The Sport Champions Of Dunearn Sec Tech School

From a defender to Singapore's best jockey, from kampung boy to millionaire, Saimee Jumaat is his father's dream come true

DEAR Big Chief, you should be reading this from heaven. It's a promise I made to you and Leha, and I'm fulfilling it today - 32 years late.

'But better late than never,' says Mee, when I finally caught up with him. And look at him now - a big boy, happily married with two lively kids, two big cars, a big house, a beautiful garden, and lots of money to erase every bit poverty that once besieged you.

Just imagine the day Leha brought him to the Turf Club from Kandang Kerbau Hospital in 1972, such a tiny baby crying his lungs out, yo-yoing in her sarong hung down from the ceiling, in that dark, damp one-room corner unit of the stableboys' quarters.

How would you ever make ends meet, we asked ourselves, especially Ah Hwee (former jockey Tan Cheng Hwee), your best friend. We were all not married yet, just beginning our working lives, and there you were with your fourth child.

'Jangan takut (don't be afraid),' you told us, a gathering of friends that included your disbelieving boss Bougoure. And as we took turns to cradle Mee clumsily in our uninitiated arms, you said: 'Ini, lah, gua punya champion (this, lah, is my champion). Tulis sekarang (write it now).'

'Champion? Hello, Hashim, baby only. Maybe later, when he's really a champion.'

'Tak percaya? Apa lah, tak guna lah lu (Don't believe? What, lah, useless you).'

Well, folks, Mee is none other than Saimee Jumaat, third son of the late Jumaat Nowe, who was otherwise known as Hashim and affectionately called Big Chief because he was the chief stablehand of former horse-racing trainer Garnet Bougoure.

'It's really unfortunate that my father is not around to see who I am today. He would have been very, very proud of me,' said 32-year-old Saimee, now with 777 wins under his belt and undisputably the best jockey Singapore has ever produced.

As we relaxed in the airy verandah of his two-storey, five-room semi-detached home in the prime district of Bukit Timah, he quickly added: 'You know, when dad died in 1998, he just missed one of my greatest achievements because I set the Malayan Racing Association record by breaking the century mark, scoring 111 winners in one season.

'Of course, there were celebrations, big makan here and there, everybody was so happy. But one man was missing - dad.

'Then came the other great achievement - I won the inaugural SIA Cup from an international field in 2000. Again, dad was missing. He died of liver complications, just drank too much. So I will never be an alcoholic like him.'

Had it not been the spirit of Hashim driving young Saimee on to become an apprentice jockey at the age of 16, he might have well turned out to be a mere footballer playing in the S-League.

At the age of five or six, he was already steep into football, kicking around in the open fields of the former Singapore Turf Club with all the other children of stablehands.

'We even turned the basketball court into a football pitch,' he said. 'Ask Azhar Baksin (Home United) and Nasiruddin Sawardi (Woodlands), we grew up playing football every day.'

Yes, I can recall that Saimee was a good dribbler. And it was no surprise that he represented Farrer Primary, then went on to play for Dunearn Technical at Secondary level. He was even ear-marked for bigger things when he was selected for the then national youth Milo Scheme.

But torn between two loves, he had to fulfill Big Chief's dreams. 'Dad was determined that I became a jockey. When I was four years old, he carried me up to a horse and walked around the stables.

'By the time I was eight or nine, I was already riding bare-back, no saddle, with some of the kids. But we did it when the owners and trainers were not around. As kids, we were mischievous, of course. Imagine if the officials had caught us red-handed. Dad and the rest would have been in trouble.'

Until today, football is still in Saimee's blood. And for the past six years, he has been playing for the jockeys' team in the annual Inter-Stable tournament for the Stable Cup.

'I was a defender in Primary school, a striker at Secondary school and now I'm a playmaker for the jockeys. But the last two seasons have not been so lucky for me. I seem to be injury prone.'

He dislocated a finger in the 2002 tournament and was ruled out of racing for two weeks, then he fractured his right hand in last year's event.

'Both were really costly accidents. I could not ride, so I lost out on scoring more wins. It was especially costly last year because I was going for a record. I was going for the first century mark at Kranji but was out for one month and could only score 83 winners.'

This year, he fell off his horse, Ninetyfive Emperor, in May's Lion City Cup, was out of action for a month, and the other footballing jockeys forgot to submit the team's entry for the Stable Cup.

'While I was recuperating, entries closed. I was always the one submitting our names. So my team-mates forgot, so this year's tournament, which is now going on, has no jockeys team for the first time. Terrible, isn't it?

'But, of course, the owners and trainers I ride for are happy. I can't get injured. They wanted to ban me from this year's tournament. Now they don't have to. I'm only playing football in my garden, with Dylan.'

Two-year-old Dylan is Saimee's first son, whom he describes as an 'amazing' footballer for his age. 'You know, he can dribble with the ball stuck to his feet for 10 to 15 metres in the garden.'

And when his second son, two-month old Lachlan grows up, football will his first game. After all, Saimee is a Manchester United fan and his favourite players are Ruud van Nistelrooy and Ryan Giggs.

No wonder our two-hour reunion rarely touched on horse-racing, not even whether Saimee is confident of winning the Emirates Singapore Derby today on Muscleman.

It was mostly nostalgia of the Big Chief kind, of the music that Hashim used to love, like the lyrics of Bob Dylan. That's why Saimee's first son is named Dylan.

As scrimp-and-save Hashim used to scream: 'How does it feel, to be on your own, with no directions home, like a complete unknown, like a rolling stone?'

And Saimee reminded me: 'Remember the day he got you to write my reference letter? You, the ghostwriter for Bougoure, writing that I was a 'precocious young lad' in a letter to the Turf Club so that I could become an apprentice jockey?'

Ah yes, it's all history now. He is married to Australian Nicole Inglis, his mother Salimah, nicknamed Leha, lives in the family's HDB flat in Choa Chu Kang, and he is a millionaire.

So to dear Big Chief and Leha, at long last I have kept my promise - 32 years late.