Michael Clower

GLEN KOTZEN has decided to have no runners for the next fortnight after a mysterious and undetectable virus forced him to scratch all his 12 horses at Kenilworth on Wednesday.

“The horses ran so badly at the last meeting (he ran 11 – only one made the frame, four finished last and another four were second last) that I have decided to pull the plug. I will give them all 14 days off and have no runners during that period. Once they start freshening up again we will start nominating.

“It’s a respiratory infection but it shows nothing and there are no symptoms. The horses look good, they work well, eat up and don’t cough. But when they get to the 400m mark, and the jockey starts asking them, they stop as if they had been shot.

“Last Saturday’s runners looked fine beforehand, we lung-washed them and the bloods were good to go yet they ran badly. The quickest way to get rid of something like this is not to run anything.”

It has been a tough week for the Woodhill trainer. On Monday he was fined R35 000 as a urine sample taken from Herodotus, after winning a race at Kenilworth over two years ago, was found to contain traces of a human painkiller. Seemingly this came from the urine of one of the stable staff.

But Kotzen, typically, is looking beyond this week’s bad news, reasoning that the Cape season is only just getting into gear and that his present patient approach can pay big dividends in the next three months.

It was 4.45am on Wednesday when Eric Sands found out that he was in trouble. “Rainbow Bridge had traces of urticaria on his neck and cheek. It’s an allergy, like somebody coming out in a rash, and it can happen in a few minutes. By the time I checked out the rest of the string it had gone down his shoulder.

“I wasn’t going to wait until it covered his whole body. I had to give him treatment and I couldn’t run him after doing that.’

Obviously the treatment would show up in any post-race dope test and the horse would be disqualified. Not treating him, and letting him run, was not an option either. “True, he might have won by six lengths but he was 5-10 and, if he was beaten, what would that have done for the public, the horse and myself? Running him would have been absolute stupidity and I certainly wasn’t going to risk it.”

Last year’s Met winner will now start off in the Green Point on December 12 and unfortunately his second run back, the one where he tends to run a bit flat, will be the L’Ormarins Queen’s Plate on 9 January.

They say they never come back but Captain Of Stealth, struck down by serious injury after looking a star of the future last season, put up a truly eye-catching performance in today’s Tabonline.co.za Pinnacle.

True, the race took a lot less winning without Rainbow Bridge but Sean Veale’s mount pulled his way to the front early and looked as if he might just hold on a furlong out. At the line he only went down by three-quarters of a length to the fellow Vaughan Marshall-trained Silver Operator in the Mario Ferreira colours and, if he stays sound, his day will surely come.

“I was very happy with Captain Of Stealth,” said Marshall, “and I think we will look at the Green Point with Silver Operator.”

African Night Sky, running for the first time since the 2018 Durban July, finished last but Justin Snaith was far from disheartened, saying: “He was very keen, too above himself and too excited – but he had only had the one grass gallop in all the time he has been off.”