The non-black type umThombothi Stakes run at Hollywoodbets Scottsville on Sunday has received engagement and interest on this platform on a par nearing that of a Grade 1.
That, mostly due it seems to the fact that the Sporting Post headlined the race report, ‘Royal Victory Flops’, after the dual Gr1 winning 4-10 favourite plodded in fourth of six runners and some 5,75 lengths behind gun-to-tape winner, Selukwe.
‘Flop’ is a four-letter word that clearly evokes powerful emotions when used in a sensitive place. Google describes ‘flop’ as an informal term that means something is a complete failure or unsuccessful.
We seemed to have touched a nerve and got into a jam on what looked like a quiet Sunday of bread-and-butter racing.
When we covered the race in the morning, our headline screamed ‘Kotzen’s Royal Victory Is The Class’.
The son of Pathfork looked head and shoulders above the opposition.
We knew it was a prep run, but he had had an outing just a month earlier.
Muzi Yeni knows him well.
He won his last Grade 1 on soft ground.
His five opponents were, with all respect, not exactly Equus candidates.
The ‘flop’ headline in the subsequent race report was written without malice, absolutely definitely not from the pocket, and with no agenda. The Kotzens – the Woodhill clan and their Natalian counterparts – are the nicest people around. Muzi did nothing wrong.
So the headline was simply an opinion about the effort of a 4-10 shot that, in our book, didn’t run like a 4-10 shot.
We really do hope that Royal Victory comes out and wins another two Grade 1 races this year.
Remember, we’re never nasty, definitely not malicious, and talk to anybody and everybody who wants a voice – no matter what side of the fence you’re on. And that fence counts in this game!
If we offended anybody, we need to say the hardest word.
After all that, let’s get down to a letter to our Sporting Post Mailbag.
It comes from well-known owner Rob Haswell, former Mayor of Pietermaritzburg – it is published as incoming, unedited.
We thank Mr Haswell for making the effort to put pen to paper (Pic – Candiese Lenferna)
Rob Haswell writes that he has had horses trained by Nathan Kotzen for more than twenty years, and I have come to know and appreciate that his quiet and unassuming nature, belies a horseman of exceptional ability.
Two of my horses — Cumulus and Master Keys — won first time out, and being green and over ambitious, I pushed for them to race at Turffontein and Fairview, with place success.
If that is considered a flop, then the buck stopped with me not Nathan.
In fact, in all of these years Nathan has never said ” your horses cannot lose”.
Fit and working well is all you ever get, as he quietly and modestly builds up a horse to a targeted race, so by definition his horses do not flop, they win when they are ready, and show ” winning work”, working very early and usually alone on the bend at Summerveld.
Team Kotzen after a Turffontein raid with Muzi Yeni and Royal Victory (Pic – JC Photos)
So to describe Royal Victory’s admittedly sluggish run at Hollywoodbets Scottsville, as a flop, is unwarranted, wide of the mark, and even insulting in that Nathan never said the horse is a good thing.
After all, you should know that he builds Royal Victory up slowly without fanfare and that he is following the same prep this year.
Why change when he won not one but two Grade Ones at Turffontein, and is clearly intent, and nobley assisted by Ted Hughes’s transportation services, following the same prep route this year.
How could you be so blissfully unaware of his amazing training feat by raiding the Highveld which bigger stables have chosen not to, for fear of flopping. Again your choice of the word is completely wide off the mark.
In my view and in the new South Africa, ‘the people’s horse’, an over used title, will come from a smaller stable and not necessarily be owned by a billionaire.
Lastly, to expect Royal Victory to romp home in minor races months before his main mission and earning penalties, is frankly amateurish, and the real flop is committed by those tipsters, who are readily it seems, misled by the pricing up of the horse at odds on.
The only certainty is that he was not primed for Sunday’s second race @ Hollywoodbets Scottsville.
Of course Nathan’s tried and tested slow methodical prep for The Premier’s and possibly the Hollywoodbets Durban July, bearing in mind that Nathan, guided by Mike de Kock, prepared Grey’s Inn to win a Durban July, will be put to the test again, and those who write off Royal Victory’s chances, may well end up with egg on their faces, and that, in my book, would constitute a real flop.
Time will tell.
- Have your say – send your name and address with your letter to [email protected].
