Justin Snaith smashed his own South African fastest-fifty record by 22 days when Greg Cheyne brought Evoke Emotion with a devastating late run to snatch the Soccer 6 Handicap at Durbanville yesterday. This completed a stable double and was Snaith’s tenth winner in the last five days.
He said: “It’s been an incredible start to the season. I now want to carry this on and take back the seasonal record (209) from Sean Tarry plus win the big races, especially the Queen’s Plate and the Sun Met. If I can get one of those two I will be happy. The Met seems to elude my family and I’ve got to get that sorted. I can’t live in Cape Town and not win my home town’s big race.”
Red Light Girl, Snaith’s other winner, booked her ticket for the Choice Carriers Championship by making all under Richard Fourie in the All To Come Graduation Plate with her trainer saying: “She is a nice uncomplicated filly and the 1 400m of the Choice Carriers will be no problem.”
However the stable’s hopes for Le Harve in the Jockeys Chase Handicap were destroyed when he lost a good eight lengths by rearing as the gates opened and a further six by swinging wide. He finished last by a distance but at least punters got their money back because the stipes, after holding a race review, ruled that the horse should be treated as a non-runner.
Richard Fourie said: “That was the right thing to do. I was in the air when the pens opened. I called out but I was drawn wide and it wasn’t easy for the starter to hear me.”
Table Bay, having his first race since the Langerman in June, could only manage third to the Brett Crawford all-the-way winner Winter Prince and Corne Orffer but Ricardo Sobotker, Joey Ramsden’s assistant, was far from disheartened.’
He said: “Table Bay is a big horse and he needed this. He is going to have to have another run, or a gallop at least.”
Those who had backed William The Brave in the Play The Pick Six Maiden realised they were in as much trouble as Sam Allardyce when they heard Tellytrack presenter Stan Elley stating that the favourite moved so badly going to post that he would have changed his selection had he been allowed. Sure enough the colt was beaten and, to add insult to injury, the race was won by his own stable companion Cardiff Castle under a determined Aldo Domeyer.
Sobotker said: “William The Brave never throws his legs out but nobody can find anything wrong with him while Cardiff Castle was unlucky not to win last time. He is immature but I think he will keep improving.”
The Carl Burger/Riaan van Reenen partnership struck for the fourth time in their nine-week association when Shadlee Fortune made all on State Ballet in the Racing.It’s A Rush Handicap even though Van Reenen played down their success saying, somewhat ambiguously: “A blind chicken has got to get a mielie. It just needs to keep pecking!”
Blinkers improved Elusive Path several kilos last time but, a little surprisingly, Vaughan Marshall took them off for the Food Village Handicap. He was proved right when the gelding made every metre.
Rider MJ Byleveld said: “Sometimes, as in cases like this, it happens that blinkers sharpen them up and then they don’t need them anymore.”
Donovan Dillon came in for the mount on odds-on Miss Malbec in the first when Cheyne was claimed for first reserve War Of Roses and he kept the Glen Kotzen-trained filly up to her work to score by a fast-dwindling three parts of a length.
> Volatile Energy (5th) was incorrectly stated by the judges to have finished fourth in race seven here last Wednesday. Solar Night was in fact the fourth horse home. The quartet was the only TAB bet affected by the mistake and any TAB outlet customers who discarded winning quartet tickets must submit a lost-ticket claim.
Michael Clower
