David Thiselton
See It Again’s WSB Cape Town Met victory highlighted how good the male crop he hailed from was as well as the astonishing lack of interest in Twice Over as a stallion.
Durban-based owner Nick Jonsson, after achieving the extraordinary feat of winning four successive Mets with four different horses, thanked many people after the race and among them was Bernard Kantor, who was responsible for bringing Twice Over to South Africa.
Twice Over has had three multiple Gr 1-winning horses and Jonsson has owned every one of them, which is another feather in the cap for surely the country’s pound-for-pound most successful owner.
The three horses did not just win ordinary Gr 1s either.
Do It Again is one of only six horses in history to win the July twice and he won four Gr 1s in all, including the L’Ormarins King’s Plate and the Hollywoodbets Gold Challenge, which are perennially the two highest rated races in the country, both being weight for age miles. Do It Again went close to winning both the July and the Met, a feat that only seven horses in history have achieved.
Double Superlative’s two Gr 1s were the Cape Guineas and the Met. The former is known as the country’s greatest stallion producing event and Double Superlative is duly standing at stud in the KZN Midlands. His other win was in the WSB Met, Cape Town’s biggest race and one of two Gr 1 Weight For Age races over 2000m in the country. The WSB Met is considered one of the country’s three major races, along with the Hollywoodbets Durban July and Betway Summer Cup,.
See It Again won both of the country’s 2000m classic events as a three-year-old, The Cape Derby at Hollywoodbets Kenilworth and the Daily News 2000. That same season he failed by 0,25 lengths to carry 56,5kg to victory in the July, which would have been a record weight for a three-year-old to carry to victory in the country’s most celebrated horseracing event.
Justin Snaith trained both Do It Again and Double Superlative, while Michael Roberts was See It Again’s trainer for all of his races bar his last two at which time he was moved to the Snaith yard. It was thus Snaith who was his conditioner for his WSB Met win.
See It Again is out of Visionaire mare Supreme Vision, who is a half-sister to Do It Again.
Twice Over’s only other Gr 1 winner was Sand And Sea, who won the Gold Medallion as a two-year-old, but he disappointed thereafter and ended up only having 14 career runs.
Twice Over, who is by Observatory, was a twice winner of the Gr 1 WFA Champion Stakes over 2000m and he also won the Gr 1 Coral Eclipse and Gr 1 Juddmonte International, all of them prestigious WFA races over a distance in all three instances of roundabout 2000m.
Juddmonte did not want Twice Over for stud purposes only due to their overcrowded stallion ranks at the time, which included the legendary Frankel. South Africa thus benefited and Twice Over stood at Klawervlei Stud.
Do It Again was one of Twice Over’s first crop and fetched R1.1 million at the National Yearling Sale, purchased by John Freeman.
However, Twice Over never became fashionable and See It Again was purchased for a bargain R125,000 at the Cape Yearling Premier Sale, while Double Superlative, who is out of Jet Master mare Come Fly With Me, fetched R375,000 at the Cape Premier Yearling Sale.
An indication of his unfashionable status is that Twice Over covered only nine mares in 2025, having covered only 27 in 2024, although he is now 21 years old.
He did not have a single horse at last year’s National Yearling Sale, but he does have eight at the Race Coast Sales Premier Yearling Sale next month and three of them are on the prestigious Day One of the Sale.
See It Again was from the same male crop as the much celebrated Charles Dickens and his record against him was actually 2-2. He beat him in a major shock in their first meeting in the Cape Derby, romping home by 1,25 lengths at 50/1 odds with the 1/5 shot Charles Dickens in second place.
Charles Dickens reversed placings in the Gr 2 WSB Guineas, beating second-placed See It Again by two lengths. See It Again later won the Gr 2 Green Point Stakes at odds of 11/2 with 5/10 shot Charles Dickens beaten 2,15 lengths into third.
However, Charles Dickens (Trippi) then had his finest hour in the L’Ormarins King’s Plate, beating runner up See It Again by 2,75 lengths.
Another stalwart from that male crop is Dave The King (Global View), a three-time Gr 1 winner who was the Equus Horse Of The Year in the 2023/2024 season and he has won a Gr 2 this season.
Cousin Casey (Vercingetorix) is another Gr 1-winning champion from the crop and he is now standing at stud. Gimme A Prince (Gimmethegreenlight) is a three-time Gr 1 winner from the crop and was an Equus Champion Sprinter.
Royal Victory (Pathfork) is a twice Gr 1 winner from the crop.
Gladatorian and Atticus Finch are Gr 1 winners from the crop who are still prominent.
In fact a lot of this crop are still performing at good class as six-year-olds and they include the like of I Am Giant, Cafe Culture, Mercantour, Mover And Shaker, Zatara Magic, Laguna Verde, Quantum Theory, Royal Aussie and others.
