The last Gr 1 win of Piere Strydom’s illustrious career was the WSB Cape Fillies Guineas on the Brett and James Crawford-trained Fatal Flaw (New Predator) (Picture: Chase Liebenberg)
Piere “Striker” Strydom, who has his last ever ride at the Vaal on Thursday, has gained a reputation for not riding much work and the pundits have been known to remind him of this, although usually in a pulling-the- leg type of way.
He gave an insight into his attitude towards workriding.
“I would say I was the hardest workriding apprentice of my time both in Durban and in PE and then when I moved to Jo’Burg I also rode a lot of work to get going.”
“But when I started traveling I obviously couldn’t ride that much.”
“But also every now and then I would ride for a yard and we would have a great three months and the horses would all win. Then the handicapper would catch up with them and they would struggle to win and I would get fired. So then I thought, ‘All this effort for what?’ i.e. you’r workriding and you still get fired.”
“But every day if you ride winners, you’re going to get away with not riding work. So realising that basically changed my whole attitude towards workriding.”
He continued, “Also you can get injured workriding and it’s for nothing. It is a risk and your main job is to ride in races.”
He added, “And it has changed a lot. Nowadays there are actually specialist workriders.”
Piere has always had a highly professinal attitude towards his job and his attitude towards workriding makes professional sense.
If required to be at track he will be there and a good example was in the preparation of the Sean Tarry-trained 2012 Durban July winner Pomodoro for the following year’s July.
In the build up to the July I had spoken to Tarry one day in my capacity as a racing journalist and he informed me there would be an important workout at Clairwood for Pomodoro the next day at “7 a.m.” in order to test him in a tongue tie.
I thought the workout would be around 7 o’clock give or take as much as 15 minutes on either side as times given for workouts are seldom accurate (or are not given at all as trainers like to do things in their own time).
However, on this occasion Striker arrived at the ring literally a couple of minutes before 7 a.m., having flown in from Johannesburg for just one single early morning work ride.
The horse was saddled up and he and the trainer had to do no waiting at all.
Striker was aboard and on his way to the track at 7 a.m. on the dot.
As the saying goes, “Punctuality is the first step towards success”.
Tarry is also a professional of the highest order and had regarded the feedback of the horse’s big race rider as an essential in making the decision and was not going to just rely on the feedback of any other rider he could have put aboard.
The pair were in deep discussion after the gallop.
A decision was made to run Pomodoro with the tongue tie on and the press were informed.
