Horse Chestnut one of South Africa's greatest

There is a saying that your horse can only be as brave as you are, and they don’t come braver than Mike de Kock, who decided to run his 3-year-old prodigy at the J&B Metropolitan Stakes over 2000m.

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It was the first time Horse Chestnut had been asked to go such a distance, and it is a big ask for any three-year-old - so much so that the Met had not been won by a three-year-old in over 50 years. However, horses don’t read the record books; they write them.

Horse Chestnut (Fort Wood - London Wall) was bred at Harry Oppenheimer's Mauritzfontein Stud. Trained by Mike de Kock and campaigned in the famous yellow and black Mauritzfontein silks, on December 20 1997, he was the first runner and first winner for the newly imported Fort Wood. It was the beginning of a South African legend.