Valorific! Muzi Yeni smiles for our photographer as Valor Red charges home
Justin Snaith has had the racing media reinventing the wheel in a quest for superlatives this season . The Cape trainer was bang on target yet again with a feature win at Fairview on Friday. His beautifully bred filly Valor Red finished with a flourish to win the R130 000 Listed East Cape Oaks.
Snaith has been making an impact in all three coastal racing centres and it was hardly surprising to see him produce the goods yet again as Valor Red showed an appreciation for the ground and caught the fancied Silvan Spirit in the final 200m of this 2000m feature.
Valor Red had been limited earlier in her career to shorter distances, but has improved after being steadily stepped up in trip. She built on her good last fourth in the Oaks Plate over 1800m with a sustained finish in this event.
Entrancer made the pace for her fancied stablemate Silvan Spirit for much of the race. Strydom moved the favourite up at the 400m to take the lead and she looked to be traveling powerfully.
Muzi Yeni had other ideas however and he produced Valor Red to challenge at the 200m marker and she powered on impressively.
Valor Red drew off to win by 1,25 lengths in a time of 127,46 secs.
Silvan Spirit ran quite handily as opposed to her last winning effort, but nevertheless stayed on very nicely for second.
The Bass’ For The Count ran third as her first start in the Eastern Cape.
Valor Red has now won twice from ten starts with five places to her credit.
She took her earnings to R126 437 in the process.
Valor Red cost R550 000 on the Cape Premier Yearling Sale Book 1.
She is beautifully bred and hails from a well tried and high performance Lammerskraal family.
By Western Winter out of the four time winning Pas De Quoi mare Nacarat, Valor Red is well related and is a full sister to the boom 2yo colt, Red Ray. She could have found her niche and should now convert some of her obvious ability into improving her career stats
While it is rather worrying and may be worth noting for punters, we were unable to verify the accuracy of a suggestion on Tellytrack by the on course presenters that certain yards in PE had been affected by a virus.
