If the first month of the new season is anything to go by....

With earnings exceeding R15 million and 18 individual Stakes winners of 22 Stakes races coming off Summerhill last season, we weren’t sure we were on the same earth we’d been on previously, let alone repeat the act again.

And while that may be something of a pipe dream, August has been a good month for runners from Summerhill with two Feature race winners in the first 23 days. Thirteen-time winner Hear The Drums, got the show on the road with a gutsy top-weight-carrying slugging of a Weight-For-Age field in the Sprinters Stakes at Fairview.

Just yesterday, at their annual Festival meeting at Flamingo Park, Rambo Dancer’s son, Howzat, posted his second win of their most prestigious race of the year, the Racing Association Handicap, doing just as Hear The Drums had, and carrying 61 kgs in a last-to-first exhibition that defied the belief that you can’t come from off them and win in the sand. He took on all-comers for the R100 000 stake, and showed that neither age nor weight were hinderances to a horse that moves up at least a stone when he’s on this surface.