Sheikh Fahad’s Qatar Racing – “Our ambitions include competing against the very best in the world all over the world” – had one of its first South African winners at Kenilworth on Saturday when the Donovan Dillon-ridden Tarsus became the first two-year-old to beat the older horses in Cape Town this season.
MJ Byleveld
Qatar Racing is a major force in Britain where it has some 90 horses in training and its handful campaigning in the distinctive gold-braided claret in South Africa includes the Snaith-trained certain future winner Frank Lloyd Wright.
Joey Ramsden said: “I train two for them and I have a slight family connection as Jamie Spencer rode for them. I would like to think that Tarsus will stay a little further. These Vars are not all about sprinting. I have had a bit of luck going further with them (notably Variety Club) and I have enjoyed the challenge of trying to do that.”
Qatar own this one in partnership with the colt’s breeder Maine Chance who were also on the mark with the Vaughan Marshall-trained Sequined on whom M.J. Byleveld made all in the Interbet.co.za Handicap.
Santa Clara, out of a full sister to champion sire Silvano, put herself in line for a crack at the Irridescence at the end of June by leading over a furlong out under Aldo Domeyer in the opening maiden juvenile fillies.
Candice Bass-Robinson, winning her ninth two-year-old race of the season, said: “She shows quite a bit of pace and she travels comfortably.”
The start of the other two-year-old race – won by Corne Orffer on the Glen Kotzen-trained 12-1 chance Crown Guardian – was delayed for almost ten minutes after one of the riders reported an “indentation” on the way to the start. The ground staff searched the area as carefully as the Turffontein diamond seekers but the hollow proved to be an optical illusion. Even so the jockeys promptly avoided the area like the plague.
The Andre Nel-trained East Lynne (“Tiny, not much bigger than a pony”) and Bernard Fayd’Herbe spoiled Piet Steyn’s 60th birthday celebrations by readily beating Hammie’s Fan in the Tabonline Maiden.
In the early part of the season Louis Burke was being hailed as the next star apprentice but then it all went cold and the Mike Stewart-trained Al Wahed in the fifth was the still-talented Burke’s first winner for over five months. Jason Smitsdorff also knows what it feels like to go out of fashion but it hasn’t stopped him battling and he was rewarded with his first success since before Christmas on Kotzen’s Star Of London in the Supabets Handicap.
But it was Morne Winnaar who provided the biggest surprise of the day when leading over a furlong out on 16-1 shot Piracy, trained and part-owned by Geoff Woodruff, in the last.
- The Betting World screens showed nothing more informative than a new place rule throughout the afternoon. “It’s a national problem,” explained the long-suffering girl on the desk when asked, for the umpteenth time, what had happened to the prices.
By Michael Clower
