Hawwaam, Mike de Kock’s exciting Dingaans winner, is a 10-1 chance with Betting World for the Sun Met but punters should not back him unless and until his trainer reports him a runner because, as of now, he looks like being still in Gauteng when the historic Kenilworth race is run on January 26.

In an interview with Charl Pretorius’s Turf Talk, de Kock spoke of the present much stricter African Horse Sickness regulations which led, in part, to Soqrat and Ghaalla taking 27 hours to get to Cape Town and added: “Hawwaam would have been on the same float but his value and reputation are too high to have risked an arduous trip. Everyone rightly expected Hawwaam to take on Vaughan Marshall’s One World and the other classic contenders but at the end of the day we are the ones who have to travel and the risk is all ours.”

Present plans, according to Pretorious, are that the colt will run in Turffontein’s Tony Ruffel and Gauteng Guineas rather than the Met.

Rainbow Bridge was installed 3-1 favourite when Betting World opened its Met book on Monday but Do It Again has since been backed from 4-1 to 7-2. However the Sporting Post’s disclosure that Bernard Fayd’Herbe weighed in half a kilo overweight in last Saturday’s Green Point makes Rainbow Bridge’s performance even better than it looked. It is not that uncommon for a jockey to come back a little heavier than he weighed out – it is even possible for sweat-soaked colours to account for this – and the rule sallow for half a kilo. However this is the equivalent of half a length over a mile, and theoretically enough to make the difference between fourth and first for Rainbow Bridge.

By Michael Clower