One of the top race meetings in took place n SA on Saturday. There were nine racxes and the main race was the Kings Plate dxating from the middle 1800's. It is in fact togetter with the Johananesburg S ummer Cup, The Durban July and the Cape Metropolitan the mst imprtant race meetings in SA.
There is one hig extraordinary about the races on Saturday, All nine races were sponsored by and all costs attached to the meeting was covered by Gaynor Rupert - the wife of Jiohan Rupert. For that family the millions spend on the sponsorship were small change.
Abot ten years ago Johan Rupert's sister started the Drakestein Stud farm near Franshoek and Rupert said his wife was compmaing that her life is boring - so he advised her to go into partnership with her sister and they bought some top class stud stallions from the USA, UK and Australia to improve the breeding situation. One of the horses hey brought back for stud purposes was Horse Chestnut - remember that one. However, the hore died a few years ago and was not as successful in breeding as it was in racing.
Most of the horses winning on Saturday were bred by the Drakenstein stud farm. Gaynor and her sister-in-law decided to keep some of he horses they beed and there are at least six coaches hroughout SA coaching horses for them.
Iironically the Kings Plate was won by a horse owned by Gaynor Rupert. A classic case that money goes to money But that is not all, the second were also bred and owned by the Ruperts. It was a top advertsiment for the Rupert stad farm and it is likely that they will be on the lookout worldwide for at least two more stallions after that episode.
Just a question - do you know of any race meeting where all the races on the day were all sponsored by the same person or isntitution?