Graceland Farm

Pocket Power, photographed by Hamish Niven. The book about the Champion is worth the investment, but I was left with the distinct feeling the writer was given a tight brief - stick to the facts and don't ruffle feathers.

If I ever have another horse suited by Western Cape conditions, he or she will be offered first to trainer Mike Bass. No more than nodding acquaintances as long-standing racing people tend to be, my respect for Bass the Trainer has skyrocketed in the last few days after breezing through the paperback tribute to his Pocket Power.

For those intimately involved with the Jet Master gelding – Bass and his team especially daughter Candice, groom Boy Boy Jevu and farrier Greg Dabbs; breeder Dan de Wet;  jockey Bernard Fayd’Herbe; and owners Marsh Shirtliff and Arthur Webber – Gary Lemke’s Pocket must be a walk down memory lane. For the rest of us, the book offers some idea of how great a challenge it was to keep Pocket Power in one piece during his five and a half mostly dominant years on the racetrack. We’ve all heard about his infamous near fore – but only through these pages does one get an idea of how bad his feet really were and what an achievement it was for Bass to get those 20 wins out of the Champion.

It’s taken me a quarter century of owning horses to appreciate that the difference between a great trainer and a good one is not readily apparent. All trainers worthy of the name must be disciplined, focused, dedicated, optimistic and possess a deep love for the breed. Where the great ones rise above the rest is when faced with the unusual personality, the “difficult” horse whose individuality they not only appreciate but celebrate. They make the difference between an otherwise long-ago retired-through-injury hack and the star patiently nursed to fulfill his full potential, often against the odds. Mike Bass, I now realize, is one of the greats who deserves to be spoken of in the same breath as Millard, Heming, Ferraris and De Kock.

Not since Charl Pretorius’s superb biography on Horse Chestnut has one of South Africa’s Champion Thoroughbreds had a book dedicated to them. So I was excited to see this project. But next to Pretorius’s spicy, punchy offering, Lemke’s book is like a baked potato without sour cream. Sanitised. It reads like a very long press release, even down to contrived almost cheesy quotes (everyone speaks in perfect sentences; nobody swears, ever).

Lemke is clearly no Bill Finley. Or Pretorius, for that matter. He’s a reporter rather than a storyteller. But Lemke has done a proficient job documenting Pocket Power’s four Queen’s Plates, three Mets and his dead-heated Durban July. Much of that is old hat for racing fans. What isn’t, though, is what went on behind the scenes. And it is here that Lemke’s reporting talents are seen to advantage. That rescues the book from the mediocrity almost guaranteed by a brief which seems to read: stick to the facts, don’t ruffle any feathers, don’t dig too deep. Which suggests this book was a commissioning to a wordsmith rather than the product of a free, enquiring mind.

We learn almost in passing that Pocket Power’s co-owner Marsh Shirtliff is fabulously wealthy, a huge punter, a “bloke’s bloke”, exceedingly generous and owes his good fortune in horseflesh to relying on Bass, the late Terry Silcock and others to find him horses to buy. He is painted too good to be true. His expertise, the source of the wealth, is the successful vehicle insurance business Motorite. But the company gets a single mention. Shirtliff’s life outside of the winner’s circle and Bass’s box at Kenilworth seems to have been strictly off-limits.

If ever there were an opportunity to get under the skin of this larger-than-life racing personality here it was. But I turned the last page knowing little more about Shirtliff than the broad descriptions. Even worse, all we get to learn about Pocket Power’s co-owner Arthur Webber is that he’s a pig farmer from Pretoria who retired to PE and believed Pocket Power was invincible. Oh, and is married to a lady called Rina who thought his underbid of R180 000 was madness.

Bass, too, could have been fleshed out a lot more. We read he is a family man, likes golf, doesn’t particularly like the up-country Press, adores his horses and is fiercely competitive. Also, his English-born roots are deep – one of his proudest moments apparently was getting a response to the letter he wrote to Queen Elizabeth. OK. But what really makes him tick? Why did he devote his life to training thoroughbreds? Does he have a weakness for punting, or is it his wife Carol who is the gambler? (One of the surprises is learning how R80 000 Carol won at a casino was used to buy Met winner Bunter Barlow).

But those are all minor irritations. Lemke’s book carries some lovely photographs. And Pocket did keep the long-awaited biography on Steve Jobs unopened on the bedside table. Which, given that I’m one of the Apple founder’s greatest fans, says a lot about the way the horse book pulled me in. It’s well worth the two hundred bucks. Just a pity about that feeling it could have been so much more.