Ravi Naidoo, owner of the crack colt Cousin Casey, will be eating and sleeping racing for the next few days in the build up to the most talked about race for years, the Grade 1 Hollywoodbets Cape Guineas.
He said, “It is a rare privilege to own a horse who has won his last five starts, including a Grade 1 and two Grade 2s, and yet be going into this big race as the underdog! The attention has been diverted away from Cousin Casey and it has de-pressurised us and I am loving it!”
However, he did not want to take anything away from the opposition and added, “I have seldom seen a horse win as effortlessly as Charles Dickens has been doing. It is being billed as a match race, but I wouldn’t want to be disrespectful either to Mike de Kock’s pair or Brett Crawford’s pair and others. There are also the elements, as it looks like there is going to be a howling South Easter on the day. We are also drawn in the Pick And Pay parking lot. Luck in running is always important, but I hope the race is without incident and it is a proper fair run race.”
Ravi went through a roller coaster of emotions in the early days of his association with Cousin Casey.
There was the disappointment of thinking he had lost the bidding battle.
He had to leave last year’s BSA National Yearling Sale before Cousin Casey had come into the ring because of a dinner engagement in Cape Town. He ended up following the bidding while sitting on an aeroplane at OR Tambo airport.
However, disappointment turned to elation when Glen Kotzen, who had persuaded him to buy the colt, phoned and announced, “We got him!”
The R375,000 was more than the original budget for the colt, who is by Vercingetorix out of Casey Tibbs mare Bretton Woods, a full-sister to Kotzen’s Durban July winner Big City Life.
However, Vercingetorix has become a boom sire and that price would be a steal for such a yearling today.
Cousin Casey came home to Kotzen’s Woodhill Estate via Big Sky Ranch in the Karoo, formerly known as the Gary Player Stud.
However, when Ravi went to visit him for the first time he admitted to immediately feeling “buyer’s remorse.”
He said, “I saw this furry little thing. He was not the most impressive specimen and I said to Glen ‘He is going to have to do some growing.’”
But as time went by and he lost his winter coat “he became unrecognisable”.
Later on Glen told me. “Gee, Ravi, he can run!”
Kotzen tried to set up a nice opening win in a Maiden Juvenile Plate over 1000m on L’Ormarins Queen’s Plate day, where he finished third. He then ran in the Listed Cape Town Summer Juvenile Stakes over 1000m on Met day, finishing fourth.
Ravi said, “So he blotted his copybook there a bit, but was up against tearaways who were just too quick for him. From the day he went around the turn, he has not turned back.”
It is well documented how he swept all before him in KZN, winning a Juvenile Plate over 1400m, a Listed race over 1400m, a Grade 2 over 1400m and a Grade 1 over 1600m, all from wide draws.
He showed his versatility too, as he won one of those races from the front, although his most memorable wins were from off the pace.
He is capable of “unfurling” a devastating finishing run, as Ravi puts it.
Ravi added, “But his most impressive win was when giving his peers 2kg in the Grade 2 Punters Cup (over 1600m) in his reappearance and beating them easily.”
He pointed out, “He has done it from wide draws and in big fields, which some of his rivals have not done.”
One of Cousin Casey’s biggest assets is his superb racing temperament.
Ravi said, “He is composed in the parade ring, he is an unflustered, chilled horse who loves a snuggle. Grant has always got off and said this horse follows instructions, he does just what you tell him to do.”
Ravi, who was born and grew up in Durban, also spoke about his history in racing.
He said, “I am definitely not a Johnny-come-lately. I have had a long love affair with racing ever since In Full Flight won the July in 1972. I was only eight years old, but can remember my father backing the winner. After that I used to read the form and was fascinated by the pictures showing the 800m, 400m and finishing positions. I used to know all the course records etc too.”
He continued, “Then in the early 1980s members of my family became an advance guard during the apartheid years by being granted their colours, so they were pioneers and owned a good horse called Casal Garcia.”
This Harry Hotspur filly won seven races and was multiple stakes-placed, including a narrow second in the Tibouchina.
Ravi also recalled her breaking a course record once.
Later, Ravi went down to UCT and with encouragement from Professor Tim Noakes decided to do a post grad study on EPO, a naturally occurring cytokine which was a controversial topic in athletics at the time as there were practices being used to manipulate its abundance in the bloodstreams of unscrupulous athletes.
He thus regularly accompanied veterinarian Bob McDaniel on his rounds at the Cape Town training tracks, which always ended with him taking some vials of blood back to UCT for study purposes having been drawn from racehorse’s neck veins.
Ravi then decided to contact Alec Hogg, who was at the time publishing the Racing Digest, to tell him he was in a good position to talk to trainers.
“So I wrote for the Racing Digest for a while.”
Later, with his second pay cheque working for an advertising company, he bought a 10% share in a Dancing Champ filly who was a three-parts sister to Olympic Duel.
He began expanding his interest, but it all ground to a halt when a consortium he had joined bought into an expensive import called Habaayib.
This horse injured a canon bone in his third SA start and Ravi decided to take a complete sabbatical from ownership. He did not even excercise his stallion rights.
It was at a L’Ormarins Queen’s Plate after-party a few years ago where he was encouraged by Gaynor Rupert to own again.
She invited him to join the L’Ormarins Syndicate and he accepted.
Later, Gaynor, Pam Isdell and Ravi started a fun group in which they buy three horses at the National Yearling Sales per year and race them together.
They call themselves “The Tricolores” and draw to see whose colours the horses will run in. The person who draws the colours is also allowed to choose the trainer.
One of their first runners together was Zapatillas, who won the Grade 2 WSB Guineas.
As the bug had bitten again, Ravi began buying for himself and hence the purchase of Cousin Casey.
Ravi believes Saturday’s race is good for the whole country as it has ignited such interest.
He was full of praise for Cape Racing and said, “At last racing is being run by people who fundamentally know the game. They are also running it like a business. So, I think this is just the start and there is a lot more to come. I must also mention Hollywood for the incentives they have put in place. It was wonderful to see Uncle Den collecting a 50 grand cheque on Saturday! Cape Racing has been a breath of fresh air and the Guineas now is no longer just a parochial race. What a day is in store for all of us on Saturday!”
Ravi appreciates good business practices having owned his own marketing company since 1993.
Picture below: The dapper Cape Town-based racehorse owner Ravi Naidoo.
