ZILLZAAL and little known apprentice Denis Schwarz pulled off the biggest Gauteng Summer Cup shock in more than 15 years when making all the running at 28/1 in the celebrated Grade 1 handicap at Turffontein last Saturday.
The Silvano four-year-old (out of a Giant’s Causeway mare) was the least fancied of Sean Tarry’s four runners but Schwarz had worked out his all-the-way plans in advance and secured the champion trainer’s approval. When Anton Marcus, the best jockey in South Africa, came at him on the favourite Soqrat in the final furlong, Schwarz calmly asked for more and got sufficient response to hold on by four-tenths of a length. “A big thanks to Sean Tarry for allowing me to go forward because there wasn’t much pace on,” he related afterwards.
Tarry, winning the race for the third consecutive year, added: “The apprentice has ridden an absolutely outstanding race – and not only because he won. The only way to beat the De Kock horses was to make them carry their weight.”
Mike De Kock, who had hoped to win the race for a 10th time, accounted for a quarter of the 20-strong field and, Soqrat apart, the one that did best was fourth-placed Queen Supreme. This Exceed And Excel four-year-old was bred in Co Waterford by Thomas Hassett and was sold to Form Bloodstock’s Jehan Malherbe for €130,000 at the 2017 Goffs Orby Sale.
Punters
Despite being six months wrong, she had won four of her five previous starts. She was seized on by the Turffontein punters and was backed from 13/1 to 9/2 second favourite. She finished little more than a length and a half behind the winner.
Cascapedia, by High Chaparral and bred by Timmy Hyde, was another of the De Kock runners but for once she failed to fire and finished last. Rider Craig Zackey reported that there was something amiss and the course vet reported the mare in post-race distress.
JOHANNESBURG’S biggest race meeting of the year was marred by a protest by stable staff and, more particularly, by the way it was dealt with.
The grooms, as they are called in South Africa, started their demonstration – calling for better pay – well before the first race and the stipes weighed up whether it was safe for the meeting to go ahead.
The police arrived and, when they began firing rubber bullets, the protestors dispersed rapidly. Racing started two hours late.
It was in the middle of last year that relations between trainers and staff in some Johannesburg stables reached breaking point and, although it was thought that a satisfactory settlement had been reached, clearly the resentment lives on.
Although neither the trainers nor the racecourse had anything to do with the decision to fire rubber bullets, it was surely a gross over-reaction – and one which has horrified racing people round the world.
De Kock awaits lifting of import restrictions
MIKE De Kock plans to send Soqrat and triple Group 1 winner Hawwaam to Cape Town to run in the Queen’s Plate next month and in the Sun Met on February 1st. Then they will be flown to Britain and on to Australia if the European Union relaxes its direct import restrictions in time.
De Kock is optimistic that it will but progress on this long-awaited outcome is still proving desperately slow. There has first to be an audit of the South African equine disease measures by EU staff and, while EU officials have now said that this will happen, they have yet to set a date.
Leadon
Des Leadon has been recruited by the South African government-backed SA Equine Health & Protocols (of which De Kock is a founder director) to advise on the measures to be adopted to satisfy the EU and he has conducted two trial audits.
Lifting the export barriers – at the moment everything has to go via a 90-day quarantine in Mauritius – would do wonders for South Africa’s bloodstock industry which would be a cost-attractive source of imports for Australia and Hong Kong. It would also be able to benefit from shuttle stallions.