It was a wonderfully professional win by Variety Club on the weekend and it was fantastic to see him win so well. We are all extremely proud of him and his achievements. It was also great to see that Markus had made the trip over to Hong Kong.
He is an exceptionally busy man and for him to find a break in his schedule was most rewarding indeed. I shall look forward to seeing Variety Club having a short European campaign and then maybe a trip to the Breeder’s Cup.
Back home, we have sent Coltrane off to have a crack at the Castle Tankard in Zimbabwe. I shall be going up on Thursday to see how things are and am very much looking forward to the famous Zimbabwean hospitality. It is a long, long way to go and it will be interesting to see how he goes up there. One thing is for sure, I am looking forward to the trip
I have to say that at least when Zimbabwe advertises a race, they do actually run it. This is more than can be said for some of our racing down here where they surprisingly just took the decision to move the colts Nursery by a week; this despite the fact that entries and declarations have passed. I am sorry, but I do think that our feature race dates and settings, weather permitting, are sacrosanct and just moving them because there are not enough runners is not good enough at all.
Sadly, we are in the situation where some trainers have the bulk of horses and can ultimately decide whether the race is run or not. If guys do not want to accept because they think the race might be cancelled or moved to better suit them, they have the power to manipulate the system.
It is disappointing to see our hierarchy being so easily manipulated. I am a firm believer that if trainers don’t want to accept and there are only one or two left in the race and there is a walkover, then it should happen.
Believe me, there won’t be many walkovers once they see people earning easy money for nothing. Also, owners will give their trainers a kick up the backside and get them to start racing their horses instead of letting them stand in the boxes. Enough is enough and trainers make far too many excuses for not running their horses.
We have had it all; draws before, after and between acceptances and everything else you can think of and trainers make every excuse under the sun why the horse cannot run.
There was fantastic racing at the weekend. Sadly, us home viewers didn’t get to see it unless we went and got ourselves the international racing decoder, which is not exactly a separate channel and will still include South African racing. It is quite remarkable that we have a situation where people for years have moaned that we did not get to see the interviews due to other races being covered. Now we have lost all that.
It is very much a case of “be careful what you wish for”. From a personal point of view, I miss not having international racing and would very much like to see it back on my screen as soon as possible.
Not being able to watch the 1000 and 2000 Guineas live and also Variety Club’s race on telly track was frustrating, to say the least. Let’s hope they start getting these decoders in quickly enough so we have access to the international channel and can watch all the racing that we want to.
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