What started as a frustrating weekend with four second places, turned into a New Year’s celebration for Louis Goosen at Greyville yesterday with a trio of winners. It has not been easy for trainers in KZN over the past few weeks. First it was blistering heat and almost drought conditions, followed by a few torrential storms, especially at Ashburton where staff spent their lives sorting out the sand tracks that were seemingly forever being washed away.

As a consequence, work patterns were interrupted, some horses affected more than others.

The Grey Crusader was one of the quartet of seconds last Friday and it is not often that local trainers back up in a race four days later.

“I could only work him 400m on the grass before that last race,” said Goosen. “You can’t get a horse fit like that. Friday night was just a gallop.”

“He cleaned his bowl, no temperatures and no coughing so we took our chances today.”

It was a chance well taken as apprentice Jason Gates took The Grey Crusader to the front and was never headed.

Gates was back in the winner’s box half an hour later as he rode a driving finish on Imperial Royal for Wayne Bardenhorst. It started as a three-way tussle in the home straight with La Duchesse and Fonteyn the initial protagonists but just as La Duchesse got the better of Fonteyn, Gates arrived late to snatch a short-head decision.

Haddington is one of the biggest horses in training and easily picked out in the early morning gallops but he has been affected by the wet weather and a change of equipment, or rather lack of it, saw him put his opposition to the sword in the third to give Goosen his second winner in spite of him dislodging rider Eric Ngwane in the parade.

Ngwane, recently out of his time, rides regular work for Goosen and knows Haddington well. “He doesn’t like horses around him and doesn’t quicken when there are horses in front of him,” explain Ngwane as to why he made an early move on the home turn. “He keeps going at the same pace so I let him roll and just played with him to keep him going.” Haddington rolled home by seven lengths.

“Marco van Rensburg (who rode him last time) said I must remove the blinkers. He was over-racing,” added Goosen. “I just let Eric ride his own race.”

Van Rensburg did the honours for Goosen in the last with Bravo Zulu just getting the better of Royal Rustler with the judges having to resort to a magnifying glass to separate the two.

Jeff Freeman has a small string and he got his New Year off to a good start as Muzi Yeni got home aboard What A Scorcher to tie the lead in the National Jockey’s Championship with Anton Marcus who had ended his year one ahead of Yeni. Marcus’s lead was short-live as Yeni went ahead again, albeit by a single winner, his second race of the afternoon on the Alyson Wright-trained Gorgeous Guest.

It was back to all-square in the championship as Marcus rode a hard-fought finish on the Garth Puller gelding Sentido in the seventh to beat off the challenge from Andre Nel’s pair of Selailai and Washington Square.
It’s still early days in the championship however, as there are still seven months of the season to run.

By Andrew Harrison