One of the most accomplished female sprinters to grace the South African turf, Ridgemont flyer Run Fox Run rounded off her illustrious career in fairytale fashion as she joined a select quintet in 2021 of only five fairer sex gallopers to win the prestigious Grade 1 Cape Flying Championship in the past two decades.
Run Fox Run has taken to her role as a broodmare with the same vigour and professionalism that she displayed during her racing career.
Run Fox Run in the paddock at Barnane Stud
The athletic daughter of Foxwedge enjoyed a swansong of fairytale proportions when accounting for the elite of South Africa’s fast set in the premier speed test in the height of the Cape summer in 2021 to register her eighth win from eleven starts, before jetting off to join Ridgemont’s international broodmare band in the lush paddocks of the Kieswetter family’s Barnane Stud in County Tipperary, Ireland.
Conditioned by multiple Grade 1 winning trainer Brett Crawford, Run Fox Run won her initial five outings by an aggregate of nearly 12 lengths, with her five-race winning streak including victories in both the 2019 Grade 2 Southern Cross Stakes and Listed Olympic Duel Stakes.
The first time Run Fox Run tasted defeat was as a 3yo taking on the big guns in the 2020 Grade 1 Cape Flying Championship where she ran fourth – a race that she won on her swansong appearance a year later!
Run Fox Run beats Rio Querari to win the Cape Flying Championship (Pic – Chase Liebenberg)
Run Fox Run would go on to win three of her final five races – tasting defeat by a whisker in the Grade 1 SA Fillies Sprint and then in the Grade 2 Southern Cross Stakes. But revenge would be sweet and Run Fox Run would end her career on a dizzy high when beating SA Champion Sprinter Rio Querari, with Celtic Sea in third, to win the 2021 Grade 1 Cape Flying Championship.
It is worth noting that the glorious curtain-call is put into perspective by the fact that Run Fox Run bowed out beating seven Grade 1 winners – it was a perfect ending to the first chapter of her story.
Having already foaled down a Frankel colt, who will be raced in South Africa, the future is certainly exciting for her as she is confirmed to be carrying a Lope De Vega colt.
