Capetown Noir to run in the 2014 Gr1 Horse Chestnut Stakes
In what is bound to prove a major boost to the Gauteng season and a teaser on the eve of the KZN Champion’s Season, Milnerton based trainer Dean Kannemeyer has announced his intentions to fly L’Ormarins Queen’s Plate winner Capetown Noir to Johannesburg for the HF Oppenheimer Gr1 Horse Chestnut Stakes to be run at Turffontein over 1600m on 29 March.
South Africa’s champion miler, Capetown Noir will fly up on the same basis as Kannemeyer’s successful raids of the past, which included Free My Heart’s brilliant victory in the 2002 Horse Chestnut 1600.
Neisius steered Capetown Noir to a sensational win in South Africa’s premier mile and he was also the pilot when Free My Heart beat Badger’s Coast and Bunter Barlow all those years ago.
It is thus fitting that the veteran jockey will team up again with his regular stable to ride Capetown Noir twelve years on. Kannemeyer recalled this week how his champion Free My Heart ran arguably his best race when brought to Johannesburg four days before the Horse Chestnut Stakes. That was theoretically the worst time to arrive and flew (excuse the pun) in the face of popular science.
The son of Jallad suffered no ill-effects after his easy win there, as he followed up with the best Champions Season campaign of his illustrious career, winning the Gr I Gold Challenge over 1600m and the GrI Champions Cup over 2000m, both at Clairwood.
Capetown Noir, the dual Cape Guineas and Derby winner, has shown his paces around a right handed track previously and will enjoy the long Turffontein run in.
The Gr1 Horse Chestnut Stakes was won last year with a masterful display from the saddle by the brilliant Piere Strydom who got Slumdogmillionaire to rally from what seemed a beaten position.
Another Cape challenger who could line up is trainer Vaughan Marshall’s J&B Met winner Hill Fifty Four. Marshall indicated last month that his connections are keen to for the son of Captain Al, who won the Met from what many thought was an impossible position, to go to Jo’burg.
“We are discussing the matter but, if he did go, it would only be for two races,” Marshall said after the Met. “They are the HF Oppenheimer Horse Chestnut Stakes and the President’s Champion Challenge four weeks later.” The handicappers have raised Hill Fifty Four a kilo to a new merit rating of 112 for his Met win.
Marshall said he was elated to have won the Met for a second time. Like Kannemeyer, he is also based at Milnerton, and first won Cape Town’s biggest race as a visitor from Durban in 1996 with La Fabulous. While Johannesburg is unlikely to be a popular venue for all the Capetonians to clash, Durban and the Champions Season bullring is likely to be a different story. Trainer Justin Snaith has continued his domination of the South African season and is currently R700 000 ahead of trainer Sean Tarry at the top of the national trainer log.
He was recently quoted in saying that his bid to become national champion trainer for the first time is being thwarted by a lack of boxes in Johannesburg. He was trying to secure boxes on a permanent basis at Turffontein but all he apparently could get were 10 boxes on a temporary three months basis.
“That is not economically viable,” Snaith said. “We are not expecting to go there and clean up, but three months is too short because it takes time for the horses to get acclimatised to the altitude.”
Gauteng’s loss will be KZN’s gain though and Gold Circle’s Chief Operating Officer Graeme Hawkins was upbeat on Friday when speaking about the build up to their big season, which launches on 3 May with the running of a triple Gr2 feature bill, made up of the Drill Hall Stakes and the KRA Guineas and Fillies Guineas.
Hawkins said that all the major yards would be raiding Champions Season and provided the Sporting Post with a preview of the breakdown of the visiting trainer allocations, which he said was subject to change.
Clairwood Visitors:
Joey Ramsden – 22 horses
Justin Snaith – 22 horses
Mike Bass – 20 horses
Vaughan Marshall – 20 horses
Dean Kannemeyer – 20 horses
Stan Elley – 6 horses
Paul Reeves – 5 horses
Summerveld Visitors:
Brett Crawford – 20 horses
Joe Soma – 12 horses
Alec Laird – 20 horses
