Former national champion trainer Justin Snaith said recently his KZN campaign this year had panned out to be the most important period of his current season. He duly got his feature race campaign off to a good start at Scottsville yesterday when winning the Listed KwaZulu-Natal Stakes over 1000m with the speedy Captain Al filly Jo’s Bond, who was ridden by Richard Fourie.

Justin Snaith

Fourie travelled from Cape Town for just the one ride and sat just off the pace. Jo’s Bonds powerful turn of foot saw her drawing clear of the favourite Elusivenchantment to win by a length. Our Destiny and Cosmic Burst ran on well for third and fourth and Vision To Kill was next best.

Earlier, the Gavin van Zyl-trained Oratorio gelding Arianos Bagofgold produced a good finish from off the pace to win the Non-Black Type Sentinel Stakes over 1000m under Eric Saziso Ngwane. Autumn In Seattle was giving the winner 2kg and had to be switched, so did well to finish a 0,5 length second. Northern Rebel was next best.

The first round of the newly introduced KZN Breeders “Levelling the Playing Fields” series of races kicked off at yesterday’s meeting. Trainers were invited to nominate one KZN-bred horse with a rating of 78 and below to compete in three races over 1200m, 1400m and 1600m respectively.

In Round 1’s first heat the Chris Erasmus-trained outsider Putchini just got up under Billy Jacobson to deny the Tony Rivalland-trained Reactive. The Garth Puller-trained Cipher, the Greg and Karen Anthony-trained Poivre and the Paul Gadsby-trained Roy’s Power were next best. The favourite Beckedorf dwelt in the stalls and lost many lengths.

Jo’s Bond (Nkosi Hlophe)

In the second heat, the Glen Kotzen-trained three-year-old filly Royal Agree won cosily by 1,25 lengths under Athandiwe Mgudlwa from the Wendy Whitehead-trained Brave And Bold, with the Doug Campbell-trained Fire The Rocket, the Paul Lafferty-trained Tropical’s Son and the Sean Tarry-trained favourite Kahula next best.

Both Putchini and Royal Agree are effective up to 1600m at least.

Later, the Dean Kannemeyer-trained three-year-old Summer Sky won a MR 86 handicap over 1400m by five lengths under Anthony Delpech. On that showing the Trippi gelding could develop into a feature campaigner.

There were also wins at the meeting for Wendy Whitehead and Alec Forbes, Paul Gadsby and Sean Veale and Mark Dixon and Marco van Rensburg.

By David Thiselton