Picture: Kings Gambit
Gavin Lerena rode his first Gr I winner on April 5, 2008, when he brought Kings Gambit home an easy 2,75 length winner of the R1,2 million SA Classic over 1 800m on the Turffontein standside track. The horse was trained by the late Lance Wiid and was the first Gr 1 winner for the legendary Silvano, a six-time national champion sire who is the most successful sire in Hollywoodbets Durban July history and he is the sire of South Africa’s most successful sales sire in history, the current national champion stallion, Vercingetorix.
Lerena had only come out of his record-breaking apprenticeship the previous season.
He was glowing in his praise of the three-year-old Danika Stud-bred Silvano gelding.
In an article written a couple of days after the SA Classic victory he spoke about the horse and about his time in horseracing and his aspirations.
“King’s Gambit is the best horse I have ever ridden and probably the best horse I ever will ride,” he said about the inexperienced horse who only made his debut in late January and was having just his fifth start on Saturday. “He is world class.”
Lerena described the feeling of passing the line for that elusive first Grade I winner, “It’s amazing, not something you can really explain, but I also heaved a big sigh of relief. There was high expectation from the yard as we knew he had all the ability.”
He was seen rousting his mount shortly after the start to get him covered, and settled one wide in sixth place about four lengths off the pacemaker Solar Symbol.
He kept him covered until about the 500m mark before producing him on the outside at which stage the 16-1 shot quickened well and sustained his finish all the way to the line.
“He is still very green so I had to use him a bit out of the gate, but we found a nice position. He was very relaxed and always felt like a winner and when I asked him the question he accelerated within a matter of strides.”
Lerena, still in his first year out of the apprentice ranks, sat on Kings Gambit for the first time when an unraced youngster on his initial trainer Michael Roberts’ farm.
“From day one I knew he was special,” he said.
He has first choice of rides for young trainer Lance Wiid, to whose private yard Kings Gambit moved in December last year.
He rates Wiid, who also bagged his first grade I winner, as a “real horseman and a very underrated trainer”.
The long-striding gelding’s next mission is probably the Derby.
“He is amazing as he won over 1 160m and will definitely get the Derby trip,” he added.
A former champion apprentice, Lerena broke Michael Roberts’ long-standing record for the most number of wins by an apprentice. He is also the son of former jockey, Tex, and started riding horses as a kid on the family farm.
“My father didn’t want me to be a jockey,” he said. “But when he saw that that was all I wanted to do he helped me and, together with everyone in my family, has always supported me tremendously.”
Before entering the jockey’s Academy as a fourteen-year-old, he did show jumping and also rode work at his favourite racecourse, Newmarket.
“Newmarket was a very honest track and there was a great vibe about the place,” he said. “It was a sad loss for racing.”
His favourite track these days is the Turffontein standside track, which he regards as “testing and tactical, where the best horse aided by the best tactics wins”.
He has a very professional approach and is one of only two jockeys who uses a sports psychologist.
He revealed that while he has always admired Piere Strydom, and Anton Marcus too, all of the senior jockeys help and correct the apprentices and in the end every jockey has his own style.
Lerena regards riding any horse as a privilege and counts himself as lucky to have ridden in all of the country’s big races, adding that a jockey has butterflies in his stomach on the morning before a race like the Durban July but the moment the gates open “one forgets everything and it just becomes another race.”
He concluded by saying that he has ambitions to ride overseas one day.
“I would like to get my name out there and do the best I can for my country.”
Lerena has gone on to be a twice SA Champion jockey and has had overseas success. He won the iconic Hong Kong International Jockeys Challenge in 2015 before having a stint on the island and he rode two winners when helping the Rest Of The World team win the Shergar Cup in 2016.
King’s Gambit went on to win the Gr 1 SA Derby and was named Equus Champion Stayer and he became a successful campaigner in Britain winning a Gr 3 and placig in a number of other stakes races.
King’s Gambit is from the family of the like of London News and Master Of My Fate as well as the current useful Wilgerbosdrift and Mauritzfontein-bred Mike and Mathew de Kock-trained Gr 2-winning filly White Pearl (Danon Platina).
White Pearl is out of the Tiger Ridge half-sister to King’s Gambit, Oyster Pond. Interestingly, Oyster Pond’s latest runner, the De Kock-trained filly Queen Of Pearls, is by Silvano stallion Hawwaam and she finished second on debut, so is one to follow. Oyster Pond also has a Hawwaam two-year-old colt on the ground called South Sea Pearl.
