am on the champ @ 10/1 ew, hope he runs a cracker.
JJ The Jet Plane takes on the world
Dec 10, 2010 1:37 AM | By Mike Moon
Mike Moon: There'll be a moerse party if JJ The Jet Plane wins the big race in Hong Kong this weekend.
'Nowhere will Sunday's race be followed more avidly than in the Republic Hotel in Elsburg, Germiston'
A victory for the South African horse in the HK$12-million Cathay Pacific Hong Kong Sprint is likely to be celebrated with much of the emotional intensity of this country's early international racing successes a decade and more ago.
We've got used to master trainer Mike de Kock winning all over the world and garnering us unimagined respect in the game. But this latest overseas challenge is being undertaken by a small, "homespun" team from the south of Joburg, with an enormously popular horse, so local fans will be bellowing like billyo.
Nowhere will Sunday's race be followed more avidly than in the Republic Hotel in Elsburg, Germiston, run by one of JJ The Jet Plane's co-owners, flame-haired Thea Boyens, and where her partners Hennie du Preez, Coenie Strydom and Lucky Houdalakis are wont to socialise.
The owners themselves will be at glittering Sha Tin racecourse in Hong Kong, but I suspect hearts will be with mates back in their modest pub.
The team bought the yearling JJ The Jet Plane in 2007 for a measly R70000, a bargain for a son of stallion Jet Master - mainly because he was a less-than-impressive specimen, small with iffy-looking pins. Houdalakis, a former jockey starting out as a trainer, went to work on the ugly duckling. And a really fast swan emerged.
After most of South Africa's major sprint titles were annexed with ease, overseas purses became the obvious target. Moving to the care of De Kock, JJ The Jet Plane won in Dubai and England and ran third in the prestigious July Cup at Newmarket.
But another trainer switch and a heavy British schedule eventually robbed the horse of his spark and the owners brought him home for a rest and an easier life in Lucky's yard down at the Vaal.
But, after that rest and a return to racing, the easy life part was forgotten.
In Hong Kong this week, Lucky explained: "No horse had ever come back from an overseas campaign and won a Group 1 race in SA, so he started at 7/1 when he first raced in the Golden Horse Sprint in May. He blew them away in that race, and then won the Mercury Sprint six weeks later, and we had to sit down and work out what to do with him."
For this international raid, the team was adamant that Lucky stay in charge - and that JJ's regular local pilot Piere Strydom be on board.
Indeed, Sha Tin will be crawling with South Africans.
Also in the star-studded sprint is South African-bred Cerise Cherry, a sometime Turffontein regular now owned in Hong Kong. And race favourite Rocket Man, from Singapore, is trained by SA's Pat Shaw and ridden by compatriot Felix Coetzee. But it's "JJ!" we'll be yelling - not only in Elsburg.
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