Joey Ramsden – concerned about the Greyville pace
The season ended with a big bang and a nice treble for us at Durbanville. It is good to see the horses running well. They seemed to have wintered nicely this year and I think we will start to see our 2 yr olds – which have just turned 3 – start showing what they are capable of.
It was a great day’s racing on Gold Cup day and one I thoroughly enjoyed.
Apart from the Rising Sun Gold Challenge day, it is probably my favourite day’s racing in Natal.
We do not have the July crowds but experience good, high-quality racing nevertheless. King of Pain ran a smashing race in the Champion’s Cup and I was extremely proud of his effort. All our horses ran well on the day and it was most enjoyable.
It certainly seems like the Cape Crawl has managed to emigrate its way up north to Greyville where pace (or lack of it) on the two newly formed tracks is certainly starting to become a major issue.
Horses which are drawn well appear to have a huge advantage and dominate the race right from the start. It is plainly obvious that it has not taken the guys long to latch onto the fact that if you bounce out, go for a hundred metres and then ease up, you manage to cause a huge amount of congestion behind you, thus leaving many horses caught deep and ruining their chances.
This act appears to go unchallenged whereas, elsewhere in the world, there are severe penalties for it. It does not make for fair or enjoyable racing as those that do try and place themselves early on are kept out wide by the ones with the better draws.
They then ease up, causing even more problems behind them. I fear this will become a major issue for Greyville and could certainly spoil racing for everyone.
It is good to be back here in the Cape again with all the horses, even though the ground is still soggy. The water table is high and the dams are all well above capacity.
This is good news for the summer but not good news for Dean Diedericks and his team. However, Dean is tough and has survived worse and I have no doubt he will muscle his way through this.
We had some smashing juveniles run at the weekend and although no winners, they all ran well. We actually ended up having four seconds.
As it is the start of the season, I won’t get too despondent with the seconds just yet but it will become increasingly annoying if this trend continues.
However, it is not a bad way to start as many of them were having their first outings. Some of them have never seen Kenilworth and to run so well in heavy ground up the Kenilworth straight was a good effort.
Hopefully there is plenty to look forward to for the future.
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