Published today by American journalist Ray Paulick:
SOUTH AFRICA: NATION OF GOOD HOPE
By Ray Paulick
It’s a long, long way from Lexington, Ky., to Cape Town, Africa’s southern-most city, where I was invited to attend a two-day international breeders conference and share my thoughts on Thoroughbred industry trends and challenges with members of South Africa’s Cape Breeders Club.
Was it worth taking the time to go halfway ‘round the world, experiencing a frightening aborted landing during a violent electrical storm at an intermediate stop in Dakar, getting a mental wakeup call from jet lag each night at 3 a.m., and suffering with a persistent head cold for most of stay?
Absolutely!
To be invited to a far-off nation and to meet and learn from others with a passion for Thoroughbred racing and breeding was an opportunity I couldn’t pass up. During one of my semi-sleepless nights it occurred to me that I’ve now had the good fortune to experience racing in 13 countries in Africa, Asia, Australia, Europe and North and South America.
The conference itself taught me that challenges South Africa faces are in most ways similar to those we have in the United States. For the Thoroughbred breeder, where job No. 1 is to get that mare in foal and thereby avoiding numerous pitfalls, England’s Jonathan Pycock (pictured, left, with Ray Paulick) provided sound advice during several outstanding presentations drawing on his years of experience from around the Thoroughbred world. Included among the other talks were Grant Williamson of Kentucky’s Vinery who gave a comprehensive outline of how a top-class stallion operation is managed during the breeding season; veterinarian Alasdair Cameron provided radiograph insights from an auction buyer’s perspective; Roy Gottschalk and Sybrand van den Berg discussed angular limb deformities, and Irish entrepreneur Robbie Byrne demonstrated his company’s Equisoft horse management software program. And in a compelling personal life story, Andrew Fortune spoke from the heart about how he managed to rise from the depths of a horrible drug addiction to become South Africa’s champion jockey. Yesterday I wrote about Cambridge University controversial professor emeritus W.R. “Twink” Allen’s talk promoting artificial insemination and embryo transfer.
The similarities in the Thoroughbred industry between South Africa and the U.S. are unmistakable. South Africa is drowning in simulcast products sent into the home, killing its on-track business. The takeout is too high, making it hard for punters to keep their heads above water. Bookmakers can offer better deals than the tote because it pays very little for the privilege of being in the bet-taking business. On-track attendance has fallen precipitously, turning racecourses into virtual ghost towns. The public company that owns the majority of the tracks seems to have little interest in building the sport. There are philosophical differences about marketing and how to deal with competing slot machine emporiums and casinos. Owners and breeders often have contentious differences over veterinary issues at auctions, where ethics questions arise as well. Sound familiar? It goes on and on.
Another characteristic of South African racing is the post-apartheid view that it remains an elitist white man’s game in a country that has successfully integrated and changed in so many other ways.
A visit to Cape Town’s Kenilworth racecourse for a rather non-descript day of racing demonstrated the impact of these problems. There couldn’t have been more than several hundred people throughout the facility. Some sections of the track, including a large dining room, hadn’t been occupied for weeks or months. Of those fans in attendance, many seemed more interested in the televised rugby games than the live racing.
Yet with so many things going wrong in South African racing, there are more than a few streaks of sunlight brightening the horizon. The value of South African horses, as measured by a big run-up in auction yearling averages until the past year, suggests there is good demand for the breeders’ product. South African horses have proven to be competitive around the world, including in the U.S., where Barry Irwin’s Team Valor has showcased them prominently in recent years.
No one exudes the passion and enthusiasm for the South African Thoroughbred more than publisher and breeding expert Charles Faull (pictured, left), who I had the opportunity to meet for the first time during my visit. Faull, a man with boundless energy and creativity, brought South African breeding into the modern era 30 years ago with the publication of the country’s first Stallion Register. It was described at the time by Bill Oppenheim in Racing Update as the best stallion book in the world, and Faull only made it better in subsequent editions. He boasts, in his Cape Town offices, what surely must be the most thorough library of racing and breeding information found in South Africa, and he seems to have read and absorbed just about everything the library holds.
His determination to discover what combination of bloodlines best produces a top-class racehorse is mind-boggling, matched only by his persistence to create new products that share his passion for the game. His new vision is for a Wikipedia type of web site (Thoropedia he calls it) that would have detailed pedigree and racing information on every registered Thoroughbred in history. Did I say he was ambitious?
What I liked about Faull is his insistence that racing break down its walls of elitism, become more democratic in its leadership, treat the punters or horseplayers like valued customers, increase transparency in all that the sport does, provide more comprehensive statistical information at no cost to fans, and promote and market the best that the game offers.
In some ways, Faull reflects a general optimism that I felt from many South Africans who have seen and experienced so much change in their lifetimes in the pre- and post-apartheid eras. The country itself is blessed by a rare physical beauty; the combination of the vast mountains and the two oceans that meet at the rocky southern tip of South Africa near Cape Point is as spectacular as the arid region to the north, where elephants, lions and rhino still roam freely.
Its people, of all colors, are a precious resource, too, despite many of them having lived through the terrible poverty of the townships that remain a serious challenge in all regions of the country. The country is making serious strides in the right direction, however.
South Africa was isolated from the world in the late stages of apartheid, and in some ways it remains so today. But the spirit of optimism that seems to permeate modern-day South Africa has left this weary traveler with nothing but fond memories and good feelings for the future of this country and its people.
Many thanks to the Cape Breeders Club for their generous hospitality during my stay, and especially thanks to club chair Liesl King for the kind invitation to come to Cape Town and to Adrian Todd of Worldwide Agri Exchange for his travel advice and assistance during my stay.
Tags: adrian todd, alasdair cameron, andrew fortune, Cape Breeders Club, charles faull, equisoft, grant williamson, Horse Racing, jonathan pycock, kenilworth, liesl king, Paulick Report, Ray Paulick, robbie byrne, roy gottschalk, south african racing, sybrand van den berg, twink allen, w.r. allen
This entry was posted on Tuesday, September 1st, 2009 at 6:26 am and is filed under Industry Conferences, International Racing. You can follow any responses to this entry through the RSS 2.0 feed. You can skip to the end and leave a response. Pinging is currently not allowed.
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