The Western Cape, dominated by the majesty of Table Mountain and featuring spectacular scenic attractions that make it one of the leading tourist destinations in the world, is also the birthplace of horseracing in South Africa and home to some of the most famous races, wine farms and thoroughbred studs.

It is also the home of the country’s oldest racing club, The South African Turf Club, and the internationally-famed races like the Grade 1 J&B Met and Grade 1 L’Ormarins Queen’s Plate that are at the heart of the Western Cape Sizzling Summer Season which runs through from early November to the end of January.
The season stages six other Grade 1 races of national importance from the Avontuur Estate Cape Fillies Guineas and Cape Premier Yearling Sales Guineas to the TBA Paddock Stakes and Klawervlei Majorca Stakes for fillies, the Betting World Cape Flying Championship for the speedsters and the testing Investec Cape Derby.

The three-year-old events have a history of producing top horses that have gone on to win Africa’s Greatest Horseracing Event, the Vodacom Durban July.
The three-month programme of outstanding racing and the status of the Western Cape as one of the three leading racing regions in the country, have grown from the small beginnings on the famous Green Point Common some 210 years ago when, on February 27, 1802, 21 members of the African Turf Club founded the South African Turf Club.

However, racing on the “Common” had taken place over the previous five years with the first recorded meeting at the Cape in 1797. It was the occupation of the Cape by the British that set the racing “industry” in motion with the military dominating racing with mounts from the garrison and a few private individuals becoming involved.

Races were run in heats, usually over 3 200m, with meetings lasting a week and run twice a year in the Spring and Autumn. They were very social events accompanied by balls, Turf Club dinners and special performances at the theatre. Like today’s big race meetings, the fashionable turned out in all their splendour and they were festive occasions.

Lord Charles Somerset, Governor of the Cape, was a driving force in advancing the status of racing in the Cape and played an important role in the early importation of thoroughbreds to the country from Britain. After his departure in 1826 racing continued as before and the most important development thereafter was the first running of the Queen’s Plate in 1861 with the plate of fifty guineas being a gift from Queen Victoria to which was added a sweepstake of five pounds for each runner.

It was an open event at weight-for-age and the heats for the race for the first two years were over two miles with the very first Queen’s Plate being won by Mr A Chiappini’s brown colt Dispatch.  After the two years the heats system was abandoned and after the death of Queen Victoria it became the King’s Plate which remained until Queen Elizabeth II took the throne in 1953.

The first races run at Kenilworth were staged on April 21 and 22 in 1863 although the land was only granted to the South African Turf Club in 1882. Racing continued on Green Point Common as well until March 4, 1893.
A gala meeting held at Kenilworth in 1883 included the first running of the Metropolitan Handicap which was won by the four-year-old Sir Hercules. But the early years of the race lacked charisma as it was run over various distances and the Turf Club finally took the decision in 1973 to change it from a handicap to a conditions race of weight-for-age plus penalties.

It became a success and with the distance being set at 2 000m and the introduction of J&B as the race sponsor it established itself as the leading conditions race in the country.

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