Herman Brown one of the last old-school trainers
The passing of trainer Herman Brown Snr, who died at the weekend at the age of 93, brings the curtain down on the “old school” of trainers who dominated the sport from 1970 to 2000.
One might describe it as a golden era with household names in the sport such as Terrance Millard, Syd Laird, David Payne, Jean Heming and Brown. Of this quintet only Payne, who trains in Australia, is still alive.
Brown had many star performers, including Gatecrasher, Foveros, Bold Monarch, Rock Star, Turncoat and Sun Monarch.
This writer had been racing editor of the Rand Daily Mail for a year when Brown saddled Gatecrasher for the 1975 Durban July. In those days, racing reporters were sent to Durban early to get July stories and, while trainers were not as approachable then as they are now, I managed to get a word with Brown and asked him if he thought I should tip Gatecrasher for the race.
“You can tip him with confidence and have your maximum bet on him,” came the reply.
Gatecrasher was sensationally disqualified from the race after causing interference to Ormond Ferraris’s runner, Distinctly. Brown took it on the chin saying “racing rules had to be adhered to” but inwardly he will have been gutted to have his horse demoted to third. In his book Thoroughly — compiled with Charl Pretorius — Ferraris says if Distinctly had made his run in the centre of the course “he would have won” by four to six lengths.
BEST HORSE
“We awaited Distinctly in the third box, in a disjointed blur of bitter disappointment and being almost numb. I could hardly express my anger at what had happened. It struck me that jockey Garth Puller didn’t use his whip in his left hand to prevent Gatecrasher from hanging so badly,” Ferraris wrote.
Brown is on record as saying Gatecrasher was the best horse he trained, but Foveros was right behind him, boasting wins in the J&B Met, Queen’s Plate, Hawaii Stakes and Germiston November Handicap. He was a champion sire eight times.
Bloodstock agent Andy Williams gets the credit for the importation of Foveros as he negotiated a deal in the UK that resulted in Jim Redman and Brian Moore buying the horse for £120,000.
Brown said in an interview that he considered Michael Roberts and Basil Marcus as the two best jockeys who rode for him. Both benefited from his tuition, with Oudtshoorn-born Roberts going on to win 11 SA jockey titles as well as capturing the Jockeys Championship in the UK in 1992.
Marcus went on to land seven jockey titles in Hong Kong and he was hugely popular with racing fans in the former British colony.
Perhaps one of Brown’s greatest attributes was his ability to communicate with people from different walks of life, from the average Joe Punter to a megarich owner such as pools magnate Robert Sangster.
Rather like golf legend Jack Nicklaus and his wife, Barbara, Brown had an outstanding woman by his side in his wife, Thelma. She rarely missed a race meeting.
In a blog on the Sporting Post website, Byron Kennedy says that Herman Brown Snr was “one of the finest to grace the training ranks in SA”. No-one is likely to disagree with that assessment.