Legends of the Cape Town Met:
Stories Through the Ages
A race that has been run for 164 years is bound to become more than just a list of winners. The Cape Metropolitan Stakes, now known as the Grade 1 World Sports Betting Cape Town Met, has lived through different eras, adapted as the sport has changed, and along the way has gathered a treasure trove of stories that go far beyond what’s written in the record books.
Some of those stories are well known and often retold. Others survive only in memory – in the recollections of people who were there, or in the kind of anecdotes that get passed around racing circles over time. Over the years, a few of these have been quietly collected and held onto. With the 165th renewal of the great race just around the corner, this is a chance to dust them off and revisit some of those moments – stories of Met legends from across the ages.
Above: Stanley Amos, Cookie Amos, Syd Garrett and Freddy Heyman (image: Form Organisation)
The Master of the Met was the legendary jockey turned trainer, Syd Garrett, who won the contest no fewer than 11 times after he’d hung up his boots in 1922. He saddled his first Met winner with Grand Chase in 1926, but it was when he moved his yard from Claremont to a spacious property at Milnerton that the legend truly got under way.
The stables were named Roamer Lodge after a grey horse called Roamer. He was described as a “strange-looking animal’’ and a “circus horse’’, with a “head like a Clydesdale, “a back like a billiard table’’ and splayed front feet. When he first arrived, bought cheaply and sent from England by repatriate Jim Russell, the stable lads fell about laughing at his comical gait and nicknamed him Pikkewyn (penguin). But the jokes turned to cheers when Garrett won the Met in 1928 and again in 1929, and became known as “The Wizard of Roamer Lodge’’. When the training complex was sold for housing development in the 1960s, a block of flats, still standing in Koeberg Road, was named Roamer Lodge.
Garret’s other Met winners were Sir Francis (1935), Moonlit (1936 and 1938), Asbestos II (1937), Royal Chaplain (1941 and 1942), Feltos (1945) and Marion Island (1957), and in 1936 he saddled the first three past the post in the Met, won by Moonlit.
Moonlit gave then 18-year-old jockey, Stanley Amos, his first of six Met wins in 1936. Amos, in 1987, told Thoroughbred News: “I rode plenty of good horses in my career as a jockey. The English horse Ranjit who, as a two-year-old, tested Petition and won seven Top division races here before becoming champion sire twice. The French horse Asbestos, who won the Met and was pipped on the post in the July before being champion sire five times.
“Then there was the English horse Fairthorn (sire of Sea Cottage) who annihilated a very strong Top Division field at Greyville at his only South African start. He was champion sire five times. I rode Black Cap, Jerez, Renounce, Majorca, Sympathetic, King’s Pact, Feltos, Prince Florimund and many others. None of them or any other horse I’ve ever seen would have lived with Moonlit. He was the greatest of them all. He was a big, strong, majestic bay horse – extremely intelligent and full of character. He knew that he was the best. After winning a race he would come home to Roamer Lodge and as he entered the yard all the boys would shout ‘Nkosi!’ With that he would rear up and walk into the yard on his hind legs as if to say ‘Yes, I know I’m the King!’”
Stanley’s brother, Harold “Cookie” Amos, also apprenticed to Syd Garrett, won the 1938 Met on Moonlit, and as a trainer was successful with Bulbul (1959), Jerez (1962) and the famous filly Renounce (1966).
Above: Duncan Alexander (image: supplied)
Duncan Alexander (father of Gary, Dean and Julie), rode Renounce to a win that was a watershed in his career as a jockey.
There was a three-month period towards the end of 1965 in which Duncan failed to ride a single winner. He finished second so many times that his colleagues and the racing public nick-named him, “Alexander The Second”.
In this frustrating time, Duncan said, he was angry with himself and almost gave up, but remembering his own mentor Bert Abercrombie’s advice on having patience, he decided to take a break from racing and went on holiday in Durban. For a few weeks he didn’t open a race card or listen to race result on radio.
Just after New Year’s Day in 1996, a rather depressed Duncan received news that Cookie Amos had been trying to reach him. The holidaying jockey wanted to take another week off, but his wife Marge urged him to phone the Cape trainer. This turned out to be one of the most important calls of his life, because Amos needed a lightweight for Renounce in the Met, and Duncan was his first choice.
Duncan related: “Stanley Amos was his brother’s stable jockey, but by then, Stanley had won a few Mets and the stable was very fond of a colt called Fire Eyes, who became the favourite for the race. “I’d never ridden Renounce before, but I studied some footage of her previous runs. I remember saying to Marge, ‘I can win this!’
“On the big day Mr Amos told me sit patiently on her, off the pace, and I followed his instructions. We found a clear run in the Kenilworth straight and she accelerated smartly to win from Arctic Venture with Java Head back in third.”
Duncan was on a high and the year 1966 brought more good fortunes. He notched his second Summer Handicap for George Azzie on the bottom-weight Caradoc, defeating Doctor John and Peppy. In 1967 he won the prestigious Gold Cup for trainer Bert Sage aboard Cuff Link, followed by his second Met win in 1970, riding trainer Jackie Bell’s Snow Fun.
The 1970s belonged to runners trained in the old Natal, starting with Syd Laird’s Yatagan, who won the Met in 1974. New Zealand-bred Sledgehammer ran out a facile winner in 1975, Gatecrasher took the race in 1976 and Bahadur continued the success in 1977.
Garth Puller, who rode Gatecrasher for Herman Brown (sr), noted: “He was a great individual, he moved beautifully and was probably the best I’d horse I’d ever sat on. Him, and maybe Dean Kannemeyer’s champion Dynasty, a horse I rode in home gallops.’’
Brown said about Gatecrasher: “He was the best horse I trained. He was a ‘cripple’ however, a very unsound horse. He would have been even better if not for that. He spent half of his career resting in his stable and we treated his sore legs with ice.’’
Above: Politician (image: Kuda.co.za)
Rounding out the quintet was one of the most famous of Met winners, the mighty Politician. After striding to a majestic victory in 1978, Syd Laird’s big chestnut returned twelve months later and put up one of the most riveting performances in Met history, one that will long be remembered. Drawn 16 out of 19, he looked a beaten horse 200m out, but unleashed an electric turn of foot and made up two lengths to nab the gallant filly Festive Season on the line.
Jockey Bert Hayden remarked afterwards: “I couldn’t ride him in the end, I had all this horse under me and we had nowhere to go. There was nothing I could do so I just threw the reins at him and let him do what he could. It was just amazing, he took off and fought his way through to the front.”
Alec Laird recalled: “My dad called Politician, ‘The Dutchman’. He grew into a big mother of a horse and was somewhat abrasive, like a jolly Afrikaner who walks into a room, slaps you hard on the back and says, ‘Ja, Boet!’. He would bite you just to say hello, or nudge you nonchalantly out of the way.”
Above: Dean and Peter Kannemeyer (image: Sporting Post)
Peter Kannemeyer won the old J&B Met three times, starting with Sunshine Man in 1980. He said: “Sunshine Man was an athletic, racy young horse by Persian Wonder and I liked him from the moment I saw him. I had only one owner, Ben Braam, at the sale with me. Ben was a butcher by profession and as it happened he liked big, strong, bulky horses so I couldn’t get him to like this one.
“But the wheel that squeaks gets the oil. I nagged him for days to buy Sunshine Man and he wouldn’t give in, but I persisted and just before the horse came into the sales ring he said, ‘ok, buy the bloody horse then, I’ll give it to my wife!’ ”
Peter bought Sunshine Man for R18,000 and, as Mr. Braam requested, the colt was given to his wife Heather. He let loose as a two-year-old, winning the JG Hollis Memorial and at three got within close range of the star of the year, Bold Tropic, in the Richelieu Cape Guineas.
At four years of age, Sunshine Man (8-1) was the lesser fancied of two Kannemeyer runners in the Met. The mare Festive Season was all the rage at 3-1 and Sunshine Man’s stablemate Over The Air started at 5-1. After a ding-dong battle with Over The Air (Garth Puller), jockey Felix Coetzee got Sunshine Man up to win by a neck.
“PK” had to wait 12 years for his next Met winner, Divine Master, in 1992. He recalled: “Divine Master was a good handicapper, a solid top division horse but no true star. But he was fully sound and of all the races I ever planned, this one worked out the best. We never had a day’s problems with him. Any trainer will tell you there are always niggles, always problems when you least expect it, but not with this one.
“Divine Master had run a big race to Olympic Duel in the old Mainstay Challenge in Durban and I fancied him to do well in Cape Town. I thought to myself that Jeff Lloyd would be the right jockey as Divine Master would come in with a light weight. Even before nominations I phoned Jeff and left a message on his answering service. To my surprise he phoned back and said he would consider my offer.
“Several weeks went by and the nominations were done and I didn’t hear a word from Jeff, but one day he was riding at Milnerton and walked past me in the parade ring. He was a few metres away when he stopped in his tracks, walked back and said: ‘Mr Kannemeyer, that horse you wanted me to ride in the Met, it’s okay, I will ride him.’
“So the plan came together bit by bit and Divine Master had an excellent preparation. I grew more confident by the day. We alternated work riders. One morning Garth Puller would ride him and report how much he’d improved from the previous week. A few days later Karl Neisius would get on and say the same. My patrons backed the horse from 20-1 through 14-1 and 10-1, into 8-1. The race unfolded like we expected and he won, beating 5-2 favourite Flaming Rock. Divine Master had two other July winners Spanish Galliard and Illustrador behind him. He wasn’t near as talented, I was simply a case of the right race at precisely the right time.”
Kannemeyer’s 1994 winner was Pas De Quoi, who came to him from another stable. “I got him as an older horse. I think the owners were friendly with Dean, who was my assistant trainer at the time. I didn’t plan his career, he came as an unexpected bonus. He worked very well but when he ran in the Queen’s Plate for us, he was disappointing. “Dean watched the race closely with me and he suggested afterwards that we put blinkers on Pas De Quoi because his Queen’s Plate run wasn’t near a reproduction of his gallops at home. I listened to my son, for once, and we fitted the horse with a pair of blinkers for the Met. Garth Puller had the ride and they were drawn wide and started at 20-1, but those blinkers did the trick. Pas De Quoi came with a flying late run to beat Waitara on the line. The favourite Take A Walk (5-2) finished third.’’
As far as thrills go, Politician’s epic performance was matched in 1999 by another legendary chestnut, the Oppenheimer-bred and raced Horse Chestnut. In contrast to Politician’s heart-stopping second win, he turned the 1999 Met into a procession and streaked away from his rivals to score by eight lengths, a margin which to this day, has yet to be matched or bettered.
Off The Record reported last year on how Horse Chestnut had to be accompanied to Kenilworth by a convoy of security vehicles, following threats to his life received in the week prior the race, by trainer Mike de Kock. As a result of heavy traffic, the float almost arrived late, and Horse Chestnut came close to being scratched.
Above: Pocket Power (image: Bass Racing)
The record of most wins is held by Mike Bass’ amazing Pocket Power, who completed a three-win streak in 2009. He ran out a sparkling winner first time round at age four, matched Politician’s double twelve months later and in 2009, rolled into the history books as the first and only horse in history to capture three consecutive renewals of the Met, when he held Dancer’s Daughter by a hard-fought neck.
Sources:
Gr 1 World Sports Betting Cape Town MET: Ada van der Bent, caperacing.co.za, 2025.
Legends Of The Turf, Volume 1: Charl Pretorius, Createspace, 2011.
Legends Of The Turf, Volume 2: Charl Pretorius, Createspace, 2014.
Racing Immortality: mikebassracing.com, 2017.