Lovely. Anton Marcus poses as Love Struck comes away to win the Listed KZN Betting World Guineas Trial
The Kahal gelding Love Struck earned his free ticket into the Cape Guineas at Kenilworth on 22 December, when he won the R125 000 Listed KZN Betting World Guineas Trial at Clairwood on Sunday. Ridden by Anton Marcus and trained by Summerveld-based Paul Lafferty, the 3yo built on the promise of his 2yo career.
Run under cloudy skies on good to soft ground, the feature produced a largely favourable result on a day injected with the flair and varying styles of the visiting international jockey contingent
The winner of this race is guaranteed a place in the Gr1 CPYS Guineas, which must be a rather exciting prospect for the connections. That is a much higher mountain to climb though, and the decision whether to travel to the Mother City will no doubt be the subject of some debate and head scratching for them.
The field of nine jumped on terms with Marcus easing the favourite back on the paint as Lloyd took recent maiden victor Serissa up to lead from No Worries.
The order remain unchanged as they went around the left-handed turn into the straight as Marcus angled out slightly for Love Struck’s dash to glory. Joao ‘Magic’ Moreira had other ideas though as he buckled down and got Garth Puller’s Wind Trip to run strongly and challenge.
Happiness Is. Love Struck is led in by the thrilled connections
But the brief challenge was put to the sword by Marcus as he gunned the Kahal engines into life. Love Struck responded smartly and ran away from the opposition and went on strongly to hold Wind Trip to 1,75 lengths in a time of 96.07 secs.
The Garth Puller-trained Wind Trip had looked very dangerous momentarily halfway up the home stretch, and the son of Trippi looks very promising – if not quite a classic type of horse.
Wild One dashed down the rail late in typical Strydom fashion, for third, while King’s Bridge ran fourth.
The fancied Royal Zulu Guard blotted his copybook and finished 6,85 lengths behind in sixth position. He appeared to have no excuses and this was a most disappointing effort for the Moodley family. The Gauteng visitor Here Comes Billy ran last and some 14,85 lengths behind.
With trainer Paul Lafferty overseas, Love Struck was prepared and turned out in fine condition by assistant trainer, Mike Burns.
Bred by Summerhill Stud, Love Struck is by Kahal out of the five-time winning Rambo Dancer mare, Particular Passion. He got to within R26 585 of surpassing his R260 000 National Sale price tag with this win.
Love Struck has now won 3 races with 3 places from his 9 starts.
So how good is he? We will know that answer a few days before Christmas.
For now, let’s keep our feet on the ground and remember that he beat eight one-time winners here, conceding 2kgs all round. While there are flickers of promise amongst those that ran behind him, none have done much more than win their maidens early.
