Yesterday’s race meeting at Scottsville started with an emphatic victory for the unshod Gareth van Zyl-trained Cavalry who looks to have a promising career ahead of him.

The three-year-old Querari gelding races without shoes as he tends to hit himself in stride and the shoes make the impact worse. He was bought for R225,000 and after two good outings in barrier trials and a fair fourth in the Sentinel Stakes over 1000m he was presented in fine shape yesterday and came home 3,75 lengths clear of the favourite Buckleberry.

Blaze Of Silk (Candies Marnewick)

Anton Marcus was aboard the latter and he made amends in the next when keeping the Sean Trained favourite Riptide going to hold on. Marcus had one of the most memorable months of July in his life this year despite riding with a damaged wrist and admitted in the winners enclosure yesterday his July/Gold Cup double and the fact he was now the only rider in history to have ridden five July winners had all not sunk in yet. However, the key to his popularity with punters, who fondly call him “Superman”, is he treats every race like the July and hence his consistently high strike rate, albeit on a selection of the best horses.

The 4kg claimer Khanya Sakayi scored a quick double when bringing home the Tony Rivalland-trained Reactive and the Paul Gadsby-trained Miss Varlicious in races four and five respectively. He later made it treble when scoring on the Lola Crawford-trained Silver Cent in the last.

Eric Ngwane also rode a quick double on the Corinne Bestel-trained Blaze Of Silk and the Kumaran Naidoo-trained Roy’s Magic respectively.

There was also a win early on the card for Brett Crawford and Sean Veale with Elegant Royal.
Highflying apprentice Luke Ferraris attained a bruised hip in the course of the meeting and although advised to go for x-rays appeared to be fine.

By David Thiselton