Party Time. Oblivious of the serious stuff at hand!
The spectacular L’Ormarins Queen’s Plate day held at Kenilworth on 7 January was the ultimate personification of the ritzy, glitzy and quite glamourous smile on the occasional public face of horseracing. The winner’s podium was crowded after the two prestigious Group 1 races with happy people all wanting a nibble at the tasty apple of glory.
Ever noticed how few folk are standing around the shell-shocked trainers and jockeys in the parade ring during the non-earners’ post-mortems? Shaking heads and shrugged shoulders tell a story and more hiring and firing decisions are made in that adrenaline charged sixty second post-race conflab than at any other juncture in an average day in the life of these professionals.
The reality is that scant attention is paid to the inevitable also-rans and winning is everything in horseracing, as it is in life. Ironically this is one year that folk may actually remember who ran second in the Gr1 L’Ormarins Queen’s Plate. Joey Ramsden’s Variety Club was the public’s Queens Plate winner since he won the Cape Guineas in dazzling fashion three weeks ago-and things were looking great right up until about 50m from the winning post. That’s where Justin Snaith and Piere Strydom stepped in and changed the face of our racing history forever. With a bloody Aussie bred horse, but nobody is begrudging them that.
Big Apple. Hassen Adams is a leading SA racehorse owner.
Winning Queen’s Plate owner Hassen Adams is a fierce competitor and a man who loves to win. Those are probably just two of the personal attributes that have propelled him to the top of the corporate tree from the uncertain roots of his humble beginnings. He is also a man with the flair for the dramatic and romance and few will forget his emotional post-race acceptance after winning the J&B Met just under a year ago. That day he proudly held aloft the silverware of one of our great races on that heroes acre, as the first man of colour to claim that rare honour.
The triumphant owner of the outstanding three year old Gimmethegreenlight will well know that nothing is forever in horseracing, too. In the wake of Past Master’s resounding 2011 J&B Met victory, his jockey Gerrit Schlechter was a hero and the Jet Master colt was also set for a dazzling career. But after going on to win the Gr2 Drill Hall Stakes at his next start in May 2011, he sadly ran a further four disappointing races before retiring injured, just ten months after that historic January day. His veteran winning jockey, a master of the saddle and the public hero of that victory has also moved on. He no longer rides the Adams horses and watched Saturday’s race on a television screen.
Change is the only constant in racing. The cliché applies from one year to the next just as it does from one week to the next. So absorbing the sour with the sweet and the bad with the good is a very real requirement in this game. Take visiting KZN-based trainer Dennis Drier and his stable jockey Alec Forbes. Less than a week ago they started the New Year on a high with three glorious winners for owner Knut Haug at Kenilworth on Tweede Nuwe Jaar.
Beached? Alec Forbes has had better big days previously.
After the withdrawal of Igugu from the Paddock Stakes, Drier and Forbes could hardly be faulted for believing that their smart Dynasty filly Beach Beauty would go close to winning the prized Gr1 feature on Saturday and maintain their rich vein of form. She started at 9-10 and in a slow motion circus she was forced to make her own pace. History shows that she couldn’t maintain the tempo out front and was passed by Thunder Dance in the final 200m. Beach Beauty held on for second, but the blame game was on and the fingers were pointing everywhere. Forbes erred- he should have let her stride. Drier erred – he should have forseen the likelihood of a crawl.
In the very next race, Drier and Forbes had an opportunity to redeem their afternoon when despatching the 8-10 favourite Venetian Lady to post in the Fillies and Mares Novice Plate over 1200m. But the racing gods were not playing ball. After showing pace, she shortened her stride and just held on to third spot. Monday’s magicians were Saturday’s suckers.
Even Champion Trainers have their blank days. Mike De Kock’s week started badly with the withdrawal of his Horse Of The Year, Igugu, from the already threadbare Gr1 Paddock Stakes field. De Kock provided the natural pacemaker Gibraltar Blue and also despatched the highly vaunted Toreador colt Link Man to post for the Gr1 Queen’s Plate. Gibraltar Blue ensured a true run race and then fell in a hole to finish a humble eighth, while the grey Link Man ran an inexplicable shocker to run last and 16,45 lengths off the winner.
Another man who would choose to put Saturday well behind him is jockey Richard Fourie. He recently severed his association with the powerful Snaith team for reasons ‘he wishes not to discuss’ and felt the brutal loneliness of his new found freelance career on Saturday. He had a miserable Queen’s Plate day. With just a handful of moderate rides, the best he could do beyond his riding fees was to earn commissions when riding two minor race fourth places. He also had to watch the L’Ormarins Queen’s Plate from the unsympathetic benches of the weighing room. And to provide some impetus to his emotional roller-coaster, his regular mount Gimmethegreenlight soared to a scintillating win under Piere Strydom.
Good Fellow. Richard Fourie had a quiet afternoon.
The 26 year old Fourie must have felt that he had travelled back in time to his lonely arrival as a starry-eyed apprentice in the Mother City seven years ago. And then to add insult to injury, he endured the ignominy of finishing stone last in his final ride of the day as the shadows lengthened in the Politician Stakes. He made the pace on Pilot Mike for his father-in-law Glen Puller in this Derby trial, but fell away to nothing in the final stages. The word is out that Fourie will shortly relocate to the commercial bright lights of the City Of Gold and he interestingly has ridden four of his last seven winners in that region. His parting of the ways with the Snaiths may thus well prove to be just a minor character building trough in his otherwise soaring career fortunes.
Cliches and even more clichés, to close! Life goes on though and the wheel of fortune never stops turning in this game that tames lions.
