Golden Days! Gavin Lerena and Sean Tarry celebrate Aslan's win.
The Super Sunday Canon Gold Cup meeting on 31 July brought the curtain down on an intriguing season of racing excellence on the track and political ploys in the boardrooms. After consuming over eight hours of valuable family time on a Sunday though, the climate may well now be ripe for our leaders to review the way we package the raceday experience and get in line with the modern entertainment trends of quick, slick and chic.
The R1 million Gr1 Canon Gold Cup is always a crowd spectacle and the 2011 running will go down in the record books as a memorable one for Gauteng trainer Sean Tarry who trained the shock winner Aslan and the second placed Kolkata, who ran out of his skin as a three-time winner running off a merit rating of 85. But just like the feature race, it was a long, long day.
It was nobody’s fault that the inclement weather during the build-up week forced the operators to switch the meetings around, but if anything, running the Gold Cup meeting on a Sunday may have just exposed and forced the issue of the entertainment value of the raceday to the surface. In a disposable world of unlimited options, and where almost everything is at our fingertips and readily available, the eight hour raceday has surely become dated and tedious.
The sparse crowd on a late beautiful Sunday evening at Greyville gave tangible credence to the opinion in many quarters that a compact raceday experience could just be part of the complex solution to bringing the crowds back to where everything happens. IPL Cricket, amongst other economical entertainment options, has proven that the spectator wants to work and play in a day, and still have the time to relax. Twelve races, a Pick Six, Place Accumulator and two Jacpots, amongst the wide and confusing array of betting options is hardly exciting stuff and with the limited catering facilities and little if nothing in the way of side-shows, even the likes of U2 or the All Blacks would battle to hold the attention span for hours on end.
On the day, the jockey challenge fizzled to nothing with Anton Marcus finishing a highly commendable ten wins ahead of Anthony Delpech, to clinch the Champion Jockey title. Marcus had a quiet day winning the third race on the Paul Lafferty-trained Rapid Flow, while Delpech also won one race, when steering the impressive Jet Jamboree to an end-to-end win in the Listed Darley Arabian for Dominic Zaki. The son of this season’s Champion Sire Jet Master has won three races from eight starts, and could be one of the bright lights of our next season. Gavin Lerena was the most succesful jockey on the day winning a superb Group 1 double, and this would have gone some way to eradicating his bad memories of a horror Vodacom Durban July day, where he was labelled as the perpetrator of some of the interference that marred the feature race.
Azzman's Palace. Potala Palace wins the Gr1 Champion Stakes.
Trainer Mike Azzie has taken plenty of flak and pressure for pumping horses up to be champions in the past, and he would have been sitting on the edge of his seat when a buoyant Gavin Lerena took the R3 million Singspiel colt Potala Palace to the front in the R500 000 Gr1 Premier’s Champion Stakes over 1600m. The Australian-bred Gimmethegreenlight had every chance and jumped well but had nothing to come late and plodded into third. Lerena rode a great race to keep the Azzie horse going and although he drifted out badly late, there was something really impressive about this Group 1 win.
Muzi Yeni bounced back in no uncertain fashion, after breaking his nose on July day, and he rode the first two winners on the card. Yeni secured the third spot on the jockey’s table and looks a real contender for top honours next season. Colin Scott’s Lundy’s Liability three year old Live Controversy won his second race from three starts and showed that horses don’t know their price tags. The R35 000 purchase from the Waterford Stud skated away from his field in the MR 78 Handicap over 1300m. An elated owner Robin Scott said afterwards that he was ‘an ugly bugger’ but that he had high hopes for him as the horse needed even further to show his potential. Yeni was bang on target again in the second when he gave Dynasty the first of his two winners on the day. Lineal Factor won her third race from thirteen starts for owner Mayesh Chetty and trainer Garth Puller said afterwards that she had earned a rest. It was a great run from a wide draw and the Hyjo Stud bred daughter of Winning Factor is apparently very temperamental but has lots of ability and courage. Dynasty was credited with a Gr2 win when the brilliant little Beach Beauty won the Gold Bracelet in a canter for Dennis Drier. She is top-class.
Muzi again. Dynasty's Lineal Factor wins the second race.
Gavin Van Zyl’s The Apache once again delivered the goods when winning the R700 000 Gr1 Champions Cup and the Dingaans and Daily News winner has an obviously very bright future ahead of him. Regular rider Raymond Danielson had the Mogok flagship well back early and he stormed through late to hold his stablemate Bulsara at bay. After Paul Lafferty in the third race and Sean Tarry in the Gold Cup, Van Zyl celebrated yet another trainer exacta. The list of disappointments in this race were a long one and included Sage Throne, Solo Traveller, Castlethorpe and the filly Dancewiththedevil.
We look forward to the season ahead with excitement and some trepidation. The world is likely to be a very different place in twelve months from now!
