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Picture: After The Rain showing how high his feet are off the ground in his eyecatching action (Candiese Lenferna). 

 

After The Rain is fast becoming KZN’s most popular horse, such is his eyecatching white coat and obvious zest for racing, and trainer Gareth van Zyl also revealed he was a gentle giant and “as kind as a lamb”.

Last Saturday he showed how good he is when only just failing to reel in the classy William Robertson in the Grade 2 Topbet Mike O’Connor Jo’burg Spring Challenge over 1450m at Turffontein, despite having faced him on weight for age terms.
 
That meant he was a whopping 10,5kg under sufferance with William Robertson according to official merit ratings.
 
However, the specific conditions of that race do not permit any increase to the rating of any horse other than the winner.
 
After The Rain thus remains on 104 and will be potentially well in when next running in a handicap.
 
That handicap might well be the Grade 2 Allied Steelrode – Onamission Charity Mile.
 
That race has a benchmark of 106 for 52kg, meaning After The Rain will come in officially 1kg under sufferance, but on his Spring Challenge run he could arguably be 9kg well in.
 
He travelled back to Summerveld after the Spring Challenge and Van Zyl said, “The Charity Mile is the logical choice, although travelling up there twice in a month is not ideal.”
 
Van Zyl revealed, “He is the most competitive horse I have seen. He changes completely in a race as he just loves to compete.”
 
He added, “He has not been straight forward to train as he does not have an economical action. However, he has not had issues for quite a while, although knowing him helps a lot. He pounds the ground hard on his off fore but the bones on the fetlock have now been remodelled (the bones form a structure to compensate for the repetitive pounding).”
 
He continued, “He is only shod for his races, he trains without shoes. This is because he hits himself quite hard in various places. he actually works with five boots on, (the one leg has two), otherwise he interferes with himself quite drastically. This happens worse when working on heavy sand than when going full speed in a race, although I did bandage all four legs in his last race.”
 
He added, “He pushes well from behind and has a big stride, I wouldn’t say it is an exceptionally long stride, but he is comfortable to be on and every jockey who has ridden him has said he has enjoyed riding him, he leaves an impression.”
 
His grey coat is so faded he is now white and he is a joy to watch.
 
That difficult to describe strid, in which his hooves are lifted unusually high, tells the story of a horse who is going about his task with great enthusiasm.
 
Van Zyl said, “He is not going as hard in the running as he had done previously. In the Queen’s Plate Muzi was unable to hold him and you can’t sprint for a mile, you have to save something for the finish. He has improved in that way and ridden with a little bit of restraint is finishing better.”
 
Being such a big, strong horse the rider would not be able to hold him if he was not responsive.
 
So he clearly was responsive on Saturday, because after going straight to the lead, as usual, and then being overtaken in the straight by the impressive acceleration of William Robertson, who went two lengths clear, he fought back and only just failed, losing by a quarter of a length.
 
The Master Of My Fate five-year-old entire was ridden for the first time by Diego Degouveia.
 
The average horse weighs about 470kg, a big horse weight 500kg and After The Rain weighs 570kg.
 
“I train him lean so do not overfeed him,” said Van Zyl. “Otherwise he will be too heavy on his legs.”
 
With his kind nature nothing would suggest After the Rain was still an entire.
 
Owners Graeme and VJ Palmer have not had him gelded as they would like to race some of his offspring, although they are not considering standing him commercially.
 
There have in fact been one or two offers to stand him as a stallion, both for thoroughbred and warmblood purposes.
 
However, the Palmers already have a filly lined up for him and, interestingly, she is also a grey.
 
Meanwhile, Gareth is planning to send eleven horses down to Cape Town.
 
He will be hoping to qualify Captainofthegreen (Gimmethegreenlight) for the Cape Racing Ready To Run.
 
He is also hoping some of the three-year-olds will progress into feature contenders.
 
However, he said with the incentives put in place by Cape Racing there was nothing to lose and they would otherwise run in lower division handicaps.
 
Gareth is the current KZN Champon trainer and he said, “I would not have been able to do it without the support of my faithful clients or without my family, my wife Kirsten and son and daughter Dallin and Gracie-Lee.”
 
He has had ten winners this season in KZN and is three off the pace being set by form champion Garth Puller in his bid to retain his title.