Gold Circle Pty (Ltd)

Today's Racing :

Russian Sage all set for comeback

MICHAEL CLOWER
Russian Sage will make his eagerly-awaited reappearance in the 1 200m Pinnacle Plate at Kenilworth on Sunday.
It will be the 2008 Cape Derby and Daily News 2000 winner’s first run since Kempton in England six months ago and he has been nominated for the Vodacom Durban July. Justin Snaith, who has taken him back from Mike de Kock, said: “He’s been doing very well and we will see where we go with him after Sunday’s race.” Snaith will adopt unconventional travel plans of old when sending Dance With Al from Cape Town for the SA Fillies Sprint at Scottsville on Saturday. He explained: “She will travel as late as possible. I did that with Lyrical Linda five years ago, sending her to Durban on the Thursday and on the Saturday she won the Garden Province Stakes. The Sprint is a hot race but Dance With Al is very well and she will run well.” Kapil, twice second in the Rising Sun Gold Challenge, has a back problem and this almost certainly accounts for him only finishing mid-field in the Drill Hall. Stan Elley said: “He didn’t come back too well from that race and we found problems in the sacroiliac area. But he has done two good bits of pace work since and I think he will make the Gold Challenge on June 12.”
Vaughan Marshall’s smart two year-olds Madrisa and Brilliant Cut miss Scottsville’s Day of Speed. The latter waits for the Langerman at Kenilworth on Sunday week while Madrisa is being given a break.
Andrew Fortune, Bernard Fayd’Herbe and Felix Coetzee suffered a nightmare journey from Durban on Saturday. They took off at 7am but their plane had to be diverted to Port Elizabeth when fog descended on Cape Town. They were then diverted to East London and went back to Port Elizabeth before eventually arriving at Kenilworth after the fifth race, nearly eight hours after leaving Durban. Stuart Randolph, on the other hand, took the 9am flight and landed at Cape Town without problem. He then cocked a snook at the big names a second time when scoring a runaway success in the sixth, the Listed Terrance Millard Olympic Duel Stakes, on Greg Royden-Turner’s Katici Princess. Fayd’Herbe, Coetzee and Fortune were left wondering what the fates had got against them when they came in second, third and fourth! The winner, backed from 14-1 to 15-2, revelled in the testing ground but Glen Kotzen explained that there is more to this than simply the mare being Irish-bred. “The going is all-important as she has terrible feet with almost no soles, and we have to glue on the shoes. But she is a half-sister to Kahal and she is worth plenty after this.” Coetzee had some compensation when Margaret Filmer’s gallant Grafton Street took Mike Stewart’s Durban July dream a step nearer by defying top weight in the next, a mile handicap. Stewart said: “He will have one more run here before going for a Pinnacle at Clairwood in mid-July. I know he’s got a lot above him in the July but his form is so good that he deserves to get in.”
Richard Fourie rode his second winner since painfully pulling ligaments in his groin when Team Valor’s 17-hand-plus Ebony Flyer made an impressive winning debut for Justin Snaith in the opening fillies juvenile.
The Jet Master filly is a half-sister to the stable’s 2007 Cape Fillies Guineas winner Captain’s Lover. Just as well bred is fellow newcomer Sea Point, bought by Gaynor Rupert because she is a half-sister to Cape Guineas winner Pointing North. The Spectrum filly landed the second juvenile fillies for Mike Robinson and Grant Behr. Behr took a nasty fall going to the start of the fifth, a 2 500m handicap. He said he was stiff and sore yesterday, when he was going for x-rays on a sprained finger and a bruised shoulder. He hopes to resume at Durbanville on Wednesday. The race was won by trainer Riaan van Reenen and jockey Grant van Niekerk with Keith Steinberg’s Posh Boy and the same combination also landed the concluding maiden with Lionel Adams’ Coupe de Foudre.

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