Gold Circle Pty (Ltd)

Today's Racing :

Beat gets louder

Andrew Harrison
Celebrated Australian author Les Carlyon, he of Gallipoli fame, penned a memorable preface to his book True Grit in which he distilled the essence of racing into one rhetorical question. What makes racing interesting? The answer, he opinioned, was horses and people. “These are the only things in racing worth writing about. The rest is dross”.
Port Elizabeth, or PE as the Friendly City is more commonly referred to in racing circles, has along with Kimberley been dismissed as a racing backwater by the more affluent racing jurisdictions. But those who have raced there return with only praise for a close-knit community who welcome strangers and who enjoy every moment of their racing. So when one of their own hits the national headlines, the entire city basks in the reflected glory.
Hear The Drums, one short of equaling the all-time South African record for the most number of victories, is the undisputed darling of PE racing. Although bred by the country’s leading stud, the Mooi River bastion of Summerhill, the son of Gold Press is of modest origins and fetched only R42 000 as a yearling when the hammer fell to the bid of owner Peter Fabricius. Six years down the line and 31 wins later, Hear The Drums has garnered just shy of R1,7 million in stake earnings and is on the verge of racing immortality.
Buried are the 30 victories of the “ Iron Horse”, the mighty Joe Joseph-trained Sentinel. On Friday, Hear The Drums carted the country’s popular champion jockey Andrew Fortune to a facile victory over the Arlington five to emulate Riza, who those with memories that stretch back to the early 1950’s, will tell you was a gelding who seldom won by more than he needed but defied the handicapper on 31 occasions.
Screech Owl, foaled in 1956, later eclipsed Riza’s record by one. Hear The Drums is two away from that record and the manner of his victory on Friday suggests that the seven-year-old is far from done.
Trainer Des “ Choppies” McLachlan, feigned nonchalance in the post race interview but the smoking stub of a cigarette gave it all away as the television camera followed his progress down the grandstand stairs on his way to the winner’s enclosure. It told a story of a trainer immensely proud of his horse, and relieved that his charge had not let his legion of fans down.
It is a sad indictment of the mindset of many South African racing people that achievements of this magnitude cannot be appreciated for what they are. Hear The Drums has a host of detractors simply because he has not been able to assert his authority on opposition outside of his home territory. But they will never be able to expunge his record from the history books and just as a score of 300 not out against Zimbabwe counts in the records of Test cricket, so will the feat of Hear The Drums stand proud in the annuals of South African racing. The gelding has never felt better according to Fortune so 33 career victories are well within his compass and even blurred by the sands of time, it is a record that will stand no matter what. May the beat go on.

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