Gimme A Nother cheers amid Bok roars
· Citizen
Somewhere in the sea of green and gold at the weekend’s rugby Test in Baltimore was a small patch of another hue. The colour blotch was due to a posse of Springbok fans wearing purple Breeders’ Cup caps and watching horse racing on their cellphones.
The cheer that went up when their horse won wasn’t quite a match for the roar attending Kurt-Lee Arendse’s sensational try, but it did add yet more joy to a triumphant day for South Africa.
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The racing folk in the stands at the M&T Bank Stadium in Baltimore were part of a festive, patriotic Test match party that included Steve and Jessica Jell of Mauritzfontein Stud in Kimberly, Northern Cape, and Newstead Stables in the US of A.
The victorious horse was Gimme A Nother, bred by SA’s champion breeders Mauritzfontein & Wilgersbosdrift – a stud operation made up of farms belonging to Jessica Jell and her mother Mary Slack, scions of SA’s Oppenheimer racing dynasty.
Saturday’s race was the Group 1 EP Taylor Stakes at Woodbine in Toronto, Canada – a Win and You’re In Breeders’ Cup meeting qualifier. It was the mare’s first Grade 1 win in North America and the 11th win in a sensational 15-race career thus far.
SA remembers Gimme A Nother for her seven-race unbeaten run as a youngster on these shores – before she was exported from trainer Mike de Kock’s barn at Randjesfontein to more larney accommodation at H Graham Motion’s premises in Maryland.
‘She’s been remarkable’
Motion told the story to Bloodhorse in the US: “She came to me undefeated. That was a lot of pressure, but she’s been remarkable. Hoped to get her to the Breeders’ Cup last year and it didn’t quite work out. Ever since we gave her a little break over the winter, she’s been unbeatable.
“(Jockey John Velazquez) just had a beautiful trip and you have so much confidence when Johnny is riding. He said even today that she was a better horse than she was last time – she kind of took him there. Very impressive.”
This is high praise from a man who’s already saddled 3,000 winners in the US – including a Kentucky Derby and Dubai World Cup champ.
Motion’s Herringswell Stables website gushes: “We’ll remember this as ‘The Summer of Gimme a Nother (SAF)’. Today at Woodbine, she added another jewel to her already glittering crown… This, friends, is a racehorse. This is pure class.”
The crowd at Keeneland Racecourse in Kentucky for the Breeders’ Cup in late October might not be quite as rowdy and partisan as the Bok mob in Baltimore, but South Africans watching that action will surely get plenty of guts and bravery from their international gladiator in the familiar Oppenheimer yellow and black silks.