James Crawford: Cracking the Durban July code

A month ago, 25-year-old James Crawford took over sole proprietorship of one of the biggest racehorse training yards in Cape Town – in fact, in the country. Yet this week he was back pottering around an old stamping ground on the Highveld.

The reason was simple: Randjesfontein training centre near Midrand is where Hollywoodbets Durban July winners have been coming from lately.

Both 2023 July champion Winchester Mansion and 2024 champ Oriental Charm were prepared at Randjes – both of them by young Crawford. Don’t mess with a winning recipe.

James’s father Brett built a powerhouse racing stable after relocating from his birthplace in Zimbabwe decades ago. James grew up with the smell of horses and hay ever present, but when he matriculated from elite Cape school SACS the youngster was not convinced the racing game was for him.

He took a gap year, went surfing and skateboarding, toyed with the idea of university. Eventually, a lack of ready cash prompted him to lean on his old man for a job.

“Initially the bug never really bit; it was more of a money thing,” James told an In The Box Seat podcast.

“But as I started working and saw all the blood, sweat and tears that went into getting a horse into the winner’s box … it resonated with me.

“That connection you get with an individual horse … that’s when the bug bit.”

The bug drove him to learn all he could about the job – “how and why my dad did certain things, how he fed his horses…”.

Expanding to the Highveld

A few years down the line, Brett felt the need to open a satellite training yard on the Highveld. Cape Town racing was going downhill fast at the time and options were being explored.

James journeyed into the interior at the tender age of 21 to take charge of a string of nine horses. He spent three months learning at the foot of Randjesfontein master Mike de Kock, to whom Brett had been an assistant yonks before.

“Mr de Kock” did everything differently to Brett, so as confusing as it was at the time, the young man absorbed priceless new lessons.

Being thrown in at the deep end proved a master stroke. Winners started flowing from the assistant trainer’s yard, many of them horses who weren’t cracking it in Cape Town. Within a couple of years, yard numbers had swelled to 50.

Then came Winchester Mansion.

Brett and James decided raiding KwaZulu-Natal from the Highveld was the way to go. They started posting superb win ratios at the coast when commuting horses back and forth from their Highveld base.

Promising young gelding Winchester Mansion was floated down the N3 to run second in the Grade 2 WSB 1900, and then again a month later to win the Dolphins Cup Trial – both classic Durban July prep races.

Common wisdom had it that three raids would be a raid too far, but Winchester Mansion nixed that notion to give Brett his first July trophy.

Repeat process

The whole process was repeated exactly a year later with Oriental Charm, with James the man at the cutting edge of the Randjes prep and the carefully planned travel arrangements.

James, already seen in the game as a phenomenon, was brought fully into the spotlight as a full partner with his father: B/J Crawford printed in the racecard beneath their runners.

Suddenly Brett got an offer he couldn’t refuse – a training position in the racing heaven of Hong Kong.

James ascended to the throne in Philippi on 1 June 2025. Now he’s back upcountry, shuttling from Joburg to Durban in search of an amazing Durban July triple – though this time it’ll be in his name alone.

If either of James’s runners, Oriental Charm or Pomodoro’s Jet, wins Saturday’s Durban July, he’ll become the youngest trainer to saddle a winner of the big race since David Payne with In Full Flight at the age of 24 in 1972.

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