Joey-The Merchant of Menace

Merchants Madness! Glen Hatt gets Shades Of Indigo up in the dying strides.

Trainer Joey Ramsden cast a grey cloud over the afternoon at Kenilworth on 13 November when he produced a long-priced shocker in the R300 000 Gr2 Betting World Merchants. Owned by staunch Ramsden UK-based patrons, Gisela Burg and Martin Wickens, the powerful grey Indigo Magic gelding Shades Of Indigo flew through late under a forceful Glen Hatt to beat some  highly-rated sprinters.

Whether a maiden plate or a Group race,  Joey’s winning patrons always set a refreshing standard in elegance and sophistication in the winners’ enclosure. Martin Wickens and Gisela Burg are the epitome of decorum and add their own touch of desperately needed dignity and class to proceedings. The parade ring dress code is an oft debated sore point. It really does nothing for the sport of supposed kings when guys in t-shirts and faded denim jeans stand on the Group Race winners  podium.

Joey Ramsden sent two very diverse runners to post in a capacity Merchants field that boasted some very smart sorts of the ilk of champion juvenile Delago Deluxe and Durban Merchants winner, Splash Gold. The lightly raced five year old Fastnet Rock Gr1 winning entire Curved Ball was returning from a  close to two year break and relocation from the Charles Laird stable, while the stable stalwart was having his 38^th run and returning from a blank KZN Champions Season campaign. On the scratching of Copper Parade, Glen Hatt  got lucky as young Gareth Wright was jocked off Shades Of Indigo.

Eric Sands’ Captain Al colt Captain Harry ensured a good pace out front with Captain’s Secret and Copa De La Rey in close attendance. At that point Hatt had the grey well back and only set him alight at about the 250m marker. The manner in which he cut down his opposition and went to fetch the obviously smart Captain Harry was impressive and it was not what one would have expected of a horse that looked a league out of his depth and had not run a place in eight outings since winning over the course and distance in mid-January. His last unplaced outing in the Kimberley dust bowl would no doubt have added to punters disdain. But he was turned out in fighting trim and this placement was a shrewd play by his talented conditioner.

Dream Owners. Martin Wickens and Gisela Burg enjoy the day.

Ramsden has certainly been very fortunate with the family out of the Australian bred Palace Music mare, Palace Bride . Punters will well remember the equally impressive grey Silver Mist who was a half-brother to today’s  Merchants winner by top stallion Western Winter. They are both seven time winners now. He also raced in the same yellow and royal blue partnership and had much the same finishing acceleration. He preferred a mile and longer though and history will record that he could well have rewritten the Pocket Power story in 2006. That year he played second fiddle to the legend in the Gr3 Winter Classic, the Gr3 Winter Derby and then paralysed a capacity Kenilworth holiday crowd into a stunned silence when many thought that he had caught Pocket Power in the shadow of the post to win the Gr1 L’Ormarins Queen’s Plate. To show that nobody cares who ran second, Pocket Power has a book written in his honour today and Silver Mist spends his days in a paddock at Arc En Ciel Stud. Not that Martin and Gisela will ever forgot  about a horse that provided them with so much pleasure.

The Citizen International Jockey Test day produced a first ever victory for the visiting team and was by all accounts a success – although there were a few costly fancied flops. The first of these was the well backed Ce Loire in the opening leg of the Pick 6. Joey Ramsden’s Dupont brought impressive and consistent feature race form into the MR84 Handicap and looked the right horse from a plum draw. She was never going well though and eventually struggled into fourth place under Richard Hughes as Frenchman Olivier Peslier drove the Mike Bass-trained Mombasa home on her return from a break. Danish Diva stood in the stalls and lost many lengths but ran on well for fifth under Piere Strydom. One feels for her backers as she was never in the hunt after the slow start-another case deserving of consideration by the authorities based on the old gambling maxim – if you can’t win , you can’t lose.

Bill Prestage’s General Assembly, a graduate of the Graham Beck Dispersal Sale, benefitted from a superb ride by Anton Marcus to win the fifth race. The lightning fast Isidingo cut out the fractions up front under Piere Strydom but was running on empty with 100m to run. Marcus quipped afterwards that he had agreed to take Isidingo right out of his calculations when riding his race. This ploy worked as he came away from his field to win a fifth race from fifteen starts on the talented National Assembly gelding.

Cherry Picking! Orchard House is led in by Ian Hogg and Sir William Piggot-Brown.

Weichong Marwing pulled one back for the Springbok side when he showed his strength in the final strides of the MR 78 Handicap over 2000m. Bluemambo led as the field went around the final turn but it was Felix Coetzee who grabbed the first gap on the Mike Bass-trained Latin Magic. The son of Caesour had run a dismal race in midweek but looked far more enthusiastic as a likely winner in the final strides today. Marwing had other ideas though as he gathered a rather green Orchard House and forced him down the middle to gain a narrow win. Running in the interests of Fanny Thorogood, Ian Hogg and Sir William Piggot-Brown, Joey Ramsden must take a lot of credit for getting this emerging stayer to run after a knee-chip operation. The son of Casey Tibbs won his third race from eight starts and will win plenty over ground – if Joey can keep him happy.

Winners! The International Jockey Team who won the Citizen International.

The International Team led by 380- 341 going into the final race of the series and with Anton Marcus riding the fancied odds on Hammie’s Dynasty, the Boks were expecting to take things right down to the wire. But Jimmy Fortune showed that he wasn’t prepared to go home empty-handed as he kept the Vaughan Marshall gelding Northern Conquest going long enough to hold off Muzi Yeni and Sylvester, while Felix Coetzee kept the other Marshall runner Sovereign Empire going for third. Hammie’s Dynasty plodded on for fifth place and might need more racing experience to realise his connections’ expectations of him.

After the battle to fill fields earlier in the week, the weather threatened for a large part of the morning. But the second Test went ahead with the International Jockeys clinching it. And as Joey Ramsden so aptly summarised it on this wintry day:” Quite a fair crowd on a cr%p afternoon.”

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