The Gauteng trainers leave their Cape colleagues running a poor second when it comes to filling fields. Take the ten race programme at the Vaal on Tuesday. Over 150 horses have accepted to race. That makes for interesting and competitive racing – and for the punter it’s a magnet to get involved and have a dip
Purple Capital’s CEO Charles Savage is enjoying perhaps the most successful week of his last year
There is no substitute for experience and Tyrone Zackey’s hardknocking 9yo Mirage Drive steps out for his 60th racetrack appearance at the Vaal today. The son of Kahal rattled the rafters at Turffontein recently when turning a grass gallop into an exotic bet knockout – and he could follow up
“Liquid Mercury is a smart sort. He was purchased for the stable from Joey Ramsden’s yard by Sheikh Mohammed bin Khalifa Al Maktoum, while Tellina was given to us for this campaign by Dr Andreas Jacobs.”
While some of the major yards countrywide are taking it easy during the month of August with the inevitable housekeeping of vaccinations and well-earned breaks for their big guns, Mike De Kock approaches the Vaal topliner on Thursday with all guns blazing
Avontuur-sponsored newly crowned KZN champion jockey Anthony Delpech and multiple champion trainer Mike De Kock got their 2015/16 racing season off to a flying start when the prepped-to-the-minute Mogok gelding Wild One stayed on best of all
Gr1 Golden Slipper winner Chestnuts N Pearls looks the natural choices in the R600 000 Gr1 Thekwini Stakes. But she will have to get past the unbeaten Mike De Kock-trained Ideal World filly Persian Rug, who faces her toughest test to date when she steps into the major league at Greyville today
If it is true that when horses, or those who ride or train them, do rare things, they make the people who were present that day feel good, then Mike de Kock’s Abington Place yard in Newmarket is a centre for rare excellence.
Mike De Kock’s champion filly Majmu is set to be retired to stud following her run in Saturday’s Vodacom Durban July
Sheikh Hamdan bin Rashid Al Maktoum of Dubai enjoyed a sesasonal highlight when his three-year-old sprinter Muhaarar won the Gr1 Commonwealth Cup at Royal Ascot on Friday. Locally, however, a smart win by his two-year-old colt Muwaary (AUS), wouldn’t have gone unnoticed
‘We don’t know what ‘jungles’ he has been racing at, but Mike De Kock couldn’t win a fixed race in America,’
The R1 million Gr1 Douglas Whyte Stakes Grade is the opening leg of the projected R15 million Pick 6 pool at Hollywoodbets Greyville on Sunday
A Cape jockey has told of the enormous relief and the burden lifted from his shoulders on Friday after two well-known racing men took the cudgels up on his behalf some months ago to defend the father of four against an NHRA charge
A Pick 6 carryover of R2 million is set to take the exotic pool to R15 million, while the World Pool Gr3 Gold Cup sees a Quartet carryover of R1 million and a likely pool of R5 million
