The Golden Horse Sprint and the Woolavington 2000 have lost their Gr1 status and will be run as Gr2’s this season, but this is not before every attempt had been made to maintain their status at the highest level.
Hollywoodbets Scottsville Grade 1 winner Lucky Lad (Pic – Candiese Lenferna)
David Thiselton writes on www.goldcircle.co.za that the good news for some punters, who did not like the change to a 6kg spread of weights in the Golden Horse for the last couple of renewals, and the bad news for owners of top sprinters, is that the bottom weight for this big handicap sprint will revert to 52kg and not only that but the benchmark could be as low as MR100 = 52kg, meaning if the best sprinter in the country ran, the 134 merit rated Gimme A Prince, he would have to carry 67kg.
Justin Vermaak, who is in charge of the racing programme in KZN, said, “A Gr 2 handicap is not a race for a wfa Gr 1 champion and should be weighted accordingly.”
The Woolavington 2000 is going to continue being open to older females.
However, there are going to be some tweaks to the conditions.
Vermaak said, “It will become a conditions race of sorts with some reprieve for lesser types.”
Justin Vermaak (Pic – Candiese Lenferna)
South African horseracing falls under the Asian Racing Federation and the Graded status of races is decided by the Asian Pattern Committee (APC).
If a race fails to meet the APC benchmarks for Gr 1 status on three consecutive runnings it become eligible for a downgrade.
The Woolavington failed to meet those benchmarks on three consecutive occasions when it was a level weights race restricted to three-year-old fillies.
However, in order to not downgrade it immediately an appeal was made to the APC whereby the conditions of the race were to be changed.
The conditions of the race were therefore changed into a weight for age event for fillies and mares of all ages and the Gr1 status remained.
However, it failed to meet the APC benchmarks for a Gr 1 in a further two renewals.
The benchmark level is based on the performance ability of the first four finishers in the race.
However, this performance is based on the first four horses’ best performances of the whole season.
So if a horse ran to a certain performance level when finishing in the first four in the Woolavington, but then ran to a higher performance level when running in, for example, the Hollywoodbets Durban July, the July performance is the one which counts towards rating the Woolavington’s level.
In the last two renewals of the Woolavington, when it was run as a weight for age race for fillies and mares, none of the first four finishers on each occasion managed to improve on their best performance up until then.
So, the Woolavington 2000 has now failed to reach the benchmark level for a Gr 1 race on five successive runnings.
The Golden Horse Sprint should also have been downgraded before, but leeway was given by changing the bottom weight to 54kg, the aim of which was to prevent lower graded bottom weights from lowering the overall standard of the race by finishing in the first four.
However, this measure being taken in the last couple of years has also failed to bring about a raise in the overall performance of the race and hence the downgrade to Gr2 status.
The Festival Of Speed meeting always used to be marketed as SA’s only jackpot of Gr1 events, but this will no longer be the case.
Sean Tarry , who is the most successful Gr1 trainer at Hollywoodbets Scottsville in history with 19 Gr1 victories, went close to doing the Festival Of Speed Grand Slam i.e. winning all four of the Gr1s in one meeting, on two occasions.
He will no longer be able to do a Gr1 grand slam, but the Festival Of Speed grand slam should remain as a never before achieved feat to be aimed at.
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