R100m to save racing

Restructuring task team to find ways to resuscitate Phumelela, seek new operational models.

South African horse racing was “days away” from being obliterated – before the game’s doyenne, Mary Slack, stepped in with a R100 million rescue package on Friday.

Phumelela, the biggest racing operator, simultaneously opted for business rescue and had its shares suspended on the JSE.

Racing hit “rock bottom” last week, said Charles Savage, a racehorse owner tasked by Slack with helping to coordinate a recovery for a R3 billion industry that employs up to 100 000 people.

Savage, a Johannesburg fintech entrepreneur, heads up a “restructuring task team” (RTT) appointed by Mary Oppenheimer Daughters (MOD) – Slack’s family enterprise with her four daughters – to liaise with Phumelela’s business rescue practitioner and other stakeholders to find ways to resuscitate the company and seek possible new operational models for racing.

“Racing was already in decline, but Covid-19 [and the suspension of all racing during lockdown] was the straw that broke the camel’s back,” said Savage yesterday. “Phumelela’s demise did not come overnight and there have been long-standing problems.”

Speaking during a Biznews webinar, Savage added that the current crisis offered racing an opportunity to restructure and renew itself. It was, he said, a far better opportunity than was the case five years ago when disgraced businessman Markus Jooste was dominating the game in South Africa.

Business rescue practitioner John Evans, who is in effective