South Star

The ease with which Andreas Jacobs reels off facts and statistics about Maine Chance Farms is the firmest indication of the place it holds in his heart.

With myriad business interests, from investments ranging from the Jacobs Coffee dynasty and his own initiatives, to philanthropy and the venerable Gestüt Fährhof in his native Germany, the 62-year-old regularly finds himself on a plane for commitments anywhere in the world.

Yet he bought Maine Chance, a leading nursery located at Robertson in the Western Cape, from Graham Beck because he loved it at first sight back in 2002 and returns as often as he can.

There has been a lot of information for the courteous Jacobs to ingest this past year, not least because he stands the country’s current champion sire Vercingetorix.

The exploits of the top-class filly Double Grand Slam, recently on the Grade 1 mark again in the Maine Chance-sponsored Majorca Stakes at Kenilworth and big-race regular Gladiatorian saw him topple Varsfontein’s sire supreme Gimmethegreenlight in some style.

“He isn’t only champion sire but he is very consistent across the ages; he is champion sire of two-year-olds and three-year-olds as well as overall, that is remarkable,” Jacobs says.

“He ended up with a record of 24 individual stakes winner in that season and this season I believe he’d had 12 as per January 31, which was exactly half-way, so it looks like he could do the same or maybe even better, we’ll see.”

Vercingetorix was undoubtedly a fine racehorse, as the best of his three-year-old generation in South Africa before being one of Mike de Kock’s global explorers, landing the 2014 Jebel Hatta at Group 1 level in Dubai and then finishing a close third to Designs On Rome in the QEII Cup in Hong Kong.

Jacobs, however, was also seduced by his sire. Silvano was one of the best to have hailed from Fährhof’s paddocks, actually winning the QEII in 2001, a year in which he also claimed the Arlington Million and Singapore Cup.

Silvano was only supposed to shuttle but was “stuck” in South Africa for six years when quarantine restrictions tightened owing to the prevention of the spread of African Horse Sickness. The son of Lomitas would actually spend most of his life at Maine Chance and had become a seminal sires by the time of his death in 2021 with six overall titles.

“I loved Vercingetorix and he’s been the best horse on the track for Silvano, who was such a sensation and my most beloved horse, of course,” Jacobs explains.

“I always wanted to have a son of his and I was delighted when Jehan Malberbe, who was advising Vercingetorix’s owners, suggested that maybe they could bring him to the stud where we had made Silvano a great stallion.

“Jehan rang me, so I didn’t hunt him, but I was delighted and I put a syndicate together.

“We all know with stallions maybe one out of ten is making it, maybe, and he was the one out of ten.

“In hindsight I’d say Vercingetorix is probably even better than Silvano as a sire, for several reasons.

“He’s more robust, as a physical he has more scope, he’s passed on two-year-old speed. If you add it together he’s more versatile and probably more attractive.”

Vercingetorix, who stands at a fee of R300,000 (nearly £14,000) is South Africa’s most expensive publicly-listed stallion - not that it is putting breeders off.

“He’s limited to 125 mares and he has about 250 applications so the selection process is quite difficult, so lot of unhappy phone calls to make!” laughs Jacobs.

“Vercingetorix became very popular over the last four years, so the quality of mares he has been getting is amazing.

"From his 125 mares, I’d say about 85 are shareholders, and the rest outsiders, and they are basically only Group 1 winners and Group 1 producers.

“That’s why I think the next three years will be absolutely exceptional. He started slow in a way because he was the son of Silvano, who collected all the trophy mares and he was just the young boy next to him! So he had to do it the hard way at Maine Chance and it’s exceptional how far he has come.”

Vercingetorix stands alongside another leading sire that Jacobs also bred in Germany.

The 20-year-old Querari won the 2010 Premio Presidente Della Repubblica in the yellow and black Jacobs silks when it was still an Italian Group 1 over 1m2f.

He has produced a champion sprinter in South Africa, Rio Querari, and posted another top-five finish in the overall standings last season.

Querari’s own pedigree has had an unexpected update with his three-parts brother Quinault, who has taken trainer Stuart Williams and owner Tom Morley on a sensational journey which recently included a lucrative victory in the Dukhan Sprint Cup (see page 88).

“South Africa is very commercial - when you have an older stallion then everyone seems to go for the new commercial one - which is the same in most places, but Querari consistently throws two-year-olds and a lot of 1000m winners, which I imagine is the Oasis Dream coming through with him,” Jacobs reflects.

“He’s still very popular despite the fact that he’s older, but he’s commercially very well priced and he’s doing well as a very solid outcross.”

As the pragmatic Jacobs has hinted, not every overseas arrival has been such an unqualified success. However, he has gambled big again on the newest member of the present roster.

Former Aidan O’Brien trainee Point Lonsdale,
a multiple Group winner, has been in situ for a year.

“He had a good start,” Jacobs reported.

“There are a lot of young stallions, I think there were 12 freshmen in 2024, so there’s a lot of competition. He covered a reasonable book of 80 mares and I’m happy with him.

“He’s a good-looking horse and he was a 575,000gns yearling at Tattersalls, the most expensive Australia sold at auction, so he must be good looking!

“I was also attracted by his damline as his mother [Sweepstake] won a stakes race against colts in May as a two-year-old in England, so she must have had a lot of speed and earliness, and that’s an attraction.”

Jacobs pauses to point out the emergence of Point Lonsdale’s sibling Diego Velazquez, now at the National Stud in Newmarket after his Group 1 Prix Jacques le Marois victory in the summer and laughs, “I was on the right track!”

It would appear Jacobs tries to leave little to chance with what are expensive plans in acquiring and importing stallions. He explains he spoke to Point Lonsdale’s trainer, Aidan O’Brien, at length before making a decision.

There is also the added layer that South Africa’s fragile economy means he cannot go overboard on price, or he will have little chance of recouping the investment through syndication or stallion fees.

“It takes quite some time,” he explains. “You have to pre-select your sire lines. I wanted to bring somehow Acclamation and Royal Applause blood because there wasn’t any at that time and I felt the speed is good for South Africa.

“They used to focus on a lot of Danzig speed and Galileo didn’t really work in South Africa, so his broodmare was important. But you select the pedigree first and then you want basically a consistent Group 2 winner as a
two-year-old and a three-year-old.

“The moment you come into a Group 1 winner from England, you just can’t pay it. It’s out of the range. You’ve got to be a bit lucky, you’ve also got to fish just below the market that’s acceptable for England or Ireland.”

Maine Chance also maintains a broodmare band of around 100, which include some of the old Beck families and others from the purchase of Geoff and Katherine Winshaw’s Litchfield Stud.

Jacobs clearly thrives on the intellectual challenge of overseeing the farm and learning the different ways which trainers prepare horses compared with Europe. He delights in seeing its graduates excel, such as with Wish List, who beat her elders in the recent Grade 1 Paddock Stakes, or seeing the progress of promising Classic type Star Major.

The most notable horse to have emerged from Maine Chance in recent times is Princess Calla, the multiple Grade 1 winner for Sean Tarry who was bought by John Stewart’s Resolute Racing. She could manage only one start in North America, and has now joined the big-spending owner-breeder’s stud.

And with the arduous quarantine restrictions having virtually disappeared now, the best of the continent can finally test itself overseas again and One Stripe, beaten a neck in the Pegasus World Cup Turf Invitationa (G1), has been one of the test pilots.

Jacobs says: “Princess Calla was a flag carrier, an exceptional racehorse in South Africa, consistent and if she’d stayed sound she probably would have shown great class on Turf in the US.

“That’s what we have to aim for - being an international player. We’ve been cut off and isolated for the last
15 years and that’s been a shame.

We have to come back to the scene and we have to compete internationally to prove our blood and vice versa.

“That would help us to become an importer of good mares. What I keep saying is we have good stallions, like Vercingetorix.

“We should be bringing 30 or 40 mares every year from overseas to mate with him, and with his products we could show that we are part of the international competition.”

Jacobs, it must be said, intends to practice what he preaches.

“I always wanted to have a Silvano mare at Fährhof,” he says. “I did that and I could see myself doing the same again with a Vercingetorix.”

One of the great endeavours for the Jacobs family was developing Newsells Park Stud from scratch into a modern, neat-as-a-pin blueprint for a farm which has maintained its leading standards under its current owner, Graham Smith-Bernal.

Jacobs says Maine Chance was different, as it was proven as a top-class nursery by the Becks. However, the stewardship of the land, upgrading facilities and installing a strong team, now led by the experienced stud manager
Ross Fuller, have been important
pieces of the puzzle.

“I had to invest but I wasn’t dreaming,” Jacobs says. “I knew the ground, the farm itself, the operation, could do it. It wasn’t a start-up.”

What appears a feeling of quiet satisfaction at Maine Chance,
after a very trying period with the various issues which have affected the beleaguered South African industry, is helped by a now happier outlook in the region.

Its principal racecourse, Cape Town’s stately Kenilworth, was on a financial precipice in 2022 before its purchase by financier Greg Bortz in a partnership with gambling behemoth Hollywoodbets. The new operators have stimulated interest and field sizes through seeding prize-money and premiums.

Jacobs says the momentum has continued.

“Prize-money has been going up, causing yearling prices to go up in the last two years - and significantly,” he says.

“It has been a major boost in the Western Cape and that caused breeders to reinvest, which is good.

“At the same time the new team that is running the racecourses and the operations are keen to export racing and racehorses back to Dubai.

“Quarantine is much shorter now, there is less stress, less cost, there are some flying to England and others to Hong Kong.

“It might be only 20 horses going at each time on each flight, but slowly I hope we’re going to be back on the scene.”