The victory of Red Ray in Saturday’s Gr.1 Mercury Sprint was a bittersweet occasion, as just four days earlier, Lammerskraal Stud had lost his dam Nacarat.

According to stud manager Sally Bruss, the 20-year-old mare had been suffering from Cushing’s disease (a dysfunction of the pituitary gland) and suddenly foundered very badly in the days leading up to her death.

Founder is the layman’s term for Laminitis, an acutely painful affliction of the feet where the laminae, which lie between the horny wall of the hoof and the pedal bone, become inflamed. This notoriously dreaded affliction has claimed the lives of many prominent thoroughbreds, amongst which the great Secretariat.

A Lammerskraal homebred herself, Nacarat, one of just a handful of daughters of Pas De Quoi at stud, showed ability on the track by winning four races as a three-year-old. However, it was as a broodmare that she was destined to make her mark. Red Ray is one of seven stakes performers amongst her ten winning foals, of which six were sired by the late resident champion stallion Western Winter.

A sibling to Gr.1 Thekwini winner Nania and Listed East Cape Oaks victress Valor Red, Red Ray is also an own brother to Brutal Force, winner of this season’s Gr.2 Merchants in the same Jooste silks, and to the Listed Summer Juvenile Stakes third, Bishops Bounty, all of which must surely now put Nacarat in line for the Equus award of Broodmare of the Year.

The mare’s last two foals are a yearling own brother by Go Deputy to the triple stakes winner Adobe Pink and a weanling colt by Western Winter’s champion sprint son What A Winter.

Nacarat’s legacy as a broodmare looks assured, as Red Ray is destined to exchange the rigours of a racing stable for life as a stallion. More importantly though, at least four daughters are treasured members of the Lammerskraal broodmare band: Valor Red, Adobe Pink, Gr.3-placed Vermillion and Chambre, who is already the dam of Gr.3-placed three-year-old Mr Roy.

Nacarat’s demise counts not just as a huge loss to the stud’s broodmare band, she has also taken a piece out of Sally’s heart: “She was a great mare to me and I will not only miss her grand presence, but also her extremely loving nature.”

Ada van der Bent

Vodacom Durban July-winning trainer Joey Ramsden spoke of the emotional roller coaster he had ridden as trainer of the luckless “machine” Red Ray and of just how much the five-year-old entire’s Gr 1 Mercury Sprint victory on Saturday meant to both himself and jockey Anton Marcus.

Ramsden has bundles of outstanding memories in his training career, but one which will never fade is of a gallop Red Ray put up over six furlongs at Kenilworth under Andrew Fortune in which he annihilated the older Gr 1-winning filly Blueridge Mountain by some ten to fifteen lengths giving away weight.

In his next start, his first as a three-year-old, Red Ray beat the subsequently named Equus Horse Of The Year Legislate by 2,5 lengths in the Gr 3 Cape Classic over 1400m under Marcus. It was an impressive display, but Legislate was not well known at that stage and had started at odds of 20/1.

Joey Ramsden (Nkosi Hlophe)

Therefore the talking point became Ramsden’s seemingly over bold statement of Red Ray’s ability when interviewed for a live Tellytrack audience in the winner’s enclosure. He said in the interview he regarded Red Ray as “similar but probably better than Variety Club”. The latter had by that stage won four Gr 1s, had proved himself one of the best milers the country had ever seen, and had twice been named Equus Horse Of The Year.

However, Ramsden stood by his statement on Saturday after the Mercury Sprint win.

He said,  “I always felt Red Ray was the equivalent of Variety Club, if not better. This horse was a living, running machine of absolute epic note. I have never been one to cry when horses move on, but when this horse went away to Dubai I absolutely cried. He was a very unlucky horse at three from terrible, terrible draws and should have won a Gr 1. When we brought him to Scottsville and he got beaten from a 15 draw when they all went up the other side, I literally cried that night. We ran him in races like the Queen’s Plate from bad draws.

“He is an amazing horse and he’s just as good going to the front, although he probably doesn’t quite get home over a mile, as he is being held up. I was lucky enough that year to have some brilliant horses like Variety Club and a very good filly called Blueridge Mountain, and Red Ray made mincemeat of them all. And he was never a morning glory horse, everything he did he reproduced. Whether it happened on the track due to various factors, it was just one of those unlucky things. If ever I was frustrated over a horse, and through none of his own fault, it was with him.

“He is and was a living, walking machine and one of the most handsome horses I have trained. You only have to look at his head to see this horse will make it no matter what he does. I am glad the public got to see the best of him today. They could tell from Anton’s interview how much he thinks of him and thought of him too. I would like to think we were not totally bananas in what we felt about his true ability.”

Marcus said in the winning interview on Saturday, “This horse on raw ability is probably the best horse in the country.”

The great jockey had been at “sixes and sevens” to explain Red Ray’s below par run in the Gr 2 Post Merchants. Ramsden said simply nothing had gone right for Red Ray that day and felt he had also been a touch unlucky in the Gr 1 Tsogo Sun Sprint, which was his comeback from a year-and-a-half layoff.

Ramsden and Markus Jooste’s racing manager Derek Brugman went back to the drawing board and decided to fit blinkers for the first time in the Mercury Sprint.

Anton Marcus retrospectively described this decision as “a stroke of genius.” The great jockey said working out how the race would pan out had been like trying to decipher hieroglyphics. However, Red Ray travelled down to the start well in the blinkers and after breaking well managed to find the rail quite comfortably in suitably fast conditions. He was then given a perfect lead by Captain Alfredo at a fast enough pace to allow him to use his considerable stride.

Red Ray Gr1 Mercury Sprint (Candiese Marnewick)

When asked the question in the straight, Red Ray responded magnificently and passed the line full of running and two lengths clear of a quality field. It was the second year in succession the Markus and Ingrid Jooste silks had been carried to victory in the Mercury Sprint. This time they did the one-two as the Mike Bass-trained six-year-old Night Trip enjoyed the step down in trip and stayed on strongly from a handy position for second. Three Gr 1-winning sprinters, Real Princess, Gulf Storm and Talktothestars, filled the next three places.

The Western Winter entire’s winning time of 69,31 seconds, albeit with the aid of a tailwind, was considerably quicker than Captain Of All’s time of 70,84 last year, despite the latter having won by five lengths and being accorded a merit rating of 126.

The race put the cherry on the top of a fine season for Red Ray’s breeders Lammerskraal Stud, who also bred SA Triple Crown winner Abashiri.

Ramsden heaped praise on his Summerveld assistant trainer Alson Ndzilana, whom he described as a “supreme horseman.”

He added later, “Today Anton (Marcus) showed exactly how good the horse really is, he made me feel very, very proud of Red Ray and exceptionally proud of Anton himself.”

Ramsden was going to savour every moment of the vindication on Saturday and it was not a selfish vindication because his only concern after making that bold statement back in October 2013 had been the fear he had made a fool of the horse.

He concluded, “Maybe this horse means a bit more to me than The July.”

David Thiselton

Pictures: Nkosi Hlophe and Candiese Marnewick