Gold Circle Pty (Ltd)

Today's Racing :

David Thiselton
The 2007/2008 horseracing season will go down as a memorable one for many reasons.
As the horse floats rolled in from the Cape and Gauteng at the beginning of the KZN Champions Season in April, the two horses on everybody’s lips were the Cape pair, Pocket Power and Dancer’s Daughter, winners of four Grade I races between them during the Cape Sizzling Summer Season.
It was quite amazing, therefore, that they should end up dead-heating in South Africa’s premier race, the Vodacom Durban July.
The eagerly awaited re-match in the Champions Cup over 1800m at Clairwood didn’t work out as well, Dancer’s Daughter breaking slowly and trapped wide, although both horses were flying at the finish, Pocket Power a close second and Dancer’s Daughter less than a length behind him in fourth.
Mike Bass said magnanimously, “Pocket Power couldn’t quite get there conceding 3,5kg but Buy And Sell beat him in last year’s July and in the Gold Challenge, so he deserved a big race win.”
Trainer of Buy And Sell, Sean Tarry, described it as “a good end to a disappointing season”, an indication of the high standards he sets himself as he did finish fifth in the Trainer’s Championships and provided another major seasonal talking point with his three-year-old filly, Wendywood, who won the Woolavington in her second career start and found herself in the July less than two months after her debut.
Pocket Power not only sealed his place among the greats of the South African turf, emulating Politician in twice doing the Queens Plate and J&B Met double and winning the July with topweight, but he helped Jet Master become the first South African-bred horse in history to win the Champion Sire’s title twice. He was also the first progeny of the Jet Master to win the July, and yet another of his progeny, J J The Jet Plane, ended the season as one of South Africa’s best ever sprinters. The Lucky Houdalakis-trained three-year-old gelding won three Grade I sprints in succession.
Dancer’s Daughter ended the season with four Grade I wins, adding not only the July but the Gold Challenge to her Cape Grade I tally, and her trainer Justin Snaith emerged as a force to be reckoned with, finishing third on the trainer’s log and bagging seven Grade I victories.
The season maintained interest for fans right up until the last minor meeting at the Vaal on July 31, for with just three races left Charles Laird was less than R5,000 ahead of Mike de Kock in the race for the Trainer’s Championship.
De Kock won the next two races to clinch the title.
De Kock had said days before, “If it happens, it happens, but, no matter what, it has been an incredible season.”

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