Formgrids turns 20 today

Today, 20 years ago, was the first time Formgrids was shared with the South African racing public...

A short history of Formgrids

by David Safi (Founder of Formgrids)

Charl Pretorius was the first person to see it outside of a small circle which included Gary Soma. Charl followed up the same day with an offer to buy it out. He wanted to produce a Computaform for Hong Kong.

Next was an offer from that great racing man Alex Hogg and Moneyweb - it pained me to turn it down. Alex formerly produced the wonderful Racing Digest and many of racings future role players learned under his mertorship.

David Attenborough tried to put a deal together with Phumelela but we were not willing to give away majority ownership, realizing that in time it would be handed over to people who do not share the same vision as us, which was and is to help racegoers.

Trainer Joe Soma tried his best to help us forge ahead but red tape in Phumelela proved too much.

Graeme Hawkins and Gold Circle assisted for a while and Gallop was produced at the time.

Gold Circle was an island of sanity at a time when racing was crazy, Michel Nirac, special thanks to him, stepped in at a vital moment and kept us going when we were insanely cut off by Phumelela.

At one stage when finances were extremely low we contacted many big names in the game for any assistance and appealed via our front page to our users for any contribution, only one man responded and that was Anthony Lang, a special thanks to him.

Once again Joe Soma came through for us by getting Larry and the RA to do a one off 15k contribution.

Clyde Basel helped where he could but Phumelela was at loggerheads with itself and racing at the time.

Top players like John Sweet joined us early on and he has made many tutorial videos over the many years.

Eighteen years earlier, in 1986, the first version of Formgrids was produced on an Olivetti typewriter with the help of Carol Moore.

During the time span between 1986 and 2004 several versions were produced including the first modern version when Monica Calvo so kindly assisted with her knowledge of Microsoft Excel.

This was a time where each and every horse new run in every race result had to be manually typed into each of its past runs to keep the formlines updated - it was mammoth task.

Along came Wolfgang in 2004 who modernized our platform but for the first few years we still had to do a huge amount of semi-manual uploading and editing.

We were helped for a short while by Michael Holden and Maxine Lange.

However, once we expanded into international countries including Zimbabwe, the UK, USA, Mauritius, Dubai, Hong Kong, Singapore, Malaysia we then recruited Klaudia Suszczynska and Clifford Safi to help with the loading of the data. The system was at the time still semi-automated as we had not yet got any live feeds from any one.

So the loading team had to put in many many months of long hours working with me into the early hours of the mornings then up again for card changes etc.

Formgrids hits 100 million Page Views on 11 January 2017.

This figure was taken off Google Analytics and since Formgrids was only registered on Analytics about two years after it started this milestone may well have been achieved earlier.

Sonya Rycroft had done our admin for many years and was of immeasurable value in 2019 when the nauseating "hack" came while Wolfgang was unavailable and working in the USA.

Gail Lowe (my partner) found Pedro who plugged holes. From Pedro, we were led to Jo who miraculously got us back up, he had the highest level of praise for Wolfgang's previous work.

Pedro and Jo Pearl are two magnificent programmers.

They kept us going at the vital stage of life and death of Formgrids. Sonya steered the ship through this ever so turbulent time. I don't know how she managed! I was of no help to her while I was busy running around finding the finance to pay for everything.

John Sweet has always contributed with good content as as many tutorial videos.

George Groucher, also known as Titch, has assisted in many ways including launching Formgrids radio which proved too much work without the right amount of capital.

He also came up with the Fantasy Racing concept. He has also found us sponsors which has helped us tremendously. Thank you Titch!

Many people have been there to help us when we needed them.

So a big thank you to everyone that has helped us in any way.

Thank you Joe, Gary and Gaby.

Tex for much advise and guidance.

Andrew Bon stuck his neck out for us and truth in our fight for survival with Phumelella.

James and Laff for giving us exposure and a platform.

Deez and Peter Gibson for the kindness in Hong Kong, as well as Adrian Todd.

Penny and Merle who inspired me by their goodness.

Brett and Steve for being good allies when the chips were down. As well as Dave, Hibs and John Finlayson and other ABC guys

Scott Kenny great support.

Tony Jacob and his family.

Robyn Louw inspiration.

Charl Pretorius for seeing the woods from the trees.

Alec Hogg outstanding racing man.

Robin Bruss overall outstanding racing man.

Nico and Vee in the early days for trying to get the "Informed with Formgrids" show going.

Breeders Phil Kahan and his dad George from The Alchemy, as well as James Armitage of Sandown Stud for unbelievable kindness.

Frankie Z who was there from the beginning and is still there today.

And I thank God for all the miracles keeping us going along the years. Long may we continue.

I apologise to those I have not mentioned, knowing some dont want to be mentioned. But you know who you are!

Thankfully, our star Wolfgang, returned in 2019 and took Formgrids over again.

Formgrids made some evolutionary progress steps from 2019 on. Loading is 99% automated now and many new features have been added.

Thank you Wolf for what I have put you through.

Many companies and people have advertised with us.

Adv A Joubert while he was with the TBA.

Trainers Lucky Houdalakis and Corne Spies

I would like to highlight one company that has stuck with us for many years now: Capstone Horse Feeds - Diane Howell and the Maingard family.

A big thanks to all the companies that have sponsored us at one time or another. first one being bookmaker Glen Sepel

Others include:

• Hollywoodbets
• GG Gaming
• Betfred
• The Racing Association
• Gold Circle
• Betway (current)

And a special thanks to our current sponsor Betway who have just renewed their sponsorship with us.

Kind regards

David