Generation Gap. Muis Roberts with Muzi Yeni.
Showboating and jacking around is just not acceptable when it comes to race-riding. That is the message that the National Horseracing Authority will probably send to experienced jockey Muzi Yeni after he clowned around with theatrics that almost cost his backers and connections a race at Fairview today.
Yeni is ironically South Africa’s most experienced jockey in terms of pure rides having ridden in over 600 races this season to date. That is close to 150 more than any other jockey in the country.
He has a win strike rate of 10%.and with sixty winners is lying at fifth place on the national log behind Piere Strydom, Anton Marcus, Sean Cormack and Robbie Fradd.
The seventh race at Fairview this afternoon, an MR 86 Handicap run over 1200m, was the final leg of the jackpot and Yeni was riding the 10-1 shot Vivalda for Grant Paddock.
The soccer-crazy 27 year old Yeni, who rode a first career Gr1 win on Happy Landing for Joey Soma and leading owner Markus Jooste in the Gr1 President’s Champions Cup in 2011, was having a good day, having won the second race with a cracker of a ride on the Justin Snaith-trained Daring Duchess.
The seventh was going to plan when Yeni hit the front at around the 250m mark and the Avontuur Stud-bred daughter of Var looked to be going away to win as she pleased. Then in a moment of madness, Yeni glanced to his outside and saw no threat and turned to the stands and waved and blew a kiss.
Obviously unbeknown to him, promising apprentice Teague Gould had breezed through on the rail on Alan Greef’s Grammatica and was gaining fast on the unstressed Vivalda.
In the final few meters Yeni froze as he obviously sensed the threat looming on his inside and gave his mount a desperate final flick of the arms – as we imagine that his whole life flashed in front of him.
Vivalda held on to win by the shortest of short heads from Grammatica, with the third placed I Got You Babe, who had shoe problems at the start, a further 4,30 lengths back.
While nobody advocates giving a horse a hiding, it is international practise and incumbent upon jockeys to ride their mounts to the line.
Yeni broke a golden rule this afternoon. He got away with it. But that’s not going to be good enough in terms of the rules.
Everybody makes mistakes. But the NHA will not see it that way. The Stipes Report will tell the full story.
