Gr1 HF Oppenheimer Horse Chestnut Stakes winner - Dancewiththedevil
Dancewiththedevil recorded her fifth Gr1 success – and her fourth against male rivals – when she trounced seven opponents to record a second successive triumph in the H F Oppenheimer Horse Chestnut Stakes over 1600m on the Turffontein standside course on Saturday. Relishing the good-to-soft ground, the five-year-old mare overwhelmed a field which included a couple of the very best older milers in the country, despite her owner/trainer/breeder St John Gray’s warning that she’d had a slightly troubled prep coming into this race and was not at her absolute best, MATTHEW LIPS
Those concerns were reflected in the market and Dancewiththedevil was allowed to start at 33/10 from an opening price of 22/10. It was Bravura, making his Gauteng debut and starting for the first time since his near-miss in the J & B Met nine weeks earlier, who went exactly the other way in the betting and started as 22/10 favourite, with Pierre Jourdan going off as the 33/10 joint second favourite with the eventual winner. Last season’s dual Guineas winner Solo Traveller found plenty of fans and was backed from 5/1 to join Pierre Jourdan and Dancewiththedevil on the 33/10 mark.
Buy And Sell took the race by the horns and quickly opened up a lead of several lengths, setting a solid pace clear of Bravura and Solo Traveller, with Pierre Jourdan and Rudra next in line as Dancewiththedevil adopted her customary tactics of waiting right at the back of the field. Kavanagh was also ridden from well off the pace as Buy And Sell continued to lead until the straight, where the pacesetter soon fell back into the clutches of the field and quickly faded from view. Bravura was clearly struggling coming into the last 300m, while Pierre Jourdan was struggling to quicken. Solo Traveller and his stable companion Rudra were still in contention, but wider out Dancewiththedevil could be seen eating up the ground in her usual manner, and that’s all she wrote, folks.
Dancewiththedevil very quickly put the issue to rest and stormed clear inside the final furlong to win by 3.25 lengths from Rudra, with Solo Traveller another 1.5 lengths away in third and in turn 1.25 lengths ahead of Kavanagh, who stayed on without ever looking dangerous to make this a 2-3-4 finish for the Mike de Kock stable. Bravura and Pierre Jourdan both ran well below their best to respectively finished fifth and sixth, 7.25 lengths and ten lengths behind the winner. This obviously made life easier for Dancewiththedevil, but it would be churlish to detract from the resounding manner in which she won despite not being considered absolutely spot on for the race. On weight for age terms on a testing track, Dancewiththedevil is almost unstoppable over 1600m, and all the more so when the sting is out of the ground.
St John Gray’s wonderful mare obviously stays 2000m and easily won the Gr1 Summer Cup last November, so she may well be on target for a possible level weights meeting with Igugu in the Gr1 Champions Challenge over that distance at Turffontein on April 28th. She fluffed her lines in that event last season and Gray is doubtless keen to try and set the record straight, but before that there is the Gr1 Laurie Jaffee Empress Club Stakes at WFA for fillies and mares, a race which Dancewiththedevil won resoundingly in 2011. For all her multiple victories, Dancewiththedevil has never yet crossed paths with Igugu, but that day must surely be coming and what a race we could have on our hands!
A daughter of the otherwise undistinguished stallion Modus Vivendi, Dancewiththedevil is out of the Caesour mare Emperor’s Dance and has now won nine times from 19 starts for stakes of R3 853 425.
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