The Vaal Classic track stages a low key eight race card tomorrow and the highest merit rated race is a MR 80 Handicap over 1500m which could be won by Sail For Joy, although it is an ultra-competitive handicap in which all nine of the runners have a chance.

The four-year-old Argonaut gelding Sail For Joy had to be used up to a certain extent over 1600m last time when overcoming a wide draw to go to the front, so he did well to hang on for a close third to the well regarded Jubilee Line. He now has a much better draw of three and will enjoy the step down in trip, considering his last two wins have both been over 1400m. He has only been given a one point raise for his two close finishes to Jubilee Line so is competitive off this mark. Polar Ice had a cracking win over 1700m with first time blinkers on and has another good draw. He is only two points higher in the merit ratings and is 4,5kg better off with Silver God for a 3,3 length beating in the Listed Sea Cottage Stakes last time, which was over an 1800m trip which probably stretched him from a wide draw.

Front Rank

Front Rank is an enigmatic sort but is capable and can never be ignored. He has Tommy Waterdevil beaten on paper on the form of their meeting in November as he has dropped to a competitive merit rating. His last two runs don’t look good at first sight, but he spread a shoe in the second of them and was hopelessly out at the weights in the other in a Pinnacle event. Silver God was not disgraced in the Dingaans, finishing just 6,5 lengths back, and followed with a fair effort in the Listed Sea Cottage Stakes over 1800m when 5,65 lengths behind the promising Majestic Mambo. This is his first attempt at a handicap and he has to run off an 85 merit rating from a tricky draw of six in the nine horse field. Tommy Waterdevil is a consistent sort despite often making breathing noises. He is better drawn than last time when not disgraced in fifth behind the classy three-year-old Pietro Mascagni over this course and distance. Pietro Mascagni was comfortably beaten by Silver God in the Dingaans, but a line can be drawn through that run.

There is not much between Tokyo Drift and Sail For Joy and Tommy Waterdevil on recent form. Tokyo Drift was running on from off the pace last time over 1600m on this course from a similar draw to this one. Trip To Troy is 1kg better off with Sail For Joy for a 1,4 length beating over 1600m so there is not much in it. Machismo is 1kg better off with Front Rank for a mere short-head beating over 1400m, although his last two runs have been uninspiring. Trading Profit returns from a layoff over a suitable trip and has Strydom up from pole position. He reeled off a hattrick between June and August before being well beaten in the Grand Heritage. It would probably be advisable to include the whole field in the exotics.

Pinfanta is selected as the Pick 6 banker in the last race over 1700m. This promising daughter of Captain Al had to set sail for home early when finding herself in front down the straight over 1600m last time and did well to finish second. Muzi Yeni does not have an easy draw of six to overcome and Pinfanta has also been given a three point raise. However, the Houdalakis yard bring them on slowly but surely and this horse looks promising. The stablemate Braxton from pole position could be the main danger but it is significant Yeni sticks with Pinfanta having been the regular pilot of Braxton too.  Azkur is another one to consider, but she does have a tough draw to overcome.

The previous race could be won by Crazy Vision, who is only two points higher than his fast-finishing win over this 1700m course and distance last time. However, they did all finish on top of each other in that race so the form could be suspect. He does have another good draw and is taken to beat Cosmic Count and Shogun.

Carmalita is an interesting runner in race five over 1000m as she won her maiden from start to finish over this trip and the form has been franked. Off just a 72 mark she has a fine chance.

The previous race is a competitive maiden in which the expensive Mardi Gras is taken to win as he finished strongly on debut, although he would likely prefer further so can’t be bankered. Copper Jay did beat him in that last race, while That’s Life was backed then but over raced before fading. They will be threats and Crassus and Singfonico can’t be ignored either.

The first leg of the Pick should be fought out by the two form choices Eleni and Flying Feather.

Corné Spies has been in his usual devastating form in two-year-old races and his pair of first-timers in the first two races could give him yet another juvenile double as they are reasonably well bred and don’t have a lot to beat.

By David Thiselton

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