Gold Circle Pty (Ltd)

Today's Racing :

Jockey Anton Marcus is a man of ‘hands and poise’

Andrew Harrison
There is a current thread running on one of the more popular local racing websites about just how good jockey Anton Marcus is.
Mostly it is about how he has rescued seemingly losing bets in the last couple of strides.
Everybody loves a winner, more especially a punter who, with a furlong to run, is already pondering how he is going to dig himself out of the mire in the next race, so the views expressed are decidedly biased.
But to misquote a once popular song, “Then along came Marcus”. A lot of dross is spoken about jockeys. One rides too short, one too long and the rest just useless.
The great Lester Piggott was once asked why he rode with his backside so high in the air.
The retort, in typical Lester fashion: “ Well I’ ve got to put it somewhere.”
Hands are part of what make a good jockey great. The list of riders lacking in style but big on hands is a long one. Quickly to mind are Garth Puller, Gavin “ Pots and Pans” van Zyl and current champion jockey Andrew Fortune. There are a dozen other riders with smoother, more elegant seats that are polished Rolls Royces in a finish, but up against this trio, they would more often than not be made to look ordinary.
Marcus is different. He has hands and he has poise. He is the complete article as he showed when driving Ginger Hill home, for another master of his craft, Mike de Kock, in the Allez France Handicap at Turffontein yesterday, that he has few peers in the saddle.
As commentator Craig Peters commented post race, Ginger Hill was “dead and buried” two furlongs out as Saltwater Girl pinched a winning lead. The challenges came thick and fast for second over the next furlong but Ginger Hill, under a typically balanced and powerful Marcus ride, kept grinding away. As the opposition cried enough in the heat of battle, Ginger Hill went out and fetched Saltwater Girl (no “Pots and Pans” to help out here), but ever game she proved no match for a determined Marcus.
No doubt the weights – a 3,5 kg pull to the winner – told that final 50m but Marcus was the difference between winning and losing.
At Kenilworth, the going on the outside rail took precedence as the Mike Stewart-trained Mister Dane, racing all on his own on the outside fence under Brandon Morgenrood, put one over the favourite in the third. The jocks were in two minds in the next, split half-and-half, but it was El Jadida under Bernhard Fayd’Herbe for Mike Bass that took advantage of the outside fence this time. Any doubts were dispelled in the next as the entire field was sent for Rosmeade Avenue and League Of Honour under Fareed Anthony for Piet Steyn put them all to the sword.

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