True to his roots

David Morgan

It's a big week in Cape Town and Justin Snaith, South Africa's champion trainer, sounds as though he's relishing what lies ahead. Following Cape Racing Sales' Summer Sale on Thursday, it's on to Saturday for the Cape Town Met meeting: 12 races, three of them Group 1 features, three Group 3s and a couple of Listed races among them.

He'll have 23 runners that day to keep him busy - including a pair of major chances in the Group 1s - and with his all-action, hands-on drive, one suspects that's the way he likes it.

"It's one of the three biggest events on our calendar for the entire season in South Africa, and especially as it's my home town, so for me it's a big thing," he said.

Snaith was born in Muizenberg overlooking Cape Town's stunning False Bay, where his father Chris trained horses on the beach, and spent much of his childhood close by in Marina da Gama. He and his brother Jonathan took over the running of the family stable in 2000 from their father, who remained part of the operation, with Justin's name on the trainer's license and Jonathan steering the Snaith Racing business. Snaith's many successes include three wins in the family's hometown feature, the Cape Town Met.

Met Day is nowadays a Hong Kong Jockey Club World Pool event, which brings added global exposure as well as lucrative returns to Cape Racing, but the positive vibe from Snaith - one can feel the local pride - is born of more than just that one, albeit sizable, fillip to his home scene. It's that things generally are better in South African racing than they have been in a long while.

If that wasn't the case, perhaps Snaith would not even be on-track at Kenilworth to saddle his five in the big one, or the classy filly Double Grand Slam in the G1 Majorca Stakes. After all, his triumphs, including multiple national titles, Horse of the Year awards with Do It Again and Oh Susanna, and more than 60 Group 1 wins, have brought suitors.

He has worked overseas before and rode David Hayes' 1994 G1 Melbourne Cup winner Jeune in trackwork as a young man in Australia. Since then he has gotten job offers in the Middle East and has long been on the Hong Kong Jockey Club radar, but unlike other South African champion trainers, David Ferraris and Tony Millard, and a host of jockeys including Douglas Whyte, he has never made the move to the city.

"I have been in contact with the Hong Kong Jockey Club a few times," Snaith says. "When there's a job opportunity they do contact me, which I'm very thankful for.

"The problem is, when I would have gone there wasn't an opening and now I've got a young family here in South Africa, so it's made it hard for me to make a move. Also, I can tell you that there are very few cities in the world at the moment that are as beautiful as Cape Town.

"But I'm always honored when the Hong Kong Jockey Club contacts me and if ever in my life I feel that I can move ," he leaves that thought hanging for half a second then continues. "It's a big commitment to move your whole family, and at the moment I am pretty focused on trying to help our racing here get to a level that is competitive internationally."

Horse racing in South Africa has enjoyed an upturn in fortunes in recent times, and there are positive signs in the country at large, too. South Africa has significant wealth inequality and saw out 2024 with a high unemployment rate of about 33 percent, but there are bright spots as well: a new government seems to have brought a new economic plan and some hope; the economy has at least recovered to pre-Covid pandemic levels; the electricity supply, subject to blackouts since 2007, has stabilized; and inflation dropped from above 5 percent in early 2024 to a four-year low of 2.8 percent in November as fuel and food prices eased a little.

On the racing front, Cape Racing has benefitted from the involvement of betting giant Hollywoodbets, which stepped in and effectively saved Snaith's home track, Kenilworth Racecourse, buying it outright in a deal worth R330 million (HK$140.31 million) in July 2022.

Prize money has improved, and not only in Cape Racing: the recent G1 King's Plate, sponsored by Cape wine brand L'Ormarins, was worth R3 million compared to R2 million in 2024, and the G1 Cape Town Met is worth a record R5 million this time around; this follows the G1 Summer Cup at Turffontein, Johannesburg, sponsored by another South African betting giant, Betway, which became the country's richest race with a prize pool of R6 million.

Increased prize money is one thing, but added to that is a feeling that the industry is on something of an even keel when it comes to leadership and direction, even if South African racing still has some catching up to do after years of struggle.

Notable owners and breeders with huge wealth and international business know-how have stepped up to help move racing forward, like Mary Slack, the daughter of the late De Beers chairman Harry Oppenheimer and owner of Wilgerbosdrift Stud; Gaynor Rupert of Drakenstein Stud, wife of luxury goods billionaire Johann Rupert, who owns L'Ormarins and whose Richemont is the parent company to Cartier, Van Cleef and Arpels, and Buccelatti; and then there's Owen Heffer of Hollywoodbets and its spin-off Hollywood Racing syndicate.

"That's the reason why I stayed," Snaith says. "There was a point where our racing was being run by incompetent people and that's when I was in contact with Hong Kong and very close to leaving. One of my clients has come to the party and has helped to refund and reinvent our racing, and going forward I think you'll see that South African racing will pop up everywhere and there'll be more positive feedback coming in.

"But we've lost 15 years, I'd say. I know Australian racing, and we lost 15 years to Australian racing and now it feels like 30 years. So, I think we've really got a lot to catch up on and it'll be difficult but everyone's committed and we're looking forward to what will hopefully be some exciting times.

"I think there's a lot of positives coming out of South Africa at the moment which certainly helps; our country is in a good space at the moment, which benefits our racing."

Another benefit is the change in March 2024 that lifted a 13-year ban on South African horses entering the European Union over fears of African Horse Sickness. That had reduced investment, stymied the bloodstock industry and brought a halt to South African horses heading offshore to contest major races. The days of Ipi Tombe and J J The Jet Plane seem far distant.

But the efforts of Isivunguvungu and Beach Bomb at the 2024 Breeders' Cup at Del Mar, California showed that South African horses could travel and compete again at the top, yet that pair still had to go through a full two months of quarantine after arriving in the United States. And that was after 14 days at the Kenilworth quarantine center.

"Our South African horses ran at the Breeders' Cup raceday and they're not some of the best horses we've exported. I wouldn't even put them in the top 10 of the horses exported out of South Africa, yet I thought they ran incredible races," Snaith says. "That has given South Africa a lot of confidence going forward. Hence there are some horses being bought now that are a step up on that, for the next Breeders' Cup."

Snaith would like to compete internationally but he is not yet jumping to put his horses on planes, and Dubai, 20 years ago a lucrative patch for South African trainers such as Mike de Kock, is still not easy to get to, Snaith says.

But if this new period of World Pool and Hollywoodbets et al can take South African racing to the world, then perhaps Snaith - proudly South African and proudly Cape Town - will get his chance to show the world what he can do, without ever leaving home.