South African self-made billionaire Markus Jooste (53) has come a long way from his modest Highveld youth. In the past 18 years, the chartered accountant has grown Steinhoff International from a small furniture manufacturer into a R120-billion multinational challenger to global giant IKEA. He put another notch in his belt this week when concluding a $725m capital raising issue ahead of switching Steinhoff’s primary stock market listing from the Johannesburg to the Frankfurt Stock Exchange. But Jooste the brilliant entrepreneur has another absorbing passion. As a youngster he promised that when he could afford it, he’d buy a racehorse. Fate was kind – and the first thoroughbred he bought, in 1993, was National Emblem, a South African Champion sprinter who became equally successful at stud. As Nassim Taleb suggests in Fooled by Randomness, it’s better to be fortunate than skilful. In a sport where you need dollops of it, Jooste’s luck is certainly holding. He also owns South African racing’s latest superstar, the colt Variety Club, whose story is featured below. Currently rated the second best racehorse in the world, apart from cleaning up at home Variety Club has won the top races for milers in Dubai and Hong Kong. He’s now on course for a race against the only horse rated above him at the world’s biggest race day, the US’s Breeder’s Club. Although business has kept him away from many of Variety Club’s biggest moments, wild horses wouldn’t be able to keep MJJ away from that engagement.  – AH
By Liesl King for Parade Magazine
Sixteen victories, including four Grade 1’s, three Grade 2’s, three Grade 3’s and two Horse Of The Year Titles is an impressive CV in any racing jurisdiction. Most owners around the world would have been content and in some countries this colt would have been long gone to stud – after all what was left to prove? Actually quite a lot, but it came at high risk.
An international Group 1 and possibly title of best miler in the world meant travelling thousands of miles, across continents with lengthy quarantine stops between.
Unlike human travel, horse travel comes with its own unique set of challenges. Horses do not do well in confined spaces. Standing in a jetstall for up to 16 hours in a pressurised metal tube  that can bounce up and down, is enough to send any horse into a panic, never mind a highly-strung thoroughbred. In 1964, Markham, a US eventer had to be destroyed midflight after he panicked, endangering the lives of the handlers and the other horses. Closer to home Freemyheart had to be sedated midflight enroute to Johannesburg from Cape Town and just three years ago, a young Warmblood colt died on a flight from Belgium to JFK.
Once you have touched down safely, your potential troubles are far from over as the possibility of travel sickness and colic are all too real. Vercingetorix almost didn’t run in Dubai this year after contracting travel sickness.
Survive the health risks and your star galloper still has to face different climatic conditions, training tracks, racecourses, unknown track surfaces and different starting gates from what it is accustomed to.  Japanese galloper Tokei Halo, used to wider starting stalls back home, refused point blank to load in Singapore, as did Peter Schiergen’s Empoli in Dubai. Both horses that had never had loading problems before. On the other hand, the horse may just not adapt to its new environment. Igugu left South Africa as the first filly to win the Triple Crown. Yet her inability to settle and adapt to the very different conditions in Dubai meant that our champion never won another race.  Lastly, even if all goes well, you run the risk that your prized champion may not be good enough when it comes to international competition.
So is it really worth taking these enormous risks with an extremely valuable colt such as Variety Club? Joey Ramsden, Markus Jooste and Derek Brugman thought so.
Variety Club headed for Dubai last year via a lengthy five-month quarantine on three continents and his first start was eagerly awaited. Running on Tapeta for the first time, Variety Club waltzed away with the Firebreak Stakes, prompting race caller Terry Spargo to thank South Africa and Variety Club’s connections for bringing the colt to Dubai. One start later though and the dream appeared to be in tatters.
Variety Club, inexplicably loaded early, banged his head on the stalls before jumping late. Having made up the lost ground, the colt raced up front in his customary position, but in the home straight it all went wrong. For the first time in his life, gone was the fluid stride, the long reach, ears flat against his head and when Shuruq passed him, there was no fighting answer. Shuruq was no world beater, in fact she wasn’t even a Group 1 horse. Had Variety Club just been found out? The sickening possibility that he simply wasn’t good enough loomed in the mind of doubters.
Ramsden, Brugman and Jooste thought otherwise. There were genuine excuses for the lacklustre run and it was after all his second outing after an eight-month layoff. With World Cup night looming, there was no time for another start and a decision had to be made as to whether to run the colt, and in which race. Â When the Gr 2 Godolphin Mile on the Tapeta, a surface he so clearly disliked, was chosen, Variety Club started drifting in the betting and even his staunchest South African supporters started doubting whether he was good enough.
The result is well known with Variety Club, under his long time jockey Anton Marcus, taking the lead early and kicking clear up the home straight. Seldom has Marcus celebrated so much and so early! It was a relief all round and the South African flag, proudly flown by Marcus, was just reward for all the risks.
Yet Variety Club had not yet met a strong international field at Gr 1 level. That was to come in the Gr 1 Champions Mile in Hong Kong. The Hong Kong milers are renowned as some of the best in the world. So much so that since 2005, when the Champions Mile first admitted foreign entrants, local horses had dominated every running. J J The Jetplane had famously broken Hong Kong’s strangle hold on the Hong Kong Sprint, could Variety Club do the same in the Champions Mile?
Again Variety Club had to travel, arriving in the early morning hours at Sha Tin Quarantine stables, this time under the care of Mike de Kock. Photos taken of the colt showed his ribs clearly visible in the orange glow of the overhead lights. Could this have been one trip too many?
His first trackwork was much anticipated. Â All wanted to see the South African Champion. Was he tired, had he lost weight and was he ready for the toughest race of his life? Â On Wednesday morning Variety Club stepped onto the Sha Tin turf for the first time and it was immediately clear that he was in magnificent condition. Â Coat shining, muscles rippling, this was a horse ready to race and if there was even a slight doubt, his piece of fast work the next morning left no questions unanswered. All that was left was the race.
It was a superb display of power and superiority by a superstar. Variety Club cruised home on the yielding turf unchallenged, crossing the line four lengths in front of Able Friend, emphatically ending the dominance of the Hong Kong milers in their backyard. Watching a lone horse come down the straight unchallenged can often be a yawning affair, but once in a while, it is truly magical, a moment to pause and reflect upon. Perhaps you have just witnessed greatness!
Variety Club had triumphed. His victory earned him a rating of 126, second best horse in the world and a first for South Africa.
Risk and reward, chances taken, guts, sheer bloody mindedness and balls of steel, yet the reward in the end was more than anybody could ever have hoped for.
Variety Club heads for a well-deserved spell in Newmarket, England, before a date with arguably the best miler in the world, Wise Dan, at the 2014 Breeders’ Cup.
We can’t wait!
