“I don’t know if they have got no balls or if they are just too tight with their money,” pondered former SA champion jockey Andrew Fortune in the Fairview first post-race interview on Friday, when issuing a challenge to his colleagues to donate R500 per winning ride to the local Horsecare Unit.
The Odyssey Steel-sponsored Fortune, who had just confidently piloted the Justin Snaith-trained Pataudi to a facile win in the first race on the polytrack, was his usual bubbling self, asking interviewer Alistair Cohen whether he had been demoted.
“When I saw you here, I thought they sent you down because you had done something wrong,” he laughed.
Fortune has taken up the donation cudgels from last term’s SA champion jockey Gavin Lerena, with a donation of R500 per winning ride. He confirmed that the largest HCU in South Africa was located in the Eastern Cape.
“It is the least the jockeys can do,” he added.
As for his ride, he modestly said: ” I was somehow born for these armchair rides.”
Let’s hope the other top jockeys step up and take up the challenge.
