Dreaming on a Jet Plane
THE horse with the unusual name, bought for peanuts and with poor legs, has captured the racing hearts of a nation - and South Africa is holding its breath that the champion can deliver in the Golden Jubilee Stakes tomorrow week.
J J The Jet Plane has cut a swathe through his country's Grade 1 sprints,emphasised his class in Dubai as well as his fitness at Windsor, and South Africa's champion trainer believes this is a better horse than last year's Nunthorpe runner-up National Colour.
Yet nobody wanted him when he was sent to the National Two-Year-Old Sale in Johannesburg in August 2006.
His breeding was good - by twice champion sire Jet Master out of a Northern Guest mare - but his appearance was so bad that breeder Patricia Devine had been warned that he would never see a racecourse.
When the bidding stuck at SAR70,000 (£5,300), she was happy to let him go.
The buyer was Henry du Preez, owner of a shop-fitting business and a Jet Master fan.
He had tried, and failed, to buy one in the past and he had been prepared to go to R100,000 for this one - "I just had a gut feeling about him, but I hadn't looked at his legs."
Du Preez had already asked hotel owner Thea Boyens if she would come in with him and he rang another friend, Coeni Strydom, to ask if he would do the same. The property developer agreed provided the horse was trained by Lucky Houdalakis.
Michael Nicholas Houdalakis, known as Lucky since he was a boy ("it's to do with religion but it's a long story"), had just turned to training after riding more than 600 winners.
Not a man to mince words, he replied to the proud owner's "Lucky, I've just bought you a horse," with an off-putting "Who are you?"
He was equally blunt when he saw the horse for the first time the following morning. "I was horrified," he recalls. "It was the ugliest horse I had ever seen in my life." But he needed the business, and he agreed to take a quarter share as part of the arrangement.
It was more than a year later before J J The Jet Plane made the racecourse, but by this time he was showing plenty at home. He started odds-on for a 6f maiden on sand at The Vaal and won by six lengths. Next time out he won a Grade 3 and Houdalakis decided to train him for the Gauteng Guineas.
When the horse finished down the field after being beaten in two preliminaries, it looked as if he had been wildly over-ambitious.
Houdalakis decided to drop him back to 6f for a Grade 2 and Piere Strydom, five times champion and one of the shrewdest in the business, asked for the ride. He remembered the early promise, and a gallop convinced him that this was a sprinter.
J J The Jet Plane won five sprints in a row, including three Grade 1s, in brilliant style and the owners were offered US$1.2 million. They decided on an international campaign instead, and turned to Mike de Kock. When a South African horse is good enough to race overseas, owners tend to opt for either De Kock or Jay Peg's trainer Herman Brown because few other local trainers feel they have the set-up for a second base outside the country.
But J J The Jet Plane's initial campaign met with an early setback when the Hong Kong authorities refused him an import permit - he had not spent the 60 required days in Europe - and another when he flopped on his first start in Dubai.
"Most things happen for the best in life," says De Kock, revealing a hint of his positive outlook, "and it was probably a blessing in disguise that he didn't act on the dirt because it meant I didn't have to hammer him for World Cup night.
Instead we eased up on him and he seemed to blossom." The horse did, however, demonstrate to the world just what had got the South African crowds so excited by scorching home in the Al Quoz Sprint, and at the beginning of this month he did thesame in a Windsor Listed race.
Kevin Shea, who rode J J in his two Dubai races and will be back on board at Ascot, watched the Windsor race on television in South Africa.
"I thought it was very impressive," he says. "I'm sure the Ascot track will suit him and the distance is no problem."
Strydomwas also an interested viewer on television. "That day at Windsor he was more relaxed than I'd ever seen him. He is a very sensiblehorse and I think Royal Ascot will suit him.
"He can lead but he has got such natural speed, and he can turn it onso quickly, that you can also come from behind on him.
"I would rate him among the best sprinters we've had in South Africa. I've ridden faster but they weren't able to keep going at that pace."
The Windsor win was impressive enough for the horse to be propelled to the head of the Golden Jubilee market.
"I didn't expect that," says De Kock, "and he probably won't be favourite on the day. But really the betting is wide open if the favourite is 4-1 or 5-1.
"It's a very competitive field with some good international form in it, plus some top local horses like King's Apostle."
Asked whether J J The Jet Plane is as good as National Colour and Mythical Flight, who was also exceptional in South African sprints, De Kock pauses to collect his thoughts.
"It's hard to make those sort of comparisons without running the horses against each other, but my gut feel is that he is better."
All four owners are flying over two days before the race - "It's a great honour for us to be there," says Du Preez - and they expect their horse to win or go very close. "I don't know these international horses but I've got faith in my boy," says Houdalakis.
Racing usually comes a long way down the list in South African spectator-sport appeal, but there is so much interest in J J that the Teletrack racing channel is flying over a production crew to do a feature on the horse.
"There's tremendous interest," says presenter Nico Kritsiotis. "He only cost SAR70,000 and look where he is today.
Topic Author
