|
|
News & Events
Chairman's Report - Monday, 8th December 2008
Fellow Members:
Regretfully it has taken 12 months longer to get live harness racing onto the ground in South Africa than was initially anticipated. The new scheduled start date is now 27th March 2009, the King's Cup meeting at Greyville under lights. We anticipate a first race field of 7 runners of international quality, and I am pleased to say that some of our past racing greats are anxious for a driver seat, including Muis Roberts, Garth Puller, Jimmy Anderson and others. The recent arrival of 6 Swedish trotters in the country is a major mile-stone for us. The Gold Circle Transformation Fund and SA Jockeys Academy are now committed participants and owners of trotters in SA, and we are very grateful for the on-going support and foresight of these industry role-players. We have great things to look forward to.
Stakes for our start-up races are still being negotiated and we believe we need to offer a minimum of R30,000 per race to make the sport attractive for future investors. We rely on Gold Circle to assist us in putting pressure onto PGE for an additional day of Swedish simulcasts as well as a 6 - 7% take-out from turnover to fund these stakes.
One of the factors contributing to the delay has been the intransigence and bureaucracy of the livestock registrar in the Department of Agriculture. This office has balked at registration of the standardbred as an approved breed in SA, through no sound reason of which we are aware. We have now co-opted Prof Alan Guthrie of Onderstepoort and the Equine Research Centre to produce a biological impact study on the breed, and hopefully this will produce a favourable result for us. We continue to work closely in this regard with Mr Charl Hunlun of the Stud Book in Bloemfontein.
THETA, through SAJA have provided R150,000 for each of the ensuing 2 years, commencing in 2009, for training of personnel in the harness racing industry. From these funds we are intending to bring out a Swedish trainer, whom I believe to be a 26 year old lady for in-situ skills transfer at the Academy, a senior stipendiary steward of both codes from New Zealand for the training of officials, and to provide 3 local students with working scholarships for away training in Sweden.
2008 has seen continued activity on the part of your association in assisting DSR with rural equine training, the staging of various rural race-meetings including the Dundee July, and importantly in forging a strong relationship with the SA Boerperd breeding community. A satisfactory first event was held in Senekal, and we have now been asked to stage a race in Vryheid on 21st March 2009. This meeting is anticipated will attract an entry of 70 to 90 horses. We envisage ongoing development with the Boerperd breed and this breed as a base for a larger start-up gene pool of harness racing horses. These horses trot and pace naturally and many of them are already trained to harness. We have been offered a standardbred stallion in Australia which if we were able to acquire would usefully upgrade this gene-pool to part-standardbred register standard qualification in one generation. The cost to purchase and land this horse here will be in the region of R300,000. All ideas welcomed.
The upgrade of the Dundee racetrack facility at a cost of R2.2 million has now been completed and is a disappointment for us. Our advice was not heeded in the design, we were omitted from the project implementation team, and sadly Dundee has been left with 13 toilets and an adjoining meeting room. The track itself (or lack thereof) had not one cent spent on it. This of course has discouraged STC and other overseas benefactors from assisting in the project.
Discussions with both ATG and PGE are ongoing for the introduction of the Swedish V75 (Pick 7) bet. We understand that the bandwidth limitation factor has been overcome, and that a high quote from Amtote to build the interface is the only outstanding stalling factor. ATG in Stockholm have indicated their willingness to assist with this payment, and we trust that we can rely on this bet arriving for us in the future, as it will lead to a considerable turnaround to our current financial limitations.
It is also disappointing to report that the very visible and prolific Australian harness racing viewed daily on Tellytrack brings us no financial reward. We have discussed this grievance with both Tabcorp and Phumulela, and will continue to seek some benefit for development of the industry here.
We will miss the support of the current KZN Premier Sibusiso Ndebele when he leaves office in May 2009, and will attempt to establish the support of and a relationship with the incoming officer Zweli Mkhize.
The next WTC is to be held in Oslo in May 2009, 2 weeks prior to the running of Elitloppet in Sweden. I trust that with HRSA being now formally admitted as a member to the ITA, we will again be in a position to send a delegate to this conference.
Solvalla racetrack has extended an invitation to us to stage a "South Africa Day" on the Wednesday prior to Elitloppet. Racing South Africa is helping with an application to DTI, which if forthcoming for us will enable us to stage a very meaningful event there. This could well lead to an investment in South Africa of Swedish owned horses, similar in scale to what has eventuated in the Cape with English domiciled racehorse owners. We are also exploring the concept and a methodology of partnering Swedish owners with HDIs in KZN.
It is important for us to establish a concurrent breeding program. With AI legal and well controlled in our industry it is hoped we can establish a world-class gene pool in just a generation or two. We have doses of frozen semen from Calvin Capar and Foreign Office available to us as well as other offers from both Canada and New Zealand. Hopefully even some underperforming thoroughbred mares can be enticed into this program. Anyone with early designs on standardbred breeding should contact our offices in this regard.
The NSPCA continues to harass us together with the broader racing industry. They remain a mis-guided foe and we should be wary of them going forward. We do however have a strong working relationship with the local horse-care unit, and anticipate partnering with them if they are forced out of the SPCA movement. We can consider ourselves fortunate to be aligned with STC in Sweden, a jurisdiction renowned as world leaders in equine welfare matters. Your board remains committed to the highest of animal welfare standards and practices.
HRSA membership numbers as at 1st December were as follows:
| Hon Life Members | 2 |
| Life Members | 1 |
| Family Members | 2 |
| Ordinary Members | 39 |
| Rural Associate Members | 516 |
Lastly, we wish to record our sadness at the resignation from our board of Patrick Salvage who is emigrating to the USA at year-end. Thank you Patrick for all your valuable support for us in the past, and we wish you and your family a safe, happy and prosperous new domicile in America.
(Presentation to Patrick Salvage.)
Thanks also to the other board members for your continued availability and support, and to all others who have assisted in so many ways, small and large, to move us forward.
Our continued gratitude to Gold Circle should be recorded. Without your ongoing support and assistance our job would have been doubly hard.
To Michel Nairac, the Gold Circle Board, Ulf Hornberg, Clive Murphy and Karel Miedema a very special thanks to you all.
A merry Christmas to you all.
D.A.Latimer
Chairman
|
|
