Gold Circle Pty (Ltd)

Today's Racing :

Mother Russia excels

David Thiselton

In the Grade 1 Paddock Stakes at Kenilworth last Saturday, the Mike de Kock-trained Mother Russia extended her wonderful record to claim a second Grade 1 victory. The now 11-time winner has won eight stakes races, including two Grade 1’s, three Grade 2’s, a Grade 3 and two Listed events.
She was formally trained by Joey Ramsden before being bought by Mary Slack’s Wilgebosdrift Stud and sent to de Kock at the end of last season.
In her second start for de Kock she won the Grade 2 Ipi Tombe Stakes over 1 600m at Turffontein on December 5 in very impressive style.
She undertook the arduous journey from Johannesburg mid-week, arriving on Wednesday morning. However, Mother Russia, a smallish chestnut filly with a huge heart, had reportedly put in such good work in the build up to the race that she was rumoured “unbeatable”. Furthermore, she provided the country’s current leading jockey, Anton Marcus, with his only ride of the day.
She was consequently all the rage in the betting market, opening as 15-10 favourite before shortening during the week and again on raceday to start at 11-10. River Jetez, a full-sister and stable companion to Pocket Power, was her main market rival, opening at 18-10 and shortening into 16-10 by the off.
Mother Russia’s arch-rival from her Cape Town three-year-old days, Sparkling Gem, was allowed to drift from an opening call of 4-1 all the way out to 11-1, the obvious concern for punters being that she wouldn’t stay the 1 800m trip.
The race was run at a crawl, de Kock saying later that he had never seen a Grade 1 race run so slowly. Jalantra with Richard Fourie up set the slow pace and this suited her stable companion Sparkling Gem very well. Marcus had Mother Russia one wide of Sparkling Gem on the rail, the pair in joint fourth place about three lengths back, while River Jetez was sitting in behind Sparkling Gem.
River Jetez dived for the inside rail in the straight and became involved in a ding-dong battle with Sparkling Gem. Marcus had switched Mother Russia out wide and upon giiving her her head at about the 300m mark she galloped past the inside pair and went on to win by 0,75 lengths from Sparkling Gem with River Jetez a further 0,5 lengths back. The Bass-trained Love Is In The Air finished fourth. De Kock said Mother Russia’s next target would be the J&B Met, where on yesterday’s performance, she could prove one of Pocket Power’s main rivals.
Mother Russia was bred by Normandy Stud.

\| All information on these pages are (©) Copyright Gold Circle Pty (Ltd) 2002 \| site map
(This site is best viewed at 1024 X 768)