Horse stabbing leads to siege at Dippin Blu

The ghastly act sparked a string of further calamities, such as a grooms’ solidarity strike when the alleged stabber was fired after a disciplinary hearing; threats to other staff; armed protection; failed peace talks, and a tense stalemate.

The timing couldn’t have been worse for South African racing. It’s an unsightly blemish on the face of local racing as the country proudly hosts the Asian Racing Conference in Cape Town this week. This four-day event has drawn delegates from the Asian Racing Federation’s 22 member countries in Australia, Asia, Arabia and Africa and aims to chart a way forward for the game across the hemispheric region.

If nothing else, the goings-on in PE mirror an anguish in the nation’s psyche. People in South Africa are tense in general – what with bad economic portents, power cuts and attacks on property rights – but racing folk are especially jittery. Cuts in prize money, government threats to the admin status quo, industry strikes, top trainers eyeing greener pastures … it adds up to a fraught situation.

Earlier this month, the National Horseracing Authority issued three press releases about fines for trainers for, variously, initiating a physical altercation with an employee, adopting an intimidatory and abusive manner with an official and behaving improperly and discrediting the sport at an AGM.

A stabbed horse is grotesquely symbolic.

Sporting Post newspaper, an independent publication, has been running the story about the attack and unrest in trainer Yvette Bremner’s Dippin Blu stables at Fairview.

Requests for official comment from racing bodies on the matter –including from The Citizen Online – have not yet been answered. The stable is also not responding.

It’s not fake news, though details are sketchy. Sporting Post has published photographs of heavily armed guards deployed at Fairview and claims to have photo evidence of the wounded animal.

At last Friday’s Fairview race meeting, in the aftermath of the stabbing and firing, Bremner saddled a winner. Her runners had to be escorted by armed men from the training complex to the racetrack as striking grooms besieged the yard demanding their sacked colleague be reinstated.

Two of the private security guards, wearing Nitrous Security combat gear, were given the honour of leading in the winner, Duology, with stable jockey Wayne Agrella in the saddle.

Sporting Post later reported that Agrella and other work riders were threatened with physical harm if they worked the stable horses.

Duology’s co-owner Hedley McGrath, one of South African racing’s major patrons, was quoted in Sporting Post: “This is simply not acceptable. Violence towards these beautiful animals. Then being held to ransom when due process is followed. Then the threat of further violence and intimidation. Owners spend a fortune on the game and provide employment opportunities for thousands of people … I personally am seriously reconsidering my position.”

Police are now part of the protection team at Dippin Blu.

McGrath is believed to have engaged striking grooms’ representatives in talks, but negotiations broke down over the ongoing demand that the alleged stabber be reinstated.

The injured horse is Calgary, an unraced son of new stallion Futura bred by Maine Chance Farms.

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