Under glorious Cape winter sunny skies, SA champion trainer Justin Snaith’s team continued their flying start to the new season when Cloud Chaser, a half-sister to Cape Town Met winner Double Superlative, stormed to a facile victory under Anthony Andrews to win the R200 000 Winter Country Championship 1400 Final Class 5 feature at Hollywoodbets Kenilworth on Saturday.
With a treble at Hollywoodbets Durbanville on Thursday, and Cloud Chaser rounding off a treble at the first meeting of the new term at the Southern Suburbs HQ, Snaith made it 6 winners as Cloud Chaser bounded home as if parachuted into the 1400m contest at the 300m.
Accompanied by Jonathan and Chris Snaith, and Babalo of the Snaith Racing Team, Pat Devine, Philippa Berrington-Blew and Craig Strydom lead Cloud Chaser (Anthony Andrews) in after her cracking victory (Pic – Chase Liebenberg)
Anthony Andrews had the Silvano mare some way off the gallop set by Unsolved Riddle, and she made up lengths in the run for home.
Causing a minor exotic bet knockout, Cloud Chase (20-1) ran away to win by 2,50 lengths in a time of 89,17 secs.
The favourite Spirit’s Unite (5-2) has been threatening to win, but his supporters had to again be content with a place return as he stayed on for second, ahead of Greg Ennion’s duo of Veronique (13-2) and Cattaleya (14-1) who continued to pay their way and rounded off the quartet.
Raced by Patricia Devine, who also bred her and was on course to lead her in, Cloud Chaser is a daughter of Silvano (Lomitas) out of the five-time winner Come Fly With Me, a five time winning daughter of Jet Master, who also raced in the famous silks.
Cloud Chaser is now a winner of 2 races with 5 places from 18 starts for stakes of R270 538.
The Country Championships were introduced Cape Racing on 1 January and are aimed at the lower merit-rated horses in the province, which race predominantly in Class 4 and Class 5 races.
Class 4 races are for horses with merit ratings of 62 – 78, while Class 5 races are for horses with merit ratings of 66 and below.
The intent of the initiative is to shine a spotlight on the meaningful race and earnings opportunities for the so-called ‘weaker horses’ and to illustrate that lower-rated horses in the Cape have the ability to earn considerably in the province, making the ownership experience economically attractive, while allowing the owners to continue experiencing the thrills of racing in the Cape.
The Country Championships run parallel to the RaceCape initiative’s ‘Runs Bonus’ incentive, which creates further incentives for all horses.
With RaceCape, horses that run twelve times in the season earn a R25 000 bonus, which increases further to R35 000 with fifteen runs.
