Andrew Fortune won his second Fairview Friday feature in seven days when he was seen at his top-class best again to get O Tamara home in the R150 000 Listed Lady’s Slipper.
Andrew Fortune gets O Tamara up to beat Craig Zackey on Favour’s Pride (Pic – Coastal Photos)
The meeting was held in sticky conditions with a soft rain falling throughout the afternoon. All riders were given an extra 0.5 Kg at the scale due to their wet equipment.
Andrew Fortune – superb judgement in the finish again
Fortune was aboard the second favourite O Tamara, one of three Alan Greeff runners in the fifteen strong field, where the Mike Bass-trained Cape raider Extradite started a 15-10 fravourite.
O Tamara was some lengths off the early gallop set by Lady Willow, who over raced and fell in a whole passing the 200m to run stone last.
The wide awake Craig Zackey had noticed the pacemaker wobbling and grabbed two lengths on the maiden Favour’s Pride, and it looked a winning lead as Fortune was weaving his way through traffic.
In an exciting finish, the Fortune magic worked and O Tamara got up to beat the gutsy Favour’s Pride (what price in a maiden next time?) by a head in a time of 87,32 secs, with Extradite running on wide out 2,25 lengths back.
It was not a great race for Grant Van Niekerk on Extradite.
After easing off the heels of Seattle Sunrise, entering the first turn at the 1200 metre mark, Van Niekerk was reminded by the Stipes of his obligation to ride his horse out to the end of the race.
The winner is one of many nice youngsters racing in the Scribante white and orange silks this season.
The recently sold for reputed telephone numbers Oomph was one of those,but they have some good depth and O Tamara looks to be getting better and better – and will relish a bit further.
Alan Greeff trained the winner
O Tamara was bred by the Scibante’s Piemonte Stud, which is based in the heart of racehorse country in KZN.
Named after the province of Piemonte in Italy where the Scribante’s family home remains (which Lee returns to every year), the stud is a family owned business with the father and son duo of Lee and Dino , both sharing a common love of speed and competition in a variety of sports and disciplines.
Lee and Dino not only produce and own Group winning racehorses, but they are also actively involved in the highly competitive arenas of racing cars, pigeons and showing Koi at the highest level.
O Tamara was not really wanted at sale – she went through the ring at the 2015 Suncoast KZN Yearling Sale where she was bought for R30 000 by Pine Lodge Stud.
O Tamara has now won 3 races with 4 places from 7 starts and took her stakes tally to R233 725 – which excludes the BSA Added Value Stakes Bonus of R77 500.
With her ability, the family are happy to have her racing for them and with her black-type will add value to their broodmare band.
She is by Equus Champion colt of 2007, Argonaut, out of the three-time winning Spectrum mare, Syncopate.
