Justin Snaith has had many five-winners plus race meetings, but his three Grade 1 victories on Saturday including the Sun Met will have topped the lot as the best day of his career.

Justin Snaith

He also won had two other winners on the day.

Snaith has opened up a big lead in the National Trainers Championships and should clinch his second career title as Met winner Oh Susanna and Klawervlei Majorca winner Snowdance should collect a few more big races between them during the season. Betting World Cape Flying Championship winner Sergeant Hardy, on the other hand, would like to roll up the Kenilworth straight and take it with him wherever he goes as seven of his eight career wins have been there and he is unbeaten in three starts over Saturday’s 1000m course and distance. Exotic punters were grateful to him for winning on Saturday after the false start led to the scratching of three horses, including the original favourite Naafer, as he ended up the Tote favourite.

Oh Susanna couldn’t match Snowdance over a mile, although she did have a wide draw to overcome that day in the WSB Cape Fillies Guineas, but in terms of class she has now proved herself at least the equal of her stable companion as she has subsequently won both the Cartier Paddock Stakes and the Met with contempt. Oh Susanna’s performance on Saturday will be better on paper than Snowdance’s as the latter was the highest rated runner in the weight for age Majorca for fillies and mares off 108, while Oh Susanna beat the unexposed Last Winter, rated 107, and the 118 rated Marinaresco and 123 rated Legal Eagle. The Equus Award panellists are going to have a headache separating them. Snaith will also now have a problem singling out the best filly he has ever trained and it will likely between this pair.

Snowdance is another feather in the cap for Cheveley Stud, who bred the champion three-year-old filly of two seasons ago, Bela-Bela, as well as Legislate, the 2013/2014 Equus Champion three-year-old colt, Champion Middle Distance Horse and Horse of the Year. She is also another feather in the cap for the late great champion sire Captain Al and for last season’s Equus Champion Broodmare Mystic Spring, as she is out of the latter’s daughter Spring Lilac.

Oh Susanna continues the phenomenal legacy of her sire Street Cry, whose other best progeny around the world include the legendary females Zenyatta and Winx.

By David Thiselton

Glen Kotzen is eyeing the Cape Derby-Durban July double that he pulled off with Big City Life nine years ago for Eyes Wide Open after Hugo Hattings’ Dynasty colt ran out a convincing winner of the Investec-sponsored classic at Kenilworth on Saturday.

Kotzen had no regrets about abandoning his original plan of going for the Met with the Peninsula Handicap winner, recalling: “I told Anthony Andrews that he would keep the ride in the Met but then I looked at the pedigree and saw the colt was a 26 November foal. I thought ‘Am I made or what? We must wait until next year for the Met.’”

Richard Fourie, who also won this on Legislate in 2014 and on Russian Sage six years earlier, was fined R1 500 for celebrating victory before the line but it made barely a dent in his R 56,250 percentage. Punters felt the disappointing run of 61-20 favourite Tap O’Noth far more.

Eyes Wide Open (Candiese Marnewick)

The course vet could find nothing wrong but MJ Byleveld said: “I couldn’t fault the horse in his work and he looked magnificent but in the race he felt a bit lethargic. By the time Richard went I had no horse underneath me.”

Could it have been that respiratory virus that caused Vaughan Marshall to scratch his runners the previous Saturday? “I don’t think so,” answered the trainer. “And it wasn’t the trip. I put it down to just one of those off-days – he was never travelling.”

In the Betting World Cape Flying Championship Tevez caused pandemonium when he jumped the gun. Naafer and Olympian completed the course before they could be pulled up and were promptly scratched while Search Party followed suit after unshipping Fourie on his way back to the restart.

Several of the others were so worked up that they couldn’t run up to their best but Sergeant Hardy was totally unruffled and made much of the running to give Bernard Fayd’Herbe his fourth Cape Flying and Justin Snaith his first. The Captain Al gelding has now earned R1.8 million for Veronica Foulkes and her catering supremo son Oliver despite his wind problems.

Trip To Heaven’s intensive pens tuition saw him get away on terms and finish second. Interestingly, though, he did not finish as close as he had done 12 months ago when he did things the old way, giving away an impossible amount of ground at the off and finishing like the proverbial train.

This is the last year that the winners of the two CTS $500 00 races collect more than the Met winner. In 2019 the races will be priced in Rands, R5 million of them, but the winner will get only 50% compared with 57% in the Met.

Candice Bass Robinson and Grant van Niekerk took the 1200 for the second successive year thanks to Dutch Philip bouncing back to form with a bigger saddle while Undercover Agent fully justified Brett Crawford’s confidence under Corne Orffer in the 1600.

Markus Jooste’s Mayfair Speculators was listed as part-owner of Dutch Philip but the famous emerald green, yellow stars and black-sleeved colours were not seen throughout the day – all part of the no-protest deal with the unions that apparently included the two ‘stipes-permission’ scratchings.

By Michael Clower

“In the parade ring beforehand Lester Piggott was asking me how I was feeling after dieting to ride at 51.5kg. I replied: ‘Very hungry!’ He wished me the best of luck and that boosted my confidence.

“I went down to the start with a pony but Oh Susanna felt good. In the build-up to the Met she was phenomenal and I knew that basically I had just to ride her with confidence. I tried not to put any pressure on myself – and it’s very hard for a jockey not to do that – but winning the previous race on Snowdance made it a lot easier.

“After the start I ended up in a very nice position about three lengths off them. It was a little bit dirty early on, a bit of a rough race, but after things settled down I still thought I was in a good place although I would love to have been a little bit closer.

“Coming into the straight she was going well and I asked her to quicken. She took a little bit of time to do so. Legal Eagle was in sight and in full flight while my filly was still unwinding but once my horse started gaining ground – at about the 200-150m mark – I knew that I was going to get there and that I was going to win. I know I celebrated close home – but this was the Met and I’d won it.”

What the other jockeys said:

Piere Strydom, Last Winter (2^nd): “I managed to get over from that terrible draw, squeezing out a couple of guys in the process. But in the straight I was going nowhere until he suddenly put his mind to it and then I was really flying.”

Aldo Domeyer, Marinaresco (3^rd): “Everything went right and he gave me everything he had but we were beaten by two unexposed horses.”

Anton Marcus, Legal Eagle (4^th): “He never really overcame the draw and I thought he would do that quite easily but it was a good run and a furlong out I thought he was going to win.”

Corne Orffer, Captain America (5^th): “We decided we had to give him a chance and unfortunately they went a bit slow. He is game and gutsy, and he plugged on nicely.”

Bernard Fayd’Herbe, African Night Sky (6^th): “I had the run of the race but I just didn’t have the horse underneath me.”

Richard Fourie, Gold Standard (9^th):”It was a slow run race but when the time came to quicken he didn’t find anything and at the end I was going backwards.”

Greg Cheyne, Sail South (11^th): “I had no luck in running. I was cramped throughout the first half of the race and I then had too much ground to make up.”

By Michael Clower

Oh Susanna earned an exalted place in South African racing history by becoming the first three-year-old filly to win the Met since Chair Lady in 1902 while, not to be outdone, stable companion Snowdance became the first to complete the Cape Fillies Guineas-Klawervlei Majorca double in the same season since Sun Classique 11 years ago.

Little wonder that Justin Snaith, having finally avenged his family’s Met hoodoo, took a hefty swig of Mumm champagne when he stood on the Sun Met podium while Grant van Niekerk was unable to resist spraying it around like Lewis Hamilton.

Oh Susanna (Candiese Marnewick)

Snaith, who won three of Saturday’s four Grade 1s and five of the 13 races, revealed something of the pressure he had been under, saying: “It didn’t help that people were saying Snowdance was a penalty kick while in the Met I thought we were gone when Oh Susanna was having quite a hard time early on.”

The former champion trainer is now on target to relinquish the ‘former’ element of that description and seemingly he relished shaking hands with Usain Bolt – “He is one of my lifetime heroes and I felt I had to win the Met to meet him”- while Durban beckons for his two star fillies although this still has to be confirmed.

Snaith explained: “Nothing has been decided and I need to sit down with everybody and make sure I am on the same page with them all.”

This means Gaynor Rupert and Kevin Sommerville plus Jack Mitchell in the case of Snowdance (a daughter of Captain Al and bred by Vaughan Koster at Cheveley) while Mrs Rupert’s Drakenstein is the official breeder of the Australian-bred Street Cry-sired Oh Susanna.

Van Niekerk, who also won one of the two CTS $500 000 races, earned some R585 000 for his day’s work. That might sound a lot but South African jockey earnings are low compared with many other major countries. Florent Geroux, for example, collected the equivalent of R7.5 million for winning on Gun Runner at Gulfstream in Florida later that same day.

The 26-year-old South African rider, fined R1 500 for celebrating victory while Last Winter was still bearing down on him like nemesis incarnate, reflected on the podium: “I have had ups and downs for the past year or so.” Indeed he has. Heavily criticised for his ride on Marinaresco in last year’s Met, he promptly lost the Bass Racing first jockey job and his subsequent contract with Plattner Racing was not renewed. But he seems to have fitted into the huge Snaith Racing empire like a handmade glove and there his considerable but sometimes unconventional talents appear to be appreciated to the full.

But things so nearly went haywire in the Majorca. Those who backed Snowdance at 1-4 were getting close to a collective heart attack when she appeared to be making hard work of it in the straight but Van Niekerk explained: “At about the 350m mark a bird flew up in front of me and after that Snowdance was looking at everything.“

– Just Sensual, widely considered the main danger to Snowdance, flopped and finished last but one. The veterinary examination ordered by the stipes failed to reveal anything.

By Michael Clower

If you can’t make it to Cape Town, then the best place to catch all the Sun Met racing action tomorrow is at Greyville Racecourse. Gates will open at 10:30 and full totalisator and fixed odds betting will be available right from the start of the Kenilworth Sun Met race meeting, where the first of 13 races is due off at 11:50.

Tellytrack, with full sound through the public address system, will be flighted on the impressive big screen at Greyville, magnifying the racing action from both Kenilworth and Turffontein right from the start of the day’s action at both centres.

Greyville’s first race gets under way at 16:05 and courtesy of Sun Sibaya Casino and Gold Circle, racegoers will be in line to win prizes to the value of R35 000. Apart from the Sun Sibaya-sponsored accommodation, restaurant and theatre prizes, Gold Circle will be giving away tote betting vouchers and much sought after entrance and grandstand seats to the first ODI between South Africa and India, which takes place at Kingsmead on Thursday 1 February.

The ever popular Lightning Shot Bar will open its doors at 11:00 and Hungry’s, the Braaizone and Kidszone will also be in operation through the day/night race meeting at Greyville.

The Durban View Restaurant open its doors at 15:00 and a full dinner buffet will be available – for bookings call Ursula on 031 314 1659.

The R5 000 000 Sun Met jumps at 17:15 and the last race at Greyville goes off at 19:40.