Tibbs colt with a modest pedigree and price tag was bred by trainer Glen Kotzen’s mother-in-law, Judy Wintle, and was born and brought up on the Kotzen family’s Woodhill Racing Estate in the beautiful Paardeberg region just outside Cape Town.
Purchased by Bloodstock Agent Tony Warren, who formed the syndicate of Raymond Deacon, Glen Mitchell, Andre Hauptfleisch and Glen Kotzen himself, the horse found himself back at Woodhill.
Deacon and Mitchell are cousins whose fanaticism for racing began as youngsters, when they used to ride famous horses of the time in mock races on the family couch.
Although they and Hauptfleisch all had fathers who were significant racehorse owners of the past, the trio are by no means among the country’s biggest owners.
The July was consequently a victory for the “small guy” and the elation of the win was summed up by Deacon’s spontaneous Zulu-like war dance after he had been adorned with the victory sash.
Before the July, Hennie Basson, a friend and business partner of Hauptfleisch’s also became an owner of Big City Life.
In the July Big City Life was ridden by Greg Cheyne, whose fantastic season began with a win in the Grade 1 Canon Gold Cup aboard the Basil Marcus-trained Desert Links and included five Grade 1 wins in all.
Cheyne might have created something of a record on J&B Met day when winning the Grade 1 Majorca Stakes on the Geoff Woodruff-trained Emblem Of Liberty as the horse is part-owned by his wife, Claire.
On July night he rode another Glen Kotzen-trained horse, Lady Windermere, to win the Grade 1 Garden Province Stakes over 1600m.
Lady Windermere had won the Grade 1 SA Fillies Sprint five weeks earlier.
The great day for the Kotzen family on July day was capped in that Big City beat home Zirconeum and Forest Path, two horses trained by Mike de Kock, whose Summerveld assistant is Glen’s brother, Nathan.
The headline story of the year was the great Pocket Power’s completion of both a Queen’s Plate and J&B Met treble, the first horse in history to achieve this feat.
The Mike Bass-trained superhorse also won the Grade 1 Gold Challenge.
The July and Champions Cup races didn’t pan out in his favour.
It was thought he would go for an overseas campaign after this season, but it never happened instead he added a fourth Queen’s Plate to his record.
In the training ranks Charles Laird sent out winner after winner and claimed the National title, that had narrowly eluded him in the last two seasons, in resounding fashion.
For one man this season was his heyday before a fall from grace many years later and no prizes for guessing who it was … Markus and Ingrid Jooste were champion owners with over 100 winners.
Jet Master became Champion Sire for the third time and he went on to claim seven titles in all.
However, he was perhaps overshadowed by Captain Al, who smashed his own record by sending out 30 individual two-year-old winners, including his first Grade 1 winner in this age group, Exhilaration.
The champion first season sire, the former European Sprint Champion, Var, made a huge impact as his first crop scorched the racetracks around the country.
His winners included the Vaughan Marshall-trained Villandry, who scored a facile win in the Gr 1 Gold Reefs Resorts Medallion under Felix Coetzee at Scottsville.
Summerhill Stud not only claimed their fifth National Breeders title but had a memorable year in the Sales ring.
The Kahal yearling colt, Uncle Tommy, became their first ever million rand sale and went on to become the most expensive horse of this year’s National Yearling Sale at R2,4million.
Their new sire, Solksjaer, was in the top 10 by average with his first crop at the Sales, which included the R1,5million filly Matara Garden.
The years of hard work and dedication Mick and Cheryl Goss have spent in creating a world class stud farm had finally paid dividends as Summerhill found themselves in the black for the first time ever after the National Yearling Sales.
