Trainer Profile	Mike de Kock
Mike de Kock is South Africa's best known trainer. He was not born into a horse racing family but he developed a passion for the sport early on in his life and tried to spend as much time as possible watching race day goings-on at the Newmarket racecourse which was only 500m from the family home in Alberton, South Africa. He absorbed everything he came across from visiting stables, scrutinizing race forms and continuously listening to the racing commentaries on the radio. It was whilst he was in the South African Defense Forces in 1981 that he was recruited into the Equestrian Unit. He got horses ready for combat as well as endurance races. His rank was corporal and it was in the defense force that he became a riding instructor.
He began his career as an assistant to Ormand Ferraris who is a championship winning trainer in his own right, and then moved on to assist Robbie Sage and Ricky Howard-Ginsberg. Mike took over the yard in 1989 at the age of 25 when Howard-Ginsberg died. He became the preferred trainer for the Oppenheimer family in 1995; a partnership that has been hugely successful. De Kock has won most of the big races in South Africa, and many big international races as well, thanks to an incredible band of horses trained over the past 19 years. His best horse trained must still be Horse Chestnut, although Asiatic Boy on the dirt has to be right up there as well. He has won the Summer Cup a record-breaking 6 times.

Mike de Kock - 10 Notable Horses Trained

Horse Chestnut

Victory Moon

Ipi Tombe

Grey's Inn

Wolf Whistle

Badger's Coast

Delta Form

Asiatic Boy

Grand Emporium

Gilded Minaret