Ahead of the Dubai World Cup, The National has talked to trainers and race officials about their fondest memories of the event, beginning with South Africa trainer Mike de Kock.
My best Dubai World Cup meeting has to be my first one in 2003 – it is like your first love, I suppose, you never forget.
I was not used to racing abroad and, at that level, so to have Ipi Tombe win the Dubai Duty Free and Victory Moon the UAE Derby on the same night just blew me away.
It is difficult to describe that feeling. Now when I have a winner there is more a sense of relief, whereas then it was simply “wow” and a real feeling of surprise that I had done it.
Ipi Tombe was the reason I came to race in Dubai. I had come to Dubai before that when I had heard that they were trying to get the Carnival going.
I had wanted to leave South Africa and tried to get a trainer’s job here, but I was knocked back. After that experience, I vowed that I would come back one day with horses.
Ipi Tombe was owned by a syndicate at the time and Henk Leyenaar, who was one of the major shareholders, gave me full backing to go. Team Valor International wanted to buy in and we were not so keen, but the sale of a share to them was on condition we came to Dubai.
Three years before that I had raced a legendary horse in America called Horse Chestnut, who won a Group 3 at Gulfstream Park, but this was international racing at the highest level.
Every trainer knows when he has a good horse and, at the time, I thought if there was one horse that could compete on the world stage then she was it – if there was one better, I sure wanted to see it.
I brought Victory Moon along as well, not really knowing at all whether he was good enough. He was a big, strong horse and won first time up at Jebel Ali, so I thought we’d give the Derby a go.
It was a strong field in the Duty Free, but Ipi Tombe won well and there was a huge sense of vindication for everybody involved as she was now a world champion.
International competition drives sport at the top level. If Ernie Els had only played golf on the Sunshine Tour in South Africa, he would never have been recognised. He had to get out of South Africa to play in the majors to be thought of as a great golfer.
Those wins turned South African racing upside down in terms of worldwide recognition of our bloodstock – it showed what we could do. Back then we could export freely when nobody knew about us, but we are now worse off than we have ever been in the whole history of exporting thoroughbred horses.
There were no quarantine issues then and, after 40 days in quarantine in Cape Town, the horses flew straight to Dubai for six days in quarantine here – that was it.
We had a good World Cup night the following year with Lundy’s Liability in the UAE Derby and Right Approach in the Dubai Duty Free but, after that, African horse sickness broke out in South Africa and we were suspended from trading with the European Union and then Dubai. The EU opened up a few years later, but Dubai still has not.
Now we have to go through this long quarantine procedure. I get a lot of satisfaction when every one of my horses wins in Dubai because I know what it has taken to get these horses here.
It is all very well me accepting the trophy, but my whole team have worked extremely hard and some are on Mauritius for three months away from their families.
On Mauritius, we are talking about horses worth millions of dollars training on a beach-sand track that is four furlongs round, through a forest that is conditioned by a makeshift harrow we welded together that is held down by boulders pulled along by a bread delivery van. You couldn’t make it up.
Of course nobody wants African horse sickness to leave South Africa, but it is not a contagious disease and is vector-driven, like malaria.
It would be fantastic to get clarification on this issue as I don’t think there is a scientific solution any more. It is now about politics.
All of this is a great motivator for me to succeed in Dubai, and Shea Shea last season was another highlight. To see the joy on the face of owner Brian Joffe and to be able to share in that is what we are all in racing for.
Trainer Mike de Kock was talking to Geoffrey Riddle of The National
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