Here's to a great champion who deserves more fans

He doesn’t get a lot of publicity. When he wins, again and again, it often doesn’t make the papers. As an athlete, he ranks right up there with the best in the world. He’s earned over R7,7-million, but chances are that many of you can’t recall his name.

“Let’s hope,” Charl Pretorius wrote recently, “there will come a time again in our country when horses like this will be revered by the nation, when the mainstream media will lend the same attention to racing like they do to the piss-boring non-spectacle of cricket.”

Pocket Power is one of the best racehorses South Africa has ever seen. (Pity about the name, but still.) He’s tough, he’s consistent, and he delivers every time. Over the weekend, he won his third J&B Met, to add to his three Queen’s Plates and last year’s Durban July deadheat with Dancer’s Daughter. There’s a possibility he’ll race overseas next season, if he’s still at his best.

Sure, Pocket Power doesn’t have the charisma of the great Horse Chestnut — I’ll never forget how I saw old men weeping openly after he won the third leg of the South African Triple Crown, the South African Derby, by ten lengths at Turffontein — and his winning margins have never been spectacular. But as a South African-bred son of the superb Jet Master — a grandson of Northern Dancer, perhaps the most influential sire of the 20th century — he surely represents a home-grown success story. (His full sister, incidentally, finished third in the Met. It’s a family of high achievers.)

His historic win did get covered in the Sunday Times. Presumably there was a clip on e.tv news. But for the most part, his achievements have gone unmentioned. Having followed racing since I was nine-years-old, I remember a time when all the newspapers carried substantial horseracing sections. No longer. The sport has simply disappeared from the public eye, to be resurrected twice a year for the Durban July and the Met.

Why isn’t there a Pocket Power fan club? What about a Pocket Power blog? The horse racing industry in South Africa has missed a trick or two. On the same day that Pocket Power won his third Met, an otherwise unremarkable three-year-old colt was watched by thousands of Americans as he made his racing debut.

Nicanor is famous because he is a full brother to Barbaro, the ill-fated winner of the 2006 Kentucky Derby. His older brother gained a legion of fans by winning America’s most famous horse race by six and a half lengths; they watched in horror as he shattered one of his hind legs during the running of the Preakness Stakes two weeks later. Barbaro’s owners made the unusual decision not to have him destroyed, and for nine months, racing fans and horse lovers followed his agonising progress, hoping and praying that he would recover. It was on January 29 2007, two years and two days before Nicanor appeared on the track for the first time, that Barbaro finally succumbed to laminitis and had to be put down.

His fans have been following Nicanor’s progress for a year now, thanks to this blog on bloodhorse.com. There’ll be much online commiseration over the fact that the colt only managed to finish tenth of twelve, injuring himself slightly. Nicanor’s fans will keep following him, hoping that he does better next time.

The South African industry could learn from this. For horseracing in South Africa to survive and prosper, it needs to appeal not just to the grizzled old-timers who congregate in dark TAB outlets (or indeed the French punters who bet €1-million on the Met). In the US, women represent the fastest-growing fan base for horse racing. These are not traditional punters. They follow racing because they love horses, and they’re fascinated by the personalities and the stories behind it. US horseracing websites have a substantial female following — this one is completely dominated by women — and the success of blogs like the one tracking Barbaro’s brothers suggest that there is an appetite for this kind of thing.

With so many gambling and entertainment options, horseracing battles to compete for attention. Yet the industry boasts considerable romance, intrigue and human/equine interest. There are so many opportunities to get a new generation of fans interested, particularly people — like me — who aren’t especially interested in gambling. There’s such a huge opportunity: if only somebody would do something to make the most of it.