Hollywoodbets Cape Guineas day on Saturday was a memorable one for the Ridgemont team.
The Robertson-based breeding operation sponsored the Ridgemont Gr3 Peninsula Handicap, and celebrated four winners on the major day.
A knockout of a day as Knockout and Grant van Niekerk cap four terrific winners for Ridgemont (Pic – Chase Liebenberg)
With the well established champion Rafeef and the brilliant Canford Cliffs leading the charge, Ridgemont are enjoying an excellent season with a top 5 position on the national breeders log, and a healthy 30% winner to runner strike rate, with nearly four months gone of the current term.
The Ridgemont Saturday quartet commenced in the opener when the Piet Botha-trained Escarpment won the GrandSlots Workriders Maiden Plate at the second time of asking.
Given a perfect ride by William Bambiso, Escarpment showed good ability over a trip short of his best to win well.
He is by Ridgemont’s international stakes winning sire Canford Cliffs out of the three-time winning Western Winter mare, Icy Fire.
The next Ridgemont bred winner arrived in the third, the HeartFM Commonwealth Plate, when the handsome bay colt Lion Rampart built on an excellent debut effort three weeks earlier, when a facile, albeit green, winner of the 1000m contest in the familiar Hollywood Syndicate strip for trainer Vaughan Marshall.
The exciting and upwardly mobile son of Met winner One World is out of the three-time winning Var mare, Saltire.
It will be good news that the clearly talented winner has a full-brother on the Cape Premier Yearling Sale on 25 January 2024. Named Give It Laldy, he comes up in the Ridgemont draft of fourteen as lot 70, and is described as an athletic and scopy sort.
The Brett Crawford-trained Oratorio gelding Bardolino won the fifth race, the 1600m Flash Class 4 contest, when storming home under Hollywoodbets Durban July winning jockey Kabelo Matsunyane.
Bardolino is out of the Highest Honor mare, Woodland Beauty, a smart producer of winners.
The Justin Snaith-trained Knockout put the cherry on the top of the Ridgemont quartet when she finished with a rattle to beat Mia’s Harper going away in the ninth race, a 1200m OZOW Class 4 (F & M).
Knockout, who is out of the Dylan Thomas mare For The Count, was winning her second race in six starts and looks ready to fulfill her exciting early potential.
