Robyn Louw is one of my favorite writers. Had her passion been for info, politics, finance or one other mainstream pursuit she would be a family title. Robyn, then again, is besotted with horses, and though treasured internal the equine neighborhood, is little known outside of it. My admiration goes methodology inspire. And it’s a supply of nice internal most satisfaction that “a Robyn Louw” was as soon as published on BizNews’s very first day – 4 August, 2013. Her contributions since had been sporadic but my incessant nagging has lastly paid off with this contribution which has your complete ingredients required of a pleasant memoir – a onerous working underdog coach; a modestly endowed but very valid owner; a racehorse in the SeaBiscuit mildew; and a horse by a title that would also most piquant advance from SA. The equine focus of the portion, Kommetdieding, is a upright Champion having accomplished the rare double of winning the country’s two biggest horseraces, the Durban July and the Cape Met. Although the closest you may maybe per chance also simply have advance to an equine is a clothes horse, this precise existence legend is easy to pass you. I’ll wager on that. (The pic above of Harold Crawford and Kommetdieding by hamishNIVENPhotography). – Alec Hogg
By Robyn Louw
Mighty has been fabricated from Cape Town’s racing darling, Kommetdieding and his owner, Mr Ashwin Reynolds. And rightly so. On July day 2021, Mr Reynolds became the first particular person of coloration to hang his silks on Greyville’s July corridor of fame. And when a finances horse from the little salvage owned by the Cape Apartments boy done honest correct walloped a high class field sooner than their home town crowd on the 2022 Met, successfully, it was as soon as fairy legend stuff.
On the least, the thought that horses don’t read create, precise coronary heart has no tag and a honest correct horse can change your existence steadily, are tenets buried deep in the foundations of our sport. It is the cause this apparently loopy pursuit is worth any quantity of effort and any quantity of expense to these that fancy it, because it supplies limitless alternative to dream. And it’s a honest correct memoir. A nice one, even. Nonetheless to mediate that’s all there may be to it, would be promoting it very instant certainly.
It’s as a result of the creature the complete thing is built on, because there could be a cause one feels honest correct on a horse. On the starting up, you’re increased off the bottom, so that you salvage an even bigger and broader mediate of your environment. You see things from a total new level of view. They permit you to pass sooner and be stronger than you may maybe per chance also ever be for your contain. Briefly, it’s a little bit like pulling on a Superman swimsuit. On their backs and by their side they have the funds for us glimpses of bigger, better, extra noble versions of ourselves and it’s moderately heady stuff. For most other folks, it creates a sense of duty and a force to red meat up unless you’re noteworthy of occupying that saddle and conserving these reins and in the moments that funding pays off, it feels as if Heaven has reached down and touched us for my share. As I talked about, it’s heady stuff and horse other folks spend their lives obsessively in pursuit of that aim.
In phrases of the Thoroughbred, the blood runs blue and the courage runs deep and it is some distance impossible to spend time of their company without these characteristics rubbing off. If the Thoroughbred in actuality is the noblest of its form, then the high-tail video display is the put apart potentially the most piquant enact industry.
Whereas some other folks quantify ‘potentially the most piquant’ by methodology of rands and cents success, it is some distance the alternative form that I revel in most. Moral other folks, doing what they enact simplest, making their corner of the world an even bigger yelp simply by being who they’re.
We regularly extend telling other folks how considerable they’re on the realization that we have now got the plush of time. We shouldn’t, because we don’t.
Which brings me to Harold Crawford. Harry is one of existence’s gemstones, but if one were in the behavior of judging a book by its duvet, it would be easy to fail to discover him. The shrimp figure with the shock of white hair and heavy Swartland ‘brei’, occupies barn 12, the final in the ‘worn’ block at Milnerton, tucked to this level in the corner that the manure elimination crew as soon as rapidly neglects to rating his baggage. One suspects the plan suits him – he prefers to mind his contain industry anyway.
Harry is a 2d generation horseman. His father rode in the Cape Hunt and Harry himself went to the SA Jockey Academy alongside the likes of Paddy McGivern, Garth Puller, Ticky Carr, Paddy Kruyer, Trevor and the boring Bill Taylor, Vince Curtis, Kit Kinsley and Stuart Lennox. The heaviest apprentice of his year, he most piquant acquired in because he may well inch and would frequently spend Friday nights sleeping in the sauna to salvage all of the design down to the specified 99lbs for the following day’s high-tail assembly. He lost the battle with the size in 1969 and after a various grounding, took out his coach’s license in February 1976.
Harry has by no methodology had in particular vast, indispensable homeowners or a elaborate string, but racing is what he does and the easy pleasure of being spherical horses is what gets him up in the morning. His operation is of the worn college, the put apart feed is measured by discover and combined by hand and each horse, no matter how quirky, receives individual consideration. On account of he’s happiest in the company of his animals, it is not indubitably considerable what time of day you drop by, there may be repeatedly any person (on the complete Harry) to be found on the barn and a pot of espresso to welcome guests.
He has an encyclopaedic memory for the racing info and figures of days long past by, but additionally is aware of exactly what’s occurring in racing at any given time and even as you happen to ever desire the inform memoir unhurried a memoir, Harry is the yelp to traipse. As a retired rider, he cares about the characters which have graced our turf and hosts an annual occasion for retired jockeys, which has turn into a calendar occasion.
Harry is one of existence’s kindest and most generous other folks, who despite limited methodology, has by no methodology stinted in phrases of helping others – and having been spherical as long as he has, there are few he hasn’t helped some methodology, form or create, despite it frequently growing difficulties for himself.
Yet even alongside with his shrimp barn, moderately more cost effective string and modest success, horses and homeowners had been taken out from under him, or on the first signal of having teased some doable out of an inexpensive steal, customers have abandoned him for better, bigger-title yards.
In the old few years on my own, he has had his horses put apart free, been violently attacked in his yard, threatened with eviction from his stables, had a considerable coronary heart assault in 2017, followed by a stroke two years later, which triggered daughter Michelle to affix him as his coaching partner in August 2019.
Nonetheless despite everything existence throws at him, Harry simply dusts himself off and gets inspire to his stables and the universe falls in fancy with a stubborn coronary heart. So it was as soon as long boring honest correct karma to gaze him rewarded with the wonderfully named Kommetdieding, one other of Harry’s shrewd finds off a shrimp farm sale for a shrimp tag label for a shrimp owner. When the horse acquired his debut in the Klawervlei sales high-tail in June 2020, other folks were overjoyed for Harry, but didn’t purchase it too seriously. When Kommet acquired a Growth Plate, then a Handicap and followed it up with a solid victory in the 2021 Baby-kisser Stakes, it acquired very serious certainly, ensuing moderately predictably in a string of other folks offering moderately nice sums of cash to purchase the horse off his fingers. So again, it warmed the coronary heart when Mr Reynolds flew in the face of favorite racing info and chose to stick by his horse – and coach – to gaze the put apart the walk may well lead and thank goodness for that, as we are your complete richer for it.
The boring, nice racing scribe Les Carlyon noticed, “Racehorse homeowners are lots of. Most of them have an engineer’s sense of precision, a mind that gravitates in direction of the goal and the rational. They take care of to bring show and cause to complex issues. Horse other folks are seldom like that. We may well simply furthermore be rational and pragmatic too, but we have a tendency to horrid these things unhurried issues of the coronary heart.”
I mediate it is some distance one of many things that makes us so gloriously piquant. Then again, it made it onerous to be a racing fan throughout the Phumelela technology, which tended to present consideration to vast numbers, bottom traces and shareholder dividends, in desire to safeguarding the sport we are all so serious about. Whereas that may maybe maybe had been stunning, admirable even, if we were discussing ‘same old’ industry policy, this is racing. Abandon common sense all ye who enter right here.
With Phumelela going into industry rescue in Could per chance also 2020, South African racing is present process seismic changes. A new operator, 4 Racing, backed by the Oppenheimer family, formally took over the reins on 1 December 2021. Though the activity sooner than them is an unenviable one, the new chapter guarantees a return to worn college values, the guardianship of the sport’s core rules and an appreciation for the fact that common sense is a shrimp tag to pay for magic.
To me, Kommet’s memoir is a sorely wished reminder that dreams enact advance upright, that onerous work pays off and honest correct things enact restful happen to honest correct other folks. Easiest of all, it came at a time when racing, if not the country, wished it most. Moral the form of heroes one wants for a new originate.
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