Racing as fate would have it

Racing is full of chance, luck, fate, serendipity and curious happenstance - as was evident at the Durban July last weekend.

Take how Andre Macdonald came to own the July winner, Igugu. The retired Johannesburg electrical contractor has owned dozens of racehorses in 30 years and has had 400-plus wins. But he hankered for another "champion", not to mention a July trophy.

So when the 2009 Ready to Run Sale offered him a thoroughbred pedigree of his dreams, in the form of two Australian-bred fillies by red-hot sire Galileo, he went large.

On looks, he fancied the first of the two fillies into the auction ring, and he bid all the way up to R2-million for her. Then he got a grip on himself and financial reality, dropped out of the bidding and let his rival, the trainer Mike de Kock, take the pretty young thing for R2.1-million.

Deflated, but not down, Andre went after the second Galileo girl - and got her for R1-million.

Now a bar may not sound like a bargain for a plain, brown horse, but the way things turned out it was a snip. For Andre's filly was Igugu.

Convinced he'd bought a star, he offered her to globe-trotting De Kock to train, even though he'd been beaten to his first choice by the same man and despite all other Macdonald horses being stabled elsewhere.

"I knew we'd eventually be going overseas with her, so I went straight to the best guy for the job," he told me, many months ago.

When Igugu dazzled on the racecourse, De Kock's mega-wealthy international patron Sheik Mohammed bin Khalifa al Maktoum offered to buy her. Andre refused to give up his July dream and negotiated to keep 50% of the three-year-old, though his minority partner, Summerhill Stud, did sell up. The value of this deal is a secret, but you can bet Andre got rather more than his purchase price.

The July was Igugu's eighth win from 10 starts and sent her stake earnings to more than R4-million from a scant 10 months of racing.

Andre's first choice, the R2.1-million filly, seems to be a slower developer, having run just three times, with a second place her best effort thus far.

Another angle to the July result concerned second-placed Pierre Jourdan, who was bred by Summerhill and also sold on a Ready to Run.

In contrast to Igugu and Co, this fellow was spurned by the experts and was knocked down for a paltry R60000 - to Johannesburg's Emelio Baisero and Gary Alexander, who have since pocketed prize money in excess of R4.5-million from his big-hearted efforts.

Of course, the saddest irony was the well-documented death of the 2009 July champion.

Big City Life breathed his last on the very patch of turf, just beyond the July winning post, that bore witness to his greatest moment 24 months earlier.

TURFFONTEIN TOMORROW: PA - 1,3 x 1,4 x 3 x 3,4,11 x 1 x 1,5 x 4,6,10 (R72)