Saturday’s most deserving WSB Cape Town Met winner was horse owner Greg Bortz, whose aquamarine and gray silks will be carried at Kenilworth Racecourse by outsiders Pomp And Power.
Because without Bortz there might not be a 2023 Met.
At best, it will be a scaled-down version of the beloved 140-year-old event, Cape Town’s flagship horse race.
In early July 2022, a press release appeared in the mailbox stating that Kenilworth Racing was facing “liquidity and cash flow constraints” and was going out of business. This follows the 2020 collapse of South Africa’s main racing operator Phumelela, which had organized the Western Cape race under contract.
‘The patient is dead!’
After the disaster, Kenilworth residents were forced to pick up the pieces and somehow.
But the creditors closed and the ax was about to fall on the king’s sport in Cape fairest. The existential war-weary racing community looked on in bewilderment.
“Without intervention, the Cape race will fall,” Bortz said. “The patient is not critical. The patient is dead!”
The good news in the press release is the news that Bortz’s company GMB Investments has agreed to buy the affected operations. He was the only soul who raised his hand and gave an effort to fix the mess.
GMB stuck on R130-million to settle immediate, urgent debt; then an old friend (if Bookmaker can be called a friend!) donated R200-million to kickstart some new initiatives.
Despite his horse’s name, Bortz is still not looking for glory or reward: “Owen and I do it for the best reasons. We’re both just sick of racing horses.
For seven months, Bortz (and Owen Heffer of Hollywoodbets) made pessimists and skeptics not only save the Cape race but transform it.
Kenilworth has had a complete facelift, race stakes have been pumped up by 35%, various incentives have attracted enthusiastic trainers, new sponsors are lining up, and the racing vibe has not been good in decades. All of this is no fluke.
Bortz and Heffer
Bortz grew up in Durban in the 1970s, caught a bad dose of the horse racing bug and met impecunious tipster-cum-bookie Heffer.
After university in Cape Town, Bortz went abroad and made his fortune in the US as a banker and private equity whizzkid. At age 50, he “retired” to Cape Town to indulge his passion.
But the carpet is going to be pulled, so the turnaround experts gambling money and energy change in the rescue bid. To help him is his old friend Heffer, who has now built the largest online bookmaking company in South Africa.
These people are not mugs when it comes to business. Indeed, he is the type of person we need to run the country.
Can Pomp And Power pay back Bortz’s favor on behalf of the racing game? Well, even at 66-1, he probably has a better chance of success than the Cape race in June 2022.
One small thing: the gelding had to beat the 7-2 favorite, a filly called Make It Snappy. owned by? Heffer’s Hollywood Syndicate.