There are three big races in South Africa – the Durban July, the Summer Cup and the J&B Met.  The J&B Met is going to be run this year on Saturday 1 February and basically the 20 best horses in the country, over the 2000 metre distance will take part in the race.  There is a lot of competition to get in, because there are probably about 3 500 to 4 000 horses in training in South Africa at any one time.  

I have been very lucky last year to have a horse run third in the July Handicap, namely Do You Remember, and then took a very narrow second place in the Summer Cup with Master Sabina.  Master Sabina ran wide, because the jockey could not get him to the rail the whole race and had to cover far more distance than the eventual winner, Yorker, despite losing to him very narrowly.  I am hoping that both Master Sabina and Do You Remember make the field for the J&B Met, but their first runs in Cape Town went very badly due to a virus in the Milnerton Stables.  As a result, there is a chance that one of them may be left out of the race – but I hope not.  It would be an incredible honour to have my first run ever in the J&B Met – something I never had before, and if I can actually have 2 out of 20 horses in the field, that would be an amazing achievement, particularly given that these are not 2 horses that I bought – I have bred them myself from mares who I owned and achieved quite a lot of success with – Sabina Park and Festive Occasion.  Master Sabina’s name is pretty easy to work out – his father is Jet Master and his mother is Sabina Park and my friends have worked out that Do You Remember’s name is a tribute to her mother, Festive Occasion, who we won’t forget.