TABGOLD have added a Pick 6 to their daily menu of QuickMix bets, which are popular with many customers because they combine races from different local and international meetings, and are completed much quicker than multi-race bets on single meetings.

The addition of the Pick 6 brings the number of QuickMix pools offered most days to six – three Jackpot QuickMixes and a QuickMix BiPot, Place Accumulator and Pick 6. Until further notice, the QuickMix Pick 6 will always be the last six legs of the Place Accumulator QuickMix.

To play the Pick 6 QuickMix, TABGOLD retail customers must mark VENUE SPM and RACE 2 on the betting form.

It must be noted that the Pick 6 first-timer rule will apply to South African races in the bet if these races form part of a South African Pick 6. The first-timer rule will not apply to all other races, including South African races that are not part of a local Pick 6.

Andrew Harrison

Sunday was a Gr1 R18 million race in Singapore. Yesterday it was a R90K maiden winner on the poly at Hollywoodbets Greyville as Muzi Yeni went back-to-back on two continents.

The conditional maiden looked to be a two-horse race between Glamorz and Head Girl but it proved to be a lot closer than expected but not with Head Girl involved. Calvin Habib had no hesitation in taking Head Girl to the lead in spite of a stiff headwind in the straight and she came up empty. Yeni stalked the pace on Glamorz and set sail at just the right time as he had to work hard to keep the late charging Miss Mayfly at bay with Chakpori holding station for third.

Siphesihle Hlengwa is obviously living up to Garth Puller’s high standards as the former champion jockey is giving the young rider more and more chances. He made no mistakes on the rejuvenated Masterbling as he made a bee-line up the straight to tackle longtime leader Ndaka with Love In Winter also making a nuisance of himself up the inside rail. Ndaka tried gamely to hold onto his lead but Masterbling out-ran him over the final 50m.

If you doubted Hlengwa’s ability, he reenforced a half-hour later as he rode the perfect race on the Puller-trained African Dusk. With the scratching of ante-post favourite Field Marshal, the Mike de Kock pair of Jaham and Woodland Glade were at the top of the boards. Woodland Glade made the early running but folded tamely in the straight leaving the way clear for Jaham. However, Hlengwa was wide awake and tracking in from the outside he joined Jaham who looked at one stage to have gone on by. But African Dusk was far from done and kept finding to get the better of his younger rival in spite of giving him 6kg.

Hlengwa and Rachel Venniker were in the same final year in the SA Jockey Academy and they have done the world-respected intuition proud. Venniker has been afforded international exposure and flown the country’s flag high and has made huge strides locally to where she is among the top echelon of riders. Mentored by the maestro himself, Michael Roberts, Venniker continues to improve with the experience afforded her as she showed aboard the Roberts-trained Chill In The Air. The son of What A Winter is obviously progressive but won fluently from Brave Bomber, the pair pulling many lengths clear of the opposition including favourite Amor Fati who folded tamely in the straight.

Calvin Habib had been making the second box his home in the early part of the season but the wheel appears to be turning. He did it all right on Mark Dixon’s mare Spirited Flight as he tracked the early pace and took the shortest way home catching a break on favourite Purple Flower. All the late money was for Purple Flower but Athandiwe Mgudlwa was caught out by a wide draw and had to settle probably much further back than planned. Alyson Wright’s mare was making up ground fast in the closing stages but Spirited Flight had already flown.

Puller is always keen to mentor apprentices who show some talent and commitment and he gave Mxolisi Mbuto his first winner aboard Littleblackvelvet. Drawn wide and instructed to tuck in, Mbuto said that he went to ‘plane B’ and raced on to make the pace.

 Mbuto obviously has some ‘bottle’ because he sat and sat in the straight in spite of the opposition attacks, and only at the 300 m mark did he ask for maximum. The filly, with a hollow or sway back, responded to the riders urgings, and without using the stick, she came home in fine fashion.

One does expect stable rider Craig Zackey to be on the ‘right’ one but it does not always work out that way as Sean Veale took advantage to get ‘second string’ Savantrix home in the seventh. Before slating Craig Zackey, who gave favourite French Flame a perfect ride, giving his mount every chance, rather take note of what goes on behind the scenes. There is not enough space in this piece to explain the all the intricacies but it will be worth it for those that are interested to listen to the explanation from Dean Kannemeyer’s assistant Nicolette Roscoe to fully understand what goes on when working out where to place a horse in the ‘right’ race. It is a difficult task that does not always work out as expected.

Serino Moodley rounded off the afternoon riding a confident race on Andre Nel’s runner Querari’s Dream. Well back in the early exchanges, Moodley hunted a dream gap up the inside as Forest Jump and King Bavarian stuck to their guns but Querari’s Dream pulled out the extra to win comfortably.

Local Quartet pools with fractional betting on selected UK race meetings will return to the TabGold betting menu from this Thursday following a mixed reception from customers to the introduction of commingled Quartet pools on all UK and Irish race meetings last month.

Such commingled Quartet pools have been welcomed in some quarters, but many TabGold customers have complained that this has resulted in them being unable to play fractional Quartet bets on UK races.

TabGold have taken note of the complaints and from this Thursday 12 September customers can enjoy the best of both worlds. As before local Quartet pools with fractional betting will be offered on two UK meetings most days with commingled Quartet pools on all other UK and Irish meetings.

Whether an Irish or UK meeting has local or commingled pools will be displayed clearly on Tab sheet race cards in store and online.

Unfortunately for several reasons, including vast differences in exchange rates, it is not technically possible to offer fractional bets on pools commingled internationally.

The minimum unit for commingled bets is R1 (more in the case of countries like the USA) and this is itself a fractional bet in international tote pools.

As an example, the unit of a UK Tote Quartet is one Pound and a customer playing a R1-unit Quartet with TabGold on a UK race is buying about 1/24th of the bet, depending on the exchange rate on the day. And if that bet is the only winning ticket, the customer will get 1/24th of the pool and the remainder will be carried over. To get the full UK Tote payout on a commingled Quartet requires playing the bet to a R24 unit.

That aside, the introduction of commingled Quartet bets has given TabGold customers many more opportunities to play Quartets on UK and Irish races, and access to bigger pools and payouts.

David Thiselton

The KZN Racing awards will be held on 30 August in the Classic Room at Hollywoodbets Greyville and there is going to be a quandary this year about the KZN Horse Of The Season just as there was last year.

The Horse Of The Year award, unlike the other awards, are open to horses from the yards of trainers who are not domiciled in KZN as long as the subject horse has had three or more runs in KZN. It can thus be won by an out of province horse who has excelled in KZN during the season. The other awards can only be won by horses from KZN  yards, although Glen Kotzen and Dean Kannemeyer count as KZN yards because they have had satellite yards in KZN for many years.

The Horse Of The Year exclusion was probably made due to there not being a suitable candidate for some seasons in recent times. However, should not genuine KZN-trained horses like the Michael Roberts-trained See It Again last year and the Nathan Kotzen-trained Royal Victory this year be acknowledged in some way? Everybody in the industry would have viewed the former as the best horse from KZN in the 2022/2023 season, although the Peter Muscutt-trained Isivunguvungu could also have laid a claim, and this season Royal Victory is viewed by all and sundry as the best horse from KZN, although the Gareth van Zyl-trained Flag Man could also lay a claim having performed better on paper than Royal Victory in both the Gr 1 Hollywoodbets Durban July and Gr 1 wfa HKJC Champions Cup.

The Highveld racing awards could also potentially lead to an out of province horse being named Horse Of The Season. They are actually called the Highveld Feature Season awards as they go on performances of horses on the Highveld in features races during the season. Royal Victory was thus named the Champion Middle Distance Horse and Champion Older Male in the Highveld feature Season awards this year and he was only ousted in the Horse Of The Season award by the outstanding Mike de Kock-trained Gimme A Nother.

However, the big difference is that the Highveld features only have a sprinkling of out of province horses competing in them. The Horse Of The Season award will virtually always be won by a Highveld horse and was this year it went to the outstanding Mike de Kock-trained Gimme A Nother, even though Royal Victory became the first out of province horse in history to win both of the Highveld’s biggest races, the Gr 1 Betway Summer Cup and the Gr 1 World Pool Premier’s Champions Challenge.

The KZN horses, on the other hand, have to compete with every champion from every province, because all champions from around the country descend on KZN for the three month long world famous racing festival, The Champions Season.

Last year the Horse Of The Season was won by the Sean Tarry-trained Princess Calla, who won three Gr 1s in KZN during the season.

This year the favourite must be the Mike de Kock-trained Dave The King. He qualifies because he ran in KZN three times in the season and he won two open weight for age Gr 1s in KZN. He was in fact the only horse in the country to have won two open wfa Gr 1s last season.

However, Royal Victory is a history-making KZN horse. On top of being the first out of province horse to do the Highveld double of the Summer Cup and Premier’s Champions Challenge, he is in fact the first out of province horse to have ever won the Premier’s Champions Challenge and the second out of province horse this millennium to have won the Summer Cup.

He could well go home empty-handed on KZN Awards night. If Dave The King is to be named Horse Of The Season then he must also surely be named Champion Older Male. Furthermore, the Dean Kannemeyer-trained Green With Envy ran three times in KZN during the season, so qualifies for awards as explained earlier by Kannemeyer’s KZN status, and like Royal Victory he won two middle distance Gr 1s during the season and one of them was in KZN, so he must be in pole position to win the Middle Distance award.

So the widely acknowledged best horse in KZN, Royal Victory, might be completely unacknowledged in his home province.

There are special awards occasionally put on at racing award ceremonies and this might be a case in point of creating one.

However, what would probably be better considering the realities of racing in KZN during any given season, would be to create a new permanent award to acknowledge KZN’s best horse of the season. The award should only be open to horses from KZN yards. 

Here’s good news for TabGold customers who take Trifecta bets on races in Australia, the UK, Ireland and France. 

Commingled Trifecta pools with Tote Ireland will be offered on all Irish races for the first time from this Friday and simultaneously the unit cost of commingled Trifecta bets on Australian, UK and French races will be reduced from R2 to R1. The unit cost of the Trio on French races also drops to R1. 

Commingled Trifecta bets on racing in Australia, France and the UK were introduced last month.
The benefits of commingling Trifecta pools with host totes (Tabcorp in Australia excluding thoroughbred venues in Victoria and South Australia; PMU in France, the UK Tote and Tote Ireland), as opposed to local pools, are many more Trifecta betting opportunities on races in those countries and bigger pools, which in turn afford TAB customers the chance to win bigger payouts.