Three months into a R1 million partnership to reward Grooms with R1000 per winner, Gold Circle and Hollywoodbets have seen the initiative develop into a major success.
A total of R215 000 has been paid out to 126 different winning Grooms.
From 1 October, tokens to the value of R1000 are presented to the winning Groom of every race in KZN. This is in addition to the 1% of stake money that the Grooms already receive.
Last month alone, R68 000 was paid out to the winning Grooms.
Koos de Klerk presents Aseza Dolo from the Nathan Kotzen team with one of of his awards – he had two winners with Merlin From Berlin (Pic – Candiese Lenferna)
There were 66 different winning Grooms, with Aseza Dolo (Nathan Kotzen) and Michael Zwelithini (Dennis Bosch) each having 2 winners.
Trainers Paul Lafferty, Johan Janse van Vuuren, Dean Kannemeyer, and Garth Puller each had 5 winning Grooms on their respective teams.
Thabo Ngqwangi from the Dean Kannemeyer team has saddled the most winners with 4, while Motsienyane Rearboka (Gary Rich) and Sphiwe Zuma (Brett Crawford) have saddled 3 winners over the past quarter. There are also 30 Grooms who have saddled two winners.
Trainer Dean Kannemeyer has the most winning Grooms in his team thus far with 10 different winners, while there are three other trainers in Gareth van Zyl, Gavin van Zyl, and Garth Puller that have 9 winning Grooms each.
