South African "ANNUAL REPORT 2007/8"

Annual Report 2007-08: South Africa

MIKE DE KOCK finished the 2007-08 season with a real rattle to wipe out Charles Laird's seemingly unassailable lead in the final six days, and a double last Thursday clinched his fourth South African championship.

De Kock, who cut his training teeth with endurance horses when a corporal in the South African army, has made his name on the international stage.

But he has a powerful string of young horses on the home front including the headstrong Forest Path and Rocks Off who both won top two-year-old races last month.

Front House, the first horse to carry the Magnier blue in South Africa, is now on the shortlist for Dubai while star sprinter J J The Jet Plane, winner of three Group 1s in the last three months, joins the trainer's Newmarket team to be prepared for the Hong Kong Sprint and then Dubai.

Laird also lost out by a similar agonisingly narrow margin last year (to Geoff Woodruff) and has now finished runner-up three times on the trot. His original ambition was to become a famous cricketer – he was offered a contract with Somerset when still at school – but his father insisted he opted for a career in racing.

He has never been champion trainer but he and his principal patron, Markus Jooste (the season's leading owner), have become one of the biggest buyers in the Australian yearling market and Laird has talked of setting up a training operation in Melbourne later in the year. Merlene De Lago and Our Giant were two of his best Australian purchases last term.

Justin Snaith, at 33 the youngest of the big names, had his best season and won the most Grade 1s including four with British-bred Dancer's Daughter. At one time he was assistant to the Leicester-born Mike Bass who won three with Pocket Power including that sensational dead-heat with Dancer's Daughter in the Durban July.

Mark Khan, stable jockey to Woodruff, became champion for the fifth time and finished with a huge lead over Basil Marcus's younger brother Anton and the talented PiereStrydom who famously stole the country's richest race, the Gommagomma Challenge, on Eddington.

Bernard Fayd'herbe, unflatteringly described by the local media as a heavyweight jockey, won Grade 1s on Pocket Power, Dancer's Daughter, Geepee S and Consensual, but the rider of the season was undoubtedly Andrew Fortune.

This colourful character recovered from his drug addiction to return in January and, to the delight of punters, rode 100 winners with a strike rate of over 26 per cent, combining a remarkable degree of intuition with real flair. He is going all out to become champion this term.

Jet Master, sire of J J The Jet Plane, Pocket Power and Stratos, was champion sire for the second time and Mick Goss's Summerhill Stud was the top breeder forthe fourth consecutive season.