British venture opening up new avenues for top South African breeder Gaynor Rupert

It is a great deal easier to bring a horse into South Africa than to take it out, as the country’s top breeders have been made painfully aware for the last decade.

While the laborious quarantine protocols to prevent the spread of African Horse Sickness robbed Gaynor Rupert of the opportunity for her champion Charles Dickens to compete abroad, her quiet expansion of bloodstock interests overseas is still providing international opportunities.

Rupert’s Drakenstein Stud, in the winelands east of Cape Town, welcomes not only Charles Dickens to its 2024 roster but the country’s very first Frankel. Sharp Frank is one of the graduates of the family’s Cayton Park Stud offshoot, a farm in Berkshire acquired from the late Khalid Abdullah a few years ago which also has a potential Classic prospect this year in the Futurity Trophy third God’s Window.