Gold Circle Pty (Ltd)

Today's Racing :

De Kock continues to raise the bar part 1 of 2

David Thiselton
Many have asked what separates Mike de Kock from the pack and veterinarian Dr John McVeigh summed it up, “I have worked with some of the best trainers in the world and they have two things in common. The first is an innate attention to detail and secondly they have incredible memories. Mike de Kock is a genius, but I could have told you that twenty years ago.” De Kock also constantly refers to the strength of his team, while another point that bares repeating is that when asked recently whether he was still learning in England he replied, “I am still learning here. Anybody who thinks he knows enough about this game shouldn’t be training.” De Kock dominated the South African racing season just passed, smashing the previous record for stake earnings, and will receive the Champion Trainer trophy for the fifth time at the prestigious Equus Awards ceremony on Thursday evening. This year’s Championship was not a close run affair like his fourth title in the 2007/2008 season, in which he clinched it on the last day of the season from Charles Laird. However, De Kock’s most memorable moment of the year came in Dubai when he went agonisingly close to winning the world’s richest race, the $US 10 million Dubai World Cup, with Lizard’s Desire, who went on to finish second in the QE II Cup in Hong Kong before winning the Singapore Airlines Cup. This was an incredible training feat for a horse whose previous best achievement was winning a Grade 3 race in Port Elizabeth. Also in Dubai, De Kock sent out the brilliant Musir five times for five victories, including in the Grade 2 UAE Derby on World Cup night in which he beat his stable companion, the filly Raihana. De Kock spoke of being fed up with travel when deciding to spend the English summer in South Africa rather than at one of his worldwide bases at Newmarket in England. Ever energetic, he spoke of how much he was enjoying being back at home and of a new strategy to buy horses in training rather than relying largely on sales. He was blessed with rare choice in this regard as the three-year-old male crop proved to be one of the best this country has ever seen. De Kock also had fine success with his sales-purchased horses including with dual Grade 1 winner, the Brazilian-bred Here To Win, who dead-heated in the SA Fillies Classic before going on to win the Garden Province. His two-year-old Australian-bred Galileo filly, Mahbooba, won the Grade 1 Golden Slipper over 1 450m at Clairwood and looks to have enormous potential as the best of her will only be seen when she goes middle distances. De Kock’s two-year-old Tiger Ridge colt Kavanagh was unlucky to not win a Grade 1, with two runner-up spots, one on objection. He looks to have a bright future as a miler. De Kock’s first major purchase in training was the four-year-old filly Mother Russia, who was previously with his good friend Joey Ramsden. He guided her to two Grade 1 wins, two Grade 1 runner-up spots, including in the J&B Met, and a further Grade 2 success. It is a mark of De Kock’s champion attitude that he admitted he had made a mistake by bringing Mother Russia back for the Champions Season, saying her well below par effort in the Rising Sun Gold Challenge was “one run too many”. She was duly scratched from the Vodacom Durban July and sent for a holiday. The top three-year-olds that joined De Kock from other yards included Irish Flame, Ancestral Fore, Bold Silvano, Lizarre and Absolute Heretic. Irish Flame and Ancestral Fore joined him at his Randjesfontein base in Johannesburg after the Cape Summer Season and Bold Silvano arrived later on at Summerveld for the Champions Season. De Kock steered them to four Grade 1 victories in total. Irish Flame destroyed a top class SA Derby field in the mud at Turffontein, beating one of the season’s equine heroes, Pierre Jourdan, by almost ten lengths. He then proved he could do the same on fast ground over shorter by winning the Daily News 2000, beating Bold Silvano narrowly.

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