While Craig Zackey dominated the early part of the Fairview Friday card with three winners, Richard Fourie converted a chance ride and a feature success to keep his Highveld-based colleague on his toes.
A National Yearling Sale’s bargain buy, Luna Halo (Richard Fourie) wins the Lady’s Bracelet at Fairview on Friday (Pic – Pauline Herman)
The fight for national jockey championship honours this season is still in the early days, but the tussle between Zackey and reigning champion Fourie, as well as Gavin Lerena, who indicated this week to the Sporting Post that he would not be averse to riding regularly in Nelson Mandela Bay Racing territory, makes for an interesting and exciting competition.
On Friday, Fourie won the second for Cliffie Miller when deputizing for the injured Marco van Rensburg on Lanciafiamme, and then followed up with Luna Halo – like his earlier winner, offspring of Fire Away – who registered her tenth victory with an easy wrap of the R150 000 Lady’s Bracelet.
Downgraded from Listed status to non-black type, the mile feature provided Luna Halo with the second win of her 4yo career, and showed how well the former East Cape Nursery winner has trained on from a sparkling 2yo term.
Starting at 7-10, Luna Halo hit the front after Red Sash had called it a day, and she went on smartly to beat stablemate Lady Silvano (25-1) by three quarters of a length in a time of 96,25 secs for the mile.
For the second consecutive Eastern Cape racemeeting, the Greeff yard saddled the feature trifecta as Essential (66-1) rounded off the top three, a further 3,25 lengths back.
Bred by Wilgerbosdrift & Mauritzfontein, Luna Halo is a daughter of War Front stallion Fire Away out of the twice winning Captain Al mare, Sentinel.
She was a bargain (always in hindsight!) R160 000 purchase from the 2022 National Yearling Sale and is now a winner of 10 races (6 on turf and 4 on the all-weather) and 7 places from 19 starts for stakes of R941 125.
The next Fairview racemeeting is on the turf, on Friday 17 January.
