Magician. Anton Marcus is now favourite to lift the trophy.
With just six racemeetings left of the current season, Anton Marcus finally got the upper hand in the jockey championship race and took a slender but welcome one winner lead over Anthony Delpech, when he rode four winners at a bitterly cold Kimberley on Monday 25 July.
Marcus can thank trainer Shaun Miller, who had an outstanding six winners on the day, and his sporting colleague Gunter Wrogemann, who assisted him in his quest. The purists may not enjoy the swapping and ‘manipulation’ of good rides in favour of the pretenders to the champion jockey throne, but it worked for Marcus today. Whether Kimberley ever sees him again is a moot point as he used the venue unashamedly to his advantage. But nobody will remember or care when we look back in history at Anton Marcus’ 2010/11 champion jockey title, will they?
Wrogemann swapped Miler mounts with Marcus in the first race and cost himself a winning commission as his original mount Tripartite won going away. Miller paid an indirect compliment to the Jooste owned Mellifont gelding’s former trainer Joey Ramsden, confirming that the horse had been in his yard for ‘just a week,’ It was nevertheless a brave recommendation for a trainer to give a champion jockey and he had little to gain out of it really. He however got it wrong in the first leg of the Pick Six when Marcus found himself on the well supported former Stan Elley filly Paracutin. She was made a lot of use of in the running of the 1800m Maiden Plate and fell away to finish fourth. The winner? Gunter Wrogemann of course, on Marcus’ stablemate, the 33-1 former Carl Burger plodder, Ed’s Angel! Wrogemann was well rewarded for his earlier generosity and it looks as if the daughter of Alado could win again as she took to the sand like the proverbial duck to water.
Trainer Cliffie Miller, in sharp contrast to his namesake, has had a diabolical season by his own high standards with a tally of just 19 winners and a strike rate of a dismal 7% going into today’s meeting. He must have felt some relief though when he cracked it in this final Kimberley meeting of the season when Marcus rode the Almushtarak gelding Platin to an emphatic win in the seventh race, an MR 66 Handicap over 1400m. The battling Nanda Devi had cut out a solid clip up front before Marcus pounced and drove the favourite to a convincing third win from twenty-seven starts.
Vernon Rugg was one of only three trainers, other than the high-riding Shaun Miller, to score on the day, and he would have no doubt breathed a sigh of relief to see his colleague St John Gray’s long struggling Elegant Corporal finally pick up a first win, under Ewert Pheiffer. It was a twentieth start for the gelding and Rugg may have been relieved. But he appeared slightly puzzled that the son of Sarge had finished ahead of his stable companion, Magic Mirror, who he said was ‘the better horse.’ He said things had not gone the way of stable elect Sherman Brown’s mount as he had been hampered. Magic Mirror may thus be one for the notebook. As for the Corporal? He may battle going forward, but he has been quite consistent and there is no substitute for a confidence boosting win.
The top-class Rakeen gelding Petrus showed again that he has few peers on the Kimberley sand over a mile, when he kicked away from a threatening Solomons Temple in the second leg of the Jackpot, to give Marcus his second winner. He was winning his seventh race from eight starts and he is surely a contender for the local Horse Of The Year title, in spite of having won nothing of consequence.
So we go into the Vaal Sand meeting tomorrow with Marcus leading 222-221 and holding the psychological advantage which has wrested for so long with Delpech. We wouldn’t want to bet on the result right now, but Marcus’ ‘Double Nelson’ total has been the undoing of some of the world’s greatest batsmen!
