Is Paul Peter’s remarkable training feat of saddling the first five horses to finish in the MR 80 Handicap ninth race at Turffontein on Saturday a new SA record?
We have seen stable trifectas aplenty – Wendy Whitehead enjoyed one just last Monday at Hollywoodbets Greyville – and even the rare quartet here or there. But quintets, or filling the first five slots home, is very rare.
Naval Guard (Warren Kennedy) leads the Peter charge (Pic – JC Photos)
The Turffontein-based Peter is enjoying the season of his life and he celebrated the unique moment when Warren Kennedy got the very progressive Naval Guard home to beat Great Affair (Kabelo Matsunyane / 14-1|), Secret Is Ours (Gavin Lerena / 7-2), Grimaldi (Brian Nyawo/25-1) and Baymax (Ray Danielson/40-1) in a twelve horse field.
The heat at the top of the SA trainers championship log has been turned up many degrees, with Peter maintaining an excellent run of good form over the past few months.
He currently leads incumbent Justin Snaith by R1 640 000, with the Turffontein team having saddled 42 winners more than their Philippi counterparts.
Peter’s win strike-rate of 19,3% also has Snaith’s 13,4% in the shade.
While Snaith boasts a powerful string, and usually makes merry in the SA Champions Season, the reigning champion grossed R15 848 725 versus Peter’s R12,815,175 to win last season.
On Sunday Peter was setting the gallop with R14 994 338 versus Snaith’s R13 329 963. With a stake of R5 million, the Hollywoodbets Durban July on 2 July could be the title dealbreaker.
Snaith currently boasts 50% of the top ten on the Hollywoodbets Durban July ante-post betting boards, so would seem to have a serious chance of finishing the term strongly.
Entries for the Hollywoodbets Durban July will close at 11h00 on Tuesday 19 April, with the entries list being embargoed and released on Wednesday 20 April.
Please click on the image below to see the betting:
While the history books require hours of poring over, we did manage to track UK Champion National Hunt trainer Michael Dickinson’s achievement when saddling the first five home in the Cheltenham Gold Cup in 1983.
Watch the final stages of the 1983 Cheltenham Gold Cup:
Dickinson was something of an innovator.
Following his retirement from the training ranks, for the first time, Dickinson invented and developed the Tapeta racing surface. However, even before the ‘Famous Five’ at Cheltenham, Dickinson had already written his name, possibly indelibly, into the Guiness Book of World Records.
On Boxing Day, 1982, he made a deliberate attempt to break the world record for the number of winners trained in a single day.
During a busy Bank Holiday programme, he sent out twenty runners, or over a third of his string, from his yard in Harewood, West Yorkshire, to six different meetings across the country. The highlight of the day was a win for Wayward Lad, ridden by John Francome, in the King George VI Chase at Kempton but, all told, twelve of the Dickinson-trained horses won and just one of the twenty finished unplaced.
