Easy Does It. Winter Fantasy (Greg Cheyne) wins the Fairview feature in style (Coastal Photos)
A weather enforced switch to the polytrack midway through Friday’s Fairview Valentines Day meeting threw the cat amongst the pigeons for punters and connections of some of the runners. Alan Greeff and Greg Cheyne were smiling though as Winter Fantasy relished the conditions to win the R80 000 Breeders Guineas Plate is style.
The Polytrack at Fairview was specifically introduced to ensure that no meetings would be lost to weather in the region and after a jockey protest following the fourth race, the meeting would ordinarily have probably been abandoned.
The decision to switch the remaining five races to the poly meant that the exotics could continue and the programme was completed.Trainers were allowed the opportunity of scratching their runners without penalty.
On the flipside of the coin there may be punters who felt aggrieved as the fourth race produced a blow and a potential exotic refund was pending following a successful jockey protest.
Then those that had gone through the first leg with the 20 to 1 Golden Fighter had to contend with their existing selections being exposed to the revised poly structure, where the surface and draws play a major role.
At the end of the day, the surface switch was an agreement up front by the operator and that is the way the cookie crumbles.
Both runners at the top of the boards in Winter Fantasy and the visiting Lift Off had won previously on the poly and they landed up running first and second.
Winter Fantasy was smartly away from her 1 draw to lead Arrow Heart and Maroofa. Lift Off was slightly slow out and she was relaxed near the rear.
Greg Cheyne maintained the lead all the way around and he increased his advantage to the line as the 12 to 10 favourite Lift Off ran on from too far back and wide out.
Lift Off’s rider Richard Fourie lamented the switch of surface, saying later that his filly was still a ‘bit soft’ and had battled gamely to make up the ground. “It would have been a different story on the turf,” he said philosophically.
Winter Fantasy went off at 5 to 1 and won by 2,25 lengths in a time of 82,55 secs.
Titlee stayed on well enough for third place and paid R4,40 for a tote place.
The topweighted Winter Fantasy has now won 5 races with 1 place from 9 starts for earnings of R254 375.
The winner was bred by Ascot Stud.
She is out of the thrice winning Al Mufti mare, Royal Fantasy, who won the 2006 Gr1 Thekwini Stakes, beating the then unexposed Sun Classique.
