Earmarked earlier this year as the powerful Snaith Racing Team’s potential Vodacom Durban July hope, Equus champion Legislate’s full-brother The Gatekeeper disappointed his supporters at Durbanville on Saturday when finishing a tame fourth of six runners in a race he was weighted to win.
Sachdev powers home after leading all the way to win the fifth under Luyola Mxothwa (Pic – Chase Liebenberg)
Drifting marginally from even money at the off of the Graduation Plate that marked his first run as a 4yo and his maiden outing as a gelding, the R2,2 million purchase had no answers to the sterling front-running display of his year older stablemate Sachdev who went gun top tape in the same silks at 4-1 under Luyola Mxothwa to win the 1500m contest.
A Normandy Stud-bred son of late champion sire Silvano, Sachdev, who enjoyed the benefit of a run last month, clocked 91,64 secs and won with authority to beat the late finishing My Bestie by 0,75 lengths.
Bayberry was 0,40 lengths back in third, with The Gatekeeper plodding tamely into fourth, a further 1,25 lengths back.
The Durbanville afternoon was dominated by the power players again, with Justin Snaith and Candice Bass-Robinson grabbing a treble apiece.
The only other trainers to pick up a winner were Brett Crawford, who won the seventh courtesy of the Klawervlei-bred Irish Tractor, and Milnerton maestro Vaughan Marshall, who went 1-2 in the final race, when Path Of Choice (Richard Fourie) beat Paper Trail.
Luyola Mxothwa, who rode a well-judged race on Sachdev, was in the irons on the consistent Irish Tractor and thus shared riding honours with Aldo Domeyer and Richard Fourie, who registered a double apiece.
Despite the small fields, the Pick 6 delivered a dividend of R37 372, with the Bipot (R1088) and the Place Accumulator (R164) also producing higher outcomes than would would have envisaged at the start of the day.
- The next Cape racemeeting is at Durbanville on Tuesday 14 September.
