• Home
• About Us
  • Racingweb Trainers’ Directory
  • National racing statistics
    • Trainer’s Championship
    • Jockey’s Championship
    • Leading owners
    • Top earning horses
    • Leading Stallions
    • Breeder’s Championship
  • Racingweb Breeders’ Directory
• Racingweb Tote
• RW Newsletter
• Features
• Racingweb Briefs
• Columnists
  • Paul Lafferty
  • Louis Goosen
  • Sarah Whitelaw
  • Alec Hogg
  • Hilton Tarrant
• Podcast
• Live Talk

Columnists, Features, Paul Lafferty NEWS

‘Laff’ at the Summerhill gallops!

Published by charl on November 10, 2009

HERE is a new fun article by Paul Lafferty, for which popular owner Marsh Shirtliff has kindly agreed to take up sponsorship with his company, Motorite. ‘Mr Paul’, in the aftermath of the Emperors Ready To Run promotion, takes a look back at Breezing Day, Summerhill Stud, 16 October.

This year I decided to take a ride up to Summerhill to watch the ‘Ready to run’ gallops. I had asked James ‘Goofman’ to come with me but he declined as he had recently fallen head over heels with a new girl and today he was hoping to finally get her heels over his head. Many a good tune played on an old fiddle, he asserted, as he absentmindedly flossed what remains of his edentate cavity with the wrapping from an old Cohiba cigar.

I had tried to coerce Phil Georgiou into coming up but unfortunately he had to attend a twentieth year reunion of the Durban ‘Iron Man ‘ competition. He was the ‘Iron Man exactly twenty years ago. He did fifteen shirts and three pairs of trousers in thirty minutes.

I had to cut a deal with my assistant, Byron, so that we each had a turn to drive. I would drive up only if I promised to remain sober for the first leg of the journey, the drive up. We set off in my chariot with the faint but misplaced hope that some wanton harridan would be hitching a ride on the National Highway. Byron brought along a bottle of chloroform. And I had thrown a halter in the boot.

The ascent to the Midlands went smoothly enough until we reached the off ramp at the Mooi River Toll. I handed over a crisp twenty rand note and waited for my change. The distracted and clearly bored operator waited patiently for the extra money without even a murmur. It costs more than twenty rand these days to get into the slumbering, shadow of a town. The traffic officer on duty in Mooi River must be ‘Vlad the Impaler’ as no vehicle travelled faster than thirty kilometers an hour, some overly burdened like Clyde Basel’s belt buckle.

Byron understands the basics of assistant training.

Upon arriving, we had to take a dirt road detour that had more jumps than Teasers. Mickey was greeting all and sundry with his usual ‘bonhomie’ as his team handed out see-through bags of goodies (but sans the customary condoms). Byron and I went over to introduce ourselves to the most important person present, the Barman. There are a lot of the usual suspects in attendance as I recognize one of my mates in the corner. He has two beautiful children, which is not bad out of five. His wife is so unattractive that he takes her everywhere so that he never has to kiss her goodbye.

One of the more popular trainers is not there and I am told that he could not make the event as he had to collect his prize for coming third in the wife-carrying contest. He had spent two days in intensive care with a fractured pelvis, a ruptured spleen and the worst case of shin splints seen since Cyril Naidoo gave up training many years ago.

There are dark ominous clouds coming in from the South and none too soon the show gets under way. The articulate Mickey Goss welcomes everyone and regales us with stories of previous races. The normally silver tongued champion breeder comes out with a classic, ‘The first two inaugural runnings,’ which Craig Peters compounds by saying the first ‘inaugural running’. Clearly, they both flunked English Grammar.

Summerhill’s youth policy is better than that of Gavin Howes, and his two year olds are certainly more forward than John Smit and the other horses on display. Craig Peters and Graeme Hawkins are doing a good job of calling the horses through their paces. A friend of mine had bought a horse at these breeze-up sales before and the only way you could see it at the races was to bring a pair of binoculars. I have convinced him to have another go and see if his luck changes. My friend is doing well in business these days and is keen to get a horse soon that can actually run, or at least before he goes belly-up trying. He is doing so well in business that his boss told him he could name his salary - he has decided to call his ‘Colin’.

Laff starts the game of ‘Laugh ’til we all fall down!’

Goofman phones me to see how things are proceeding. His date is on her way and I can hear that his voice is trembling in anticipation. He says that he has not been this close to a woman since he climbed the Statue of Liberty almost a decade ago at the close of the last century on New Year’s Eve. Obviously he was on LSD at the time. The excitement is palpable and Goofman says that he feels hotter than Clyde Basel’s ‘French Fries’ chef.

Marlin Aronstam comes over for a ‘chinwag’ as I accidentally cut off the bumbling Goofman in mid-sentence. Marlin seems to have lost a little weight. He says that he hasn’t eaten for days. He only eats at night. (I must try that). He is brandishing a set of stats from previous years, and it makes interesting reading. Graeme seems to have selected the best and his choices seem to stick out. I have said on many occasions that I would not like to be on the panel as it is extremely difficult to find the best horses on the gallops. All of the horses work a steady pace until they are a furlong out and then they are driven along at top speed like the Apaches’ mustangs at Custer’s last stand. All are striding out and running very quickly so it is quite difficult to have a clear-cut preference. Most horses if they are held up and then driven a long for a short stretch will seem to be getting along quickly.

Lot 6 comes galloping by!

I did speak to Mickey about it over a glass of Chardonnay and asked him to consider the option of them coming through under a hold. Mickey immediately digressed to talk about the famous hill facing the gallops. It is believed that many great leaders gathered on that very same hill during one of the Boer wars. Winston Churchill (I believe he was the last white man to be named Winston) was a war correspondent at the time and he met with, inter alia, Mahatma Gandhi, cousin of ‘Mahatma Coat’, and many of the obscure Afrikaans Generals of the time. General Hercules DeLa Rey, whom the skaaps have written a song about, was not there as he had sadly been killed by a ricochet from one of ‘Anglo’ riflemen. Mickey and Cheryl have elected to build a house on the very same spot that so many innocents met their maker. A strange choice, I do admit, but with a great view of the numerous heads of cattle seen grazing on its sunny slopes so blissfully unaware of the history and the hoopla surrounding the expensive bloodstock on display.

Once the last batch of horses has gone through their paces, the panel assembles on the platform to give their assessments and words of wisdom. There are three commentators on the stage with a combined service of over a hundred years. A notable absentee is the incomparable Clyde Basel. He is called Moon River - wider than a mile. It is an excellent panel and wonderful to get some of the greats of our industry together to discuss the horses. It is a demanding, burdensome task and full credit to them.

Graeme Hawkins has a good strike rate.

I join Andrew Harrison and Charl Pretorius at the table closest to the bar. Charl orders two ‘Nick Van Tonder’s’ (double Vodka and Coke, we think) and the game is on. Dean Kannemeyer, who pulled the short straw, had to become first emergency acceptor for the panel. He normally pulls well. He has spent the last few weeks in Greece and is darker than Robbie Hill during a moonless night, and looks more appealing than John Travolta in Saturday Night Fever.

Herbert Mulholland also joins us for a laugh. He is supposed to be over at another table but says that delegating is overrated; he will let somebody else do it. Charl orders two more Nick Van Tonder’s and gazes fondly at the food arrangement. He believes that there is room for all God’s creatures, right next to the mashed potatoes.

My mobile rings and it is the irrepressible Goofman on the line. He tells me that he is suffering from a bout of priaprism and assures me that he can still have the opposite sex fawning over him. He omits to add that when he was young he had so many blind dates that they gave him a guide dog. He tells me that the girl who visited has pushed his merit rating back up into the nineties. I cannot believe that this is the same Goofman who once said that he was not his parents favourite child even though he was the only one. He also said that he has bought two horses from this sale and the one was harder to tip than an ugly waitress and the other was extremely talented and once in a race was harder to pass than gallstones. The only thing more fixed in racing is Goofmans ageing BMW.

A good time, guaranteed at Summerhill!

I have to cut the rapacious lothario off prematurely as he was about to tell me that his girlfriend has spent more time on her back than Didier Drogba. Another ‘Nick Van Tonder’ has appeared in front of me, courtesy of the ‘Father of Journalism’, Charl Pretorius. Louis Goosen has noticed a break in the weather and he and his partner are going to climb aboard a huge motor cycle and ride back to Gauteng. There is more chance of me playing the lead role in the new Martin Luther King movie, than riding pillion in wet overcast weather with anybody.

When the rain was pelting down all the cattle on the hill turned their backsides towards the wind and rain and continued to graze on the hallowed hills. Once again it has been a wonderful success and great to touch base with some of my racing friends from around the country. The ‘Nick Van Tonder’s’ have started to kick in so I have to venture out to one of the state of the art porta loo’s. On the way out I hear one of the grooms listening animatedly to a premier league soccer match. Even married men score more than Amazulu.

Photos from summerhill.co.za (Leigh Willson).

PREVIOUS PAUL LAFFERTY COLUMN ON RACINGWEB:

A RACE DAY WITH ‘GOOFMAN’