when did we start racing over 1500 meters

Just curious

Seven and a half furlongs Sly

Well not today :lol:

there were a few big owners with runners in the races that were destroyed by Phumelela bungling. What do they have to Say?

Brian Burnard
st john gray
Peter white
chris Gerber

Did Robbie hill come up with the 1 horse? if so he must be pissed!!!

I can recall in the 1990s on J&B Met day they had a race over 1500m. In one of the years Midnight Run won who was a strong front runner for Chris Snaith.

Sylvester wrote: there were a few big owners with runners in the races that were destroyed by Phumelela bungling. What do they have to Say?

Brian Burnard
st john gray
Peter white
chris Gerber

Did Robbie hill come up with the 1 horse? if so he must be pissed!!!

forget the big guys - it's things like this that force the guy with 25% in a horse to say - "f- that - this is not a fun hobby - better I buy a Harley than waste my time with crap"
I hear the few owners at the Vaal today were angry as hell!!

If i remember correctly we had regular 1500m races in Cape Town
Milnerton springs to mind

naresh wrote: I can recall in the 1990s on J&B Met day they had a race over 1500m. In one of the years Midnight Run won who was a strong front runner for Chris Snaith.

If I remember he was a 9 time winner - I think he's the horse that got lose on track one morning and fell into the irrigation dam - he almost drowned and I think he was pulled out using a tractor(I think a jock jumped in and held his head up until help arrived) - Chris Snaith loved him

Mr Hawaii - it happened on a race day. The horses had been offloaded and were en route to the saddling enclosure. Midnight Run got fractious and got a fright and started backing up, eventually backing into the low wall surrounding the reservoir and then fell over backwards through the roof and into the water.

It's a little difficult to describe, but the reservoir was sunk into the ground and then had a low perimeter wall and a roof. After he fell in, Midnight Run then swam off below the roof into the darkness.

My dad (then assistant General Manager at Milnerton) was the guy who jumped in and swam after the horse.

Some well meaning person tied a rope around my dad's waist (I assume with the thought that they'd be able to drag him back to safety if need be), but it turned out to be something of a liability.

My dad dove in and remembers there being a shaft of light from the hole in the roof, but the rest of it being very dark. He could hear Midnight Run snorting as he was swimming around and managed to locate him by following the breathing noise. There were a series of pillars holding the roof up and by swimming from pillar to pillar, my dad managed to make his way to more or less the middle of the reservoir. Hanging onto one of the pillars, he heard the horse swimming right past him and managed to grab onto his headcollar.

Midnight Run was pretty exhausted by this point and as soon as he felt the assistance, he tried to rest himself, stopped kicking and they nearly both went under.

Anyway, my dad then let go the head collar so that Midnight Run would start kicking again and then they'd make for the next pillar where my dad would again hold his head up as best he could to allow Midnight Run a little rest. Unfortunately the flipping rope got tangled in Midnight Run's legs and with his flailing they nearly both went down a few times. Anyway, fortunately it all worked out OK. Slowly they progressed from pillar to pillar and eventually back to the wall where the rescue party was waiting.

At that time, there were tapes that the starting staff used to contain the horses behind the stalls in case one got loose. So by the time my dad and the horse got to the wall, the rescue party had torn off some of the roofing sheets to make a bigger access and they had got the tapes, and the late Peter Howes and Clinton Binda (who was assistant to Mark Watters at the time) jumped in and managed to manoeuvre the tapes under the horse's belly to form a sling.

From there they got a front end loader, hooked the ends of the straps to it and then hoisted the horse out. Both the horse and my dad got quite scraped up and my dad is still quite proud of the scars he has!

My dad was presented with a framed commemorative photograph of himself with Midnight Run after their ordeal along with a copy of the article that was written in the local paper. We still have it.

Midnight Run went on to be a very good horse (often being the working companion and pace setter for Flaming Rock) and eventually became quite a useful show-jumper with Adrienne Misdorp.

My dad fished out a few of the newspaper articles published at the time which he thought you might like to see.

Brilliant and thanks for sharing Zsuzsanna.

As always superb Zsus

Just a quick PS. The J.W.S. Langerman is a WFA 2yo race run over 1500m.

It was a cracking race and used to be run around the bend at Milnerton. The winners often went on to future greatness.

It's not quite the same at Kenilworth.