Raymond Deacon living in a “dream bubble” at the 2009 Durban July (Picture: Nkosi Hlope)
The Hollywoodbets Durban July is South Afrca’s version of “the race that stops a nation” and never fails to inspire sports lovers year after year.
But what does it feel like to own a July winner?
The recollections of three winning owners, Raymond Deacon (Big City Life in 2009), Ashwin Reynolds (Kommetdieding 2020) and Greg Bortz (Oriental Charm 2024), gives an inkling of what appears to be a surreal experience.
1. Before the 2019 July one of racing’s great characters Raymond Deacon recalled the moment ten years previously he believed his Glen Kotzen-trained horse Big City Life was going to win the Durban July.
He described a feeling of being in a dream bubble as he charged like a rugby player through a shoulder-to-shoulder crowd towards the winner’s enclosure.
His wife Paula turned to daughter Lois and said, “What’s Dad doing?”
“What’s happening?!”, she exclaimed in a higher pitch.
Lois replied, “I think we’ve just won the July!”
Big City life had come into the July off the back of victories in the KRA Guineas and the Daily News 2000, having also won the Investec Cape Derby on J&B Met day.
One of the joint-owners was Raymond’s cousin Glen Mitchell. As youngsters they used to sneak on to the course at Clairwood and help Raymond’s grandfather Reg Deacon in his role as the numbers board operator. He also recalled Glen and himself riding armchairs during racing commentaries, such was their passion for the sport as kids.
Owning a July winner back then would have seemed as unattainable as flying to the moon. So when he owned the second favourite in 2009 Raymond described the build-up of “unbelievable pressure” as a seemingly unattainable dream came within grasping distance.
He recalled, “It suddenly all gets released, I can’t think of a better drug, it is just an amazing release of joy. It is probably why we still do our pensions on this game. I could hardly see the horses through the crowd as they went past, but after he had earlier hit the front I felt almost as if the script had already been written and there was no way he could lose. I have never had a feeling like it. It all happened in slow motion, I can’t remember any noise, it was like being in a dream where you knew the end result.”
Raymond always watched the races at Greyville from the same place on the bottom step of the grandstand opposite the finish line from where his late father Maynard used to watch.
He reckoned he reached the short distance to the winner’s enclosure almost before his horse crossed the line and was thankful Gold Circle’s media relations manager Gill Mostert was on hand to tell some irate members of the public he had not just gone mental but had rather just won the July. Their irritation turned to cheers and they helped him over the winner’s enclosure railings.
Raymond said, “I would have looked a right royal idiot if he had not won, we often joke about it, although I would also have been happy with second.”
The memory of the victory is ever present in the Deacon home through a painting and all sorts of memorabilia.
Raymond said, “The only thing I haven’t got from that day is my phone!”
He lost his cellphone during his charge for the winner’s enclosure, so was unable to field the myriad of congratulatory messages and phonecalls.
One thing which struck Raymond later was this was probably the only time he had been on course and not led his winner in.
He recalled, “I was too busy hugging Frikkie (Greyling, assistant trainer at the time to Glen Kotzen) and the groom.”
Upon receiving the winner’s sash Raymond entertained the crowd with an impromptu dance.
He said, “I don’t even remember doing it, but have seen the footage of it and hope I am capable of dancing better than that! It is hard to explain, but the emotion grabbed me and it just felt right.”
He remembers upon leaving the winner’s enclosure a punter grabbing him and throwing him in the air with excitement as he had just won the July quartet, which paid a massive amount because although 11/2 shot Big City Life was the second favourite, the second, third and fourth horses were 55/1, 100/1 and 70/1 shots respectively.
Raymond continued, “One of my best recollections of the day was when Patrick Loker and Gill took us through to the Classic Room and showed us Big City Life’s colours displayed on the wall alongside all the other famous silks which have won the race. That’s when I knew it wasn’t a dream and had really happened.”
Raymond inherited the purple and white checks colours from his father.”
The Chairman’s Dinner, a traditional function in those days on the Monday night after the July, was also special and Raymond said he definitely felt the presence of his father that night.
He said, “It was a glamorous, old fashioned occasion and that is the way my Dad used to race, in a formal suit for every meeting. They also had a band come and sing the popular hit song after which Big City Life was named which was special and so were the 400 drinks afterwards, everybody wanted to buy us a drink!”
The popular Durban singer Jae sang the song in a duet with an up-and-coming fifteen-year-old rapper called Trent Kok and delighted the audience with a newly prepared version of Big City Life, with lyrics changed to reflect on the big race.
2. Ashwin Reynolds was the owner of the Harold Crawford and Michelle Rix-trained Kommetdieding, who won the lockdown July in 2020.
Ashwin Reynolds with the horse he named “Kommetdieding”, who caused a “tremor” in the Cape Flats during the lockdown July in 2020..
He watched from home together with his wife Rene and sons Brandon and Aiden and said the neighbours must have believed “a Tsunami” had hit.
The neighbours asked politely the next day whether something had happened as they were unaware of his association with racehorses.
Ashwin saw his horse lying third last early in the race and feared the worst.
He said, “I thought I was going to have to pull my heart out of my ass”.
However, Kommetdieding steadily made up ground from then onward.
He continued, “Before he hit the straight I could see Gavin (Lerena) had made his move already. It was a wise decision to get a lead on the others.”
The ‘tremor’ in the Cape Flats and the clamour in his household then began.
“I didn’t stop shouting and my wife and sons were screaming at the top of their lungs!”
Ashwin was overcome with emotion when Kommetdieding crossed the line and candidly revealed the thoughts that went through his mind, “Everything just came back to me, I saw my late grandfather and my mother-in-law … I just couldn’t anymore so I dropped to the floor and broke down and cried.”
Ashwin’s father passed away when he was eight-years-old and he was brought up by his grandfather Titus Reynolds.
Titus in fact introduced him to horseracing.
He recalled, “He used to allow me to write down the results of the quinpot.”
His interest in the sport continued when he married into the Barnes family, who own Jamestown United football club and also love horseracing.
Ashwin made it one of his goals to own a racehorse by the age of 40.
For a couple of days after the July victory Ashwin found himself sitting quietly for an hour at a time trying to absorb what he had just achieved.
He is the first person of colour to own a July winner and his racing colours will now forever be displayed on the wall of honour in Hollywoodbets Greyville’s Classic Room alongside many of South African history’s most famous racing silks.
He said, “I was saying to myself ‘Do you really know what you did?’ It is breathtaking. I can’t explain it. You can buy a horse for R10 million or R55,000 (Kommetdieding’s prce), it doesn’t matter, because this is what it is all about. I am really chuffed to be part of South African history.”
3. Greg Bortz grew up in Lambert Road off Florida Road, a stone’s throw from Hollywoodbets Greyville racecourse, and became hooked on the July in 1977 when his mother told him and his siblings about the big race and allowed them to all choose a horse. He chose Lightning Shot because he liked the name and the horse not only won it but today has a bar on the course named after him. Greg’s passion for the July grew exponentially year after year from then onward and he describes his many memories of the great event as “a series of electric moments.”
He went into last year’s race without expectation.
He said, “Based on the Pomp and Power experience, I was just grateful to be in the race and had no expectations (for his Brett and James Crawford-trained runner, Oriental Charm). Pomp and Power, was the one time I thought I could win the July and after he ran so poorly I didn’t know if I’d ever get that opportunity again.”
He recalled his thoughts and emotions from the time Oriental Charm led the field into the straight until the finish.
He said, “I think everybody thought he was going to be caught, because if you listen to both commentaries he is the only horse who isn’t really mentioned in the straight.”
Flag Man was Flying at Oriental Charm on his outside and probably headed him, Royal Victory was just behind them and Cousin Casey and See It Again were flying down the inside.
Greg said, “But he’s such a brave horse. And one of the reasons he won that race is he hangs to the right, so the right-handed Hollywoodbets Greyville actually suits him down to the ground. But it was just a question of how good were the others? We kept hearing that Flag Man was flying at home and I expected him to come flying past us. But I certainly knew he (Oriental Charm) would not quit.”
However, the further the race went the more it looked like Oriental Charm could win and Greg describes the pandemonium around him in the closing stages.
He said, “That last 50 metres, I swear I’ll never forget in my entire life. I was in the Durban view room. I was just crying from 50 metres out, screaming and crying at the same time because I could just see it … he was going to win. I was making a spectacle of myself. But a lot of the owners were there, the Flag Man table and the Cousin Casey table were right there and it was actually great because everyone was screaming home their own horses. What an experience!”
Greg decribed the moment of victory, “It was face in the hands stuff, crying. I couldn’t believe it, just couldn’t believe it. And it sounds cliched, but my mind went back to all of the Julys I’ve been to, all the memories, the great winners all of those horses that I have imprinted on my brain.”
An “overwhelmed” Greg Bortz and Gina Goldsmith after victory last year. (Candiese Lenferna Photography).
He added, “In South Africa there’s no other race that has that same impact on you, regardless of it being a handicap versus weight for age, there’s just something about that race and that race course. When you think about Durban, the thing that makes it most iconic from a sports perspective is not the Sharks or any other sporting team, it has always been the Durban July. In Cape Town it has been Western Province or the Stormers, Jo’Burg it was “the mean machine”, and Pretoria it is the Bulls … it is not a horse race in any of those cities.”
Greg had experienced the hope and heartbreak of having a July contender many years previously through a school friend of his who was the son of Martin Sternberg, who owned the like of the top class Spanish Pool. He remembered Mr Sternberg’s joy when he won the 1991 Gold Cup with Icona having never managed to win the July. That illustrated how owning a July winner is invariably an unreachable dream, so it is easy to understand why he said in an intervew after last year’s race that having at one stage dreamed of just owning a racehorse, winning the July had left him “overwhelmed”.
