It all seems rather bizarre. Phumelela will no doubt ensure that the Turffontein track will be in pristine condition for Saturday’s Sansui Summer Cup meeting, in spite of rain forecast in the build-up. Throw in the extensive Tellytrack marketing and promotional exposure, the top horses on show and the welcome needle courtesy of the charismatic showman Mike Azzie, and we have a great day in the offing. Yet they couldn’t put a routine Monday afternoon together at Flamingo Park earlier in the week.
Us punters are selfish creatures by nature. None of us were even considering the impact of lost races on the Kimberley owners and the livelihood of the local trainers when we reluctantly left the tote just after 13h30 on Monday afternoon. We tossed our wasted form guides – yes Phumelela, they cost money and no refunds were forthcoming – into the bin and subconsciously calculated the additional write-off of the emotional time and form study effort that had gone up in smoke after just two races. All because somebody had stuffed up somewhere. But how can we really expect a public company hell-bent on profits and wooing shareholders to understand the complexities of a group of ordinary customers with over three hundred years of committed patronage between the ten of them? And what are the Racing Association doing about the losses and inconvenience suffered by the Kimberley owners and trainers?
Let’s be positive though. Very impressive – that is the only way of describing the exposure and effort put into the big race promotional drive by Clyde Basel and his team. We are all suffering from a chronic bout of pink eye, having been thrown dead this past week with this ‘Powered by Gauteng’ thing. And we even had some adamantly optimistic sounding lady from the Gauteng Tourism Authority at the barrier draw, waffling on about ‘facilitation’. She actually had the temerity to warn Cape Town and Durban to ‘watch out.’ This very pleasant woman has obviously never heard of the L’Ormarins Queen’s Plate or the J&B Met and she had to have been smoking something a little stronger than Vogue Slims to seriously believe what she was saying. But Hitlerian marketing is an obnoxious cocktail of fantasy and reality and we will eventually accept anything as fact, I suppose, if we are told it often enough.
The Summer Cup panel discussion was bravely beamed live on Sunday evening, competing directly with the MNet prime time viewing of Carte Blanche and the premiere of the excellent comedy, ‘Dinner For Schmucks.’ The movie won that round for me, but I watched the discussion in the loop – and it was great entertainment with the emotional Mike Azzie and the pseudo- cynic Sean Tarry, in the starring roles. At this stage of the game we all have our personal fancies, so who really cares about collateral form and tipster opinions? It is quite boring anyway and takes the romance out of selecting winners. And when the genius Mike De Kock doesn’t hold the aces – as he will admit on this afternoon- the Gauteng feature form tends, in any event, to be a merry go-round of confusion.
Racing needs characters and real guys that we can identify with. Maybe Phumelela should consider giving Tarry and Azzie their own show on the same lines as the Goodman-Lafferty unholy Winning Ways alliance on the East Coast? Tarry doesn’t take mud from ‘kabouters’ and he had a few choice tongue in cheek digs – at the passive shuffling of the draw balls for the big race, to the final field composition and also the fact that he had sacrificed his Sunday night to travel to Rivonia – only to be told to ‘hurry up’ by Tellytrack.
Azzie on the other hand is the eternal optimist and a horseracing marketer’s dream. The man is a dramatic emotional icon, seemingly close to tears after every winner – and he often chokes up emotionally for no apparent reason. He is a true showman and a superstar for racing and whoever had the initiative to use his recent Potala Palace interview to promote the Investec Gr2 Dingaans, deserves an accolade. Mike Azzie has in fact single-handedly provided the one ounce of needle as we go into the big day. His assertion and bold statement that Potala Palace ‘floats like a butterfly and stings like a bee’ had Betting Executive, ‘Six Place Vee’ Moodley poetically countering that he ‘would be stung like a bee by Merhee.’ The Azzman didn’t want to hear about it- noting that his fellow was already a Gr1 winner and that De Kock’s Merhee had only won a maiden ‘beating the blind school.’ Moodley observed that Merhee had actually run to an unofficial rating of 100 plus that day.
Azzie added that Potala Palace had a hindered preparatory passage returning from KZN and that he was ‘as fat as a pig’ on his return run. He said he ‘didn’t make statements about horses’ without the necessary backing and asked why it was that when Mike De Kock had a star – everybody said ‘wow!’ While he humorously suggested that he himself was an ‘underrated traner’, who ‘didn’t get enough horses at the sales, ’ there were many good trainers in SA. He confirmed that the Palace’s short term objective was the Derby – ‘bring them on boys, I’m waiting!’ The Dingaans match race between Merhee and Potala Palace is shaping up into quite a contest – and overshadowing a rather tired looking bunch beyond Pierre Jourdan and The Apache in the R2 million feature. Nothing could be better for our local racing than Potala Palace winning the Dingaans on Saturday. The Azzman’s post-race interview will be the real highlight of the day – and the instant positive press and the ready made advertisements speak for themselves! We will also remember it all in a year or three from now. So go Potala Palace!
Flamingo Pink
The sobering debacle surrounding the abandonment of the Flamingo Park racemeeting after the second race was run, is a blow in a big week for the boys up North. And the whole sad episode warrants an investigation – not a cover up, as will be the natural tendecy. Without personally having any knowledge of the background facts, it goes without saying that Phumelela also owe the local owners and trainers, as well as their punting customers, an explanation.
While a routine press release would have served the purpose of informing us as to what actually transpired, it was unsurprisingly not forthcoming and I experienced the usual fear-factor stonewall mentality from the people that I approached for clarity.
The nine race programme got under way in bright sunshine with a bomb of a result in the first. She may have run over 100 lengths back at her last four starts but Raren’s Classique showed the benefit of a blinker strike when she skipped home at 50-1 under Muzi Yeni. The winning jockey described the track as ‘wet’ and bizarrely, and without a semblance of apparent sarcasm, complimented the Track Manager on ‘an outstanding job’ in his post-race interview.
Marco Van Rensburg then won the second race on the very talented Kahal gelding Currahal, who started at 14-10. The young jockey was a lot more forthright when asked for a comment on the racing surface, describing the track as ‘terrible’. He said he was ‘not happy’ as horses ‘were slipping’ and it was ‘not safe.’ Winning trainer Cliffie Miller echoed Van Rensburg’s sentiments saying that the horses’ hooves were penetrating the surface and sliding six inches. He said there were dusty dry marks and deep pockets of moisture. Miller also added that his first-timer in the first race had returned with a suspected fractured pelvis.
Chief Stipendiary Steward Langa Douse commented in a live Tellytrack interview with Gareth Pepper after the abandonment had been announced that he had arrived in Kimberley on Sunday afternoon and confirmed that the track had been inspected prior to the meeting on Monday. There had been concerns he said, and when approached by the jockeys after the second race he had suggested that the jockeys follow the due process of a protest. He confirmed that the track was unplayable. Like the trained and qualified lawyer that he is, he was largely non-commital and frankly it was probably not the correct forum to start pointing fingers at any individual.
As one Kimberley trainer commented, it would have made far more sense, in spite of the travel cost implications, to postpone the meeting in its’ entirety for a suitable date later in the week. In that way the seven races would not have been lost in cold blood in a centre that has limited racing opportunities left.
Like the cherry on a poison cake, Tellytrack showed the two Kimberley races on the all-night loop, and then summararily switched straight to Kenilworth’s weekend replays followed by the Vaal. The notice explaining the abandonment was posted after the Vaal Sunday replays. Just work it out for yourself. Nothing sucks quite like a Saftote customer. But we suckers will be back bright and early tomorrow.
Just a word of advice. Even if you pay your R50 entrance fee at Turffontein on Saturday, just don’t expect to be admitted if you’re wearing your Flamingo pink. It’s just not in, darl.
