Gifted Grant

Salute! An elated Grant Van Niekerk steers Gifted For Glory to victory (Equine Edge)

Jockey Grant Van Niekerk rode three of the four feature winners at Kenilworth on Saturday in a memorable afternoon at the office. The young man’s confidence was at a glorious high when he steered the Silvano gelding Gifted For Glory to a terrific win for Mike Bass in the R200 000 Gr3 Winter Derby run over 2400m.

Van Niekerk put the memory of his two month suspension earlier this year well behind him, and showed just why he is rated as one of South Africa’s most promising riders. He has an uncanny knack of finding the good positions and horses appear to run for him.

The eleven runners that went to post were topped by the two greys, King Of Pain and Ze Kaiser, while Alan Greeff’s PE raider Placido made for a welcome additional attraction.

The reluctance to go out and make the pace a decent one  was illustrated by the musical chairs up front where a good few runners swapped roles at various times. This is rather bizarre if one considers that two top stables fielded eight of the eleven runners! One would think that each of the stable quartets would have at least one reliable pacesetter in waiting.

Against this background it was one of the three ‘single’ stables in Glen Puller’s runner Awesome Power who eventually bounded around his field at the 1400m to add some respectability to what was a ridiculous dawdle up to that point.

His rider Fareed Anthony had obviously had enough of the tiptoeing games and realised that his only chance of getting the best of a stayer in a staying race was to avoid a sprint for home.

Into the straight Awesome Power still galloped strongly as Parker and Cigar Boy challenged.

There were many in with chances at the 300m and Joey Ramsden’s lovely grey  King Of Pain was seen  storming down the outside appearing to have the matter signed and sealed.

But  the high riding Grant Van Niekerk had other ideas as he brought Gifted For Glory down the centre of the track to win going away with a great late run.

Van Niekerk stood up and saluted in triumph as his mount beat the Selangor Cup winner by 0,75 lengths in a winning time of 156,29 secs.

Cigar Boy held on for third ahead of stablemate Johnny Rockets who ran on very well for fourth.

Gifted For Glory was bred by Riverworld Stud and is by Silvano out of the brilliant eight time winning Badger Land mare, Badger’s Gift.

He went for R1,1 million on the National Yearling Sale.

A winner of 4 races from 7 starts, Gifted For Glory took his stake earnings to R245 000.

Plenty will yet be heard from Gifted For Glory in time to come.

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