Dutch Philip sets out on the 1 600k journey from Milnerton to Summerveld this morning after putting up a satisfactory Mercury Sprint prep in the Pinnacle Stakes at Kenilworth on Saturday.
True, he didn’t win but – even if you were one of those whose money helped make him favourite at 11-10 – third place (beaten only a length and a quarter) was hardly a disaster of Eskom proportions. And there were extenuating circumstances as the stipes reported that he was tightened for galloping room 400m out.
Dutch Philip (Liesl King)
“It was a good run and he had a fairly hard race which he needed,” said Candice Bass-Robinson. “He likes to come from further back and I thought that Aldo possibly rode him a bit too handy.”
However the man on top had no such reservations and, asked if he was happy with the performance, replied: “Definitely, particularly over 1 000m and as he was giving away up to 9kg.”
Tevez, carrying the same Marsh Shirtliff colours, almost certainly earned a reprieve from retirement by accelerating like a Ferrari to lead 100m out and coming away under hands and heels with Bernard Fayd’Herbe delightedly saluting with his whip.
The eight-year-old’s trainer said: “He is an amazing horse. I was going to retire him at the end of the season but the minute he doesn’t enjoy it any more will be the time for that, and at the moment he loves his racing.”
So do the Justin Snaith two-year-olds. For most of the season they have been, to use their trainer’s now famous phrase, “under the radar,” but now they are emerging thick and fast. Clipper Captain got there under 50m out in the first (Richard Fourie: “I had to work on him the whole way but he is one to keep an eye on”) while Clouded Hill powered home under Grant van Niekerk as if he is something special.
Another lesson served up on Saturday is that the Horse Chestnut progeny have that comparatively rare ability to act in the soft and, as such, will be a valuable weapon in the punters’ armoury over the next two or three months. Clouded Hill is by the Mike de Kock-trained legend and so is Magic Mary who came right away in the final furlong of the Betting World Maiden.
For Brett Crawford and Corne Orffer, though, it was the victory of Grand Silvano that was sweetest because this three-year-old spent so much of what should have been his early career knocking at death’s door. “He had laminitis and after that he strained a tendon,” his trainer recalled. “We thought we would never get him to the racecourse.”
Brandon May, involved in a car accident, was forced to miss the meeting as was Louis Burke who was hurt in a trackwork fall on Saturday morning. Morne Winnaar took his place on Foxy Princess in the Supabets Handicap and proceeded to set a searching pace on the 22-1 apparent no-hoper. Much to the surprise of the jockeys in the stands his mount kept up the gallop just long enough.
“She kept rolling so I thought I would hold on,” reported Winnaar but Paddy Kruyer freely admitted to being one of the doubters. “Making the running wasn’t the plan but from that draw (13) we had to try something,” he said. “But I was waiting for her to stop!”
Joey Ramsden, setting the standard with his two-year-olds all season, showed that he still has a few decent maidens left to unleash by making it Cape Town juvenile success number 15 with the Donovan Dillon-ridden Sugerpova.
By Michael Clower
