Jack Milner
Can Kelly Mitchley put an end to the dominance of Alan Greeff and Gavin Smith in the Eastern
Cape trainers’ ranks?
That is the question being posed by a number of racing fans at the start of the 2024/25 season.
While the 28-year-old still has quite a way to go to knock them off their pedestal she certainly
put a dent in it last season.
Mitchley came away with 78 winners, almost doubling her tally of 40 a season earlier and also
finished in 16 th spot on the national trainers’ list. Those wins still falls short of the 139 and 134
victories from Greeff and Smith respectively, although they had substantially more runners in
action.
But Mitchley has them in her sights and closing that gap is her mission for the new season. “I
want to try and beat them this season,” she said on Monday, “but to do that we need the
support of loyal owners.
“We have around 90 horses at the moment, but we will need some new blood. We haven’t got
top horses like Alan and Gavin, so we don’t win feature races, although we have placed in some
of them.”
Mitchley was born and bred in Port Elizabeth, now Gqeberha, and has always been around
horses. It did not take long for her to fall into the world of horseracing. “I had a friend who
worked at the stables, so I used to go along.”
She has had some excellent input from some of the best trainers in the country and started out
working for Smith. “Then I got offered the chance to work for Corne Spies and after that I was
offered a job with Justin Snaith. And finally I ran the yard for Johan Janse van Vuuren in the
Eastern Cape.”
Then, in 2022, Mitchley took out her own licence, and has performed remarkably well in a short
time.
Her first goal for this season is to produce 100 winners but to do that she needs the horses.
Many of the horses that arrive in Gqeberha are filtered through from bigger yards in other
provinces. These are predominantly runners battling to make the grade and need to run in
lesser company. The other advantage is there is a Polytrack at Fairview which does not exist on
the Highveld or the Western Cape and some horses get a new lease on life on that surface.
“You’ve got to have a turnaround of horses if you want to keep the winners ticking over,” says
Mitchley. “You also have to have quality over quantity to be successful. Even with five runners
in a race there is no guarantee that one of them will win.
“The other key to success is to pick the right race for each horse and what we also do well is
give attention to all our horses.
“To compete we probably need 20 babies in a season. At the moment we have 12 for the new
season currently.”
Although there are not many jockeys based in the province and most travel from other centres,
Mitchley does rely on two jockeys in particular, Sandile Khathi and Julius Mphanya, to ride work
every morning to provide feedback.
Khathi rides quite a few of their runners as does 4kg claiming apprentice Nirvan Nastili (each
had a winner for the stable at Fairview on Tuesday) but in general S’manga Khumalo is their
first-choice jockey.
But, as the saying goes, nothing succeeds like success, and people are starting to take notice of
Mitchley’s rise up the table.
“We do get quite a few calls to take horses and we’ve also had some support from people like
Suzette and Basie Viljoen, Sean Tarry and Laurence Wernars but it would also be great to get
the support of one of the big stud farms.
“Our biggest owner right now is Brenden Fegen and we have had a really good run with
Brenden James who won his first three races since coming to us.”
She is also starting to get some inquiries from jockeys. “We did use Richard Fourie last season
when he wasn’t riding for Alan (Greeff) and he had a strike rate of almost 40% for us. I’ve also
had calls from other jockeys like Aldo Domeyer and Gareth Wright who want to ride for us.
“But for the moment, we’re sticking with S’manga. He’s off for a bit but he will be back on 16
August.”
She has already gotten off to a good start this season, collecting four wins from the two meetings
so far, one short of Greeff, but one more than Smith.
Hopefully, that hot run continues.