Alexander Brothers’ Attractive Springbok Syndicate Offer
Popular brothers Gary and Dean Aleander are ready to fire in Australia
Gary and Dean Alexander were a force in South Africa, having trained such horses as Clifton King, Wallah, Gay Tune, Bamboogie, Kick The Habit, Naval Guest, Heartwood, Thousand Nights, Speaking Oak, Imperious Sue, Tommy Hotspur, Flying Promise, Ruby Clipper, Timber Trader, Final Claim, Kazatzkah, Drum Star, Elegant Al, Brutal Force, Silver Sliver, Mosszao, Lady Of The Turf and Pierre Jourdan and others, and they now look all set to get rolling in Australia where they are based at Murray Bridge racecourse in South Australia,.
Their settling in period is over and their first yearling purchases will begin racing as three-year-olds this season, so it might well be worth the while of South African owners to invest in “the Springbok syndicate.”.
Dean explained, “We had a very nice start when we arrived initially, but our stables weren’t ready for two years from the time we got here … our stables in Murray Bridge hadn’t been built, so we started off with ten pre-stables at Morphettville Racecourse, then they moved us to Gawler and we only had ten stables there, but out of those stables we had eleven winners. In total we’ve had a bit of success, but last season was a bit quiet, because when we first arrived it was slap bang smack in the middle of COVID, so we couldn’t travel and we had to buy horses online to get going. We kicked off with horses that were in training, but they were basically horses that had been sold on. We only really started buying yearlings about two years ago. Our horses have won their races, but we did a bit of a clearing out this last season and we didn’t race too much, because we’ve just been waiting for the young horses. That’s why this is all happening now. Gary’s never been one to push his two-year-olds. These three-year-olds now are those horses that we bought at the yearling Sales and they’re all coming into their own. They’ll start racing as three-year-olds. So, basically, we’ve been here for four years, but it’s taken a while to get established and to get a team together. It has been tough as we started from scratch, we did not have one horse, and we’ve now got about 22 horses in training. We’re getting there. We’ve got a lot of young horses, which is nice, and it’s exciting. We have a couple of older horses, but not too many. It’s all about the season going forward and the season after that with the young horses and see what we can do.”
Dean said about the training facilities at Murray Bridge, which is a new racecourse about an hour out of Adelaide and about six or seven hours from Melbourne, “The training facilities at Murray Bridge are really good. They’ve got a fibre track. The main grass track is really nice and they’ve got an inside grass track, which you can work on. They’ve got a beautiful uphill sand track and then we’ve got a swimming pool and there is a nice spa. The stables were only built about two years ago, so all the facilities are really nice.”
The stakes are very good in South Australia.
Victoria State, which has Australia’s most competitive racing and biggest stakes, is within raiding distance.
Australia has no fewer than 92 Gr 1 races per season and all of them are for Aus$1Million or more, so with an exchange rate of 11 to 1, there is potentially big money to be made.
The general stakes in Adelaide on a Satuday are from about Aus$30,000 to Aus$35,000, which is about R400,000, and in midweek the stakes are generally the equivalent of about R180,000 to R200,000.
Dean added, “It goes up if you’re going across the border (to Victoria) and then most races are run for anything from about the equivalent of R700,000 to R1 million.”
Gary and Dean have always complemented each other as a team. Gary is the main trainer, while Dean focuses on owner relations and marketing, but when either is away they have the nous to fill each other’s main roles.
The details of joining the Springbok Syndicate can be read in the advertisements below:
