Summerhill Exacta in the 'Big One' at Turffontein

Mike Winstanly
(Summerhill Stud)

The topliner in Johannesburg Sunday was the Syringa Handicap (Listed), in which the farm was represented by three fillies; recent Group winner Spring Garland, (sister to Imbongi), hot-in-form Ithala, who’d gone down by the narrowest of margins in a Grade 3 on a prior start, and Aces Wild, who comes from the family of one of our most celebrated matrons, Coconut Ice.

The latter two turned the event into a match as they raced away by three lengths, with just a short head separating Mike & Pat Winstanly’s Ithala from Wally Brits’s Aces Wild.

Interestingly, these two, who never gave an inch in the tussle, were born just days apart, and both came up through our Ready To Run programme. Ithala is the second Stakes winner in the past 12 months from the Coastal mare, Siren Song who descends from a French family which has done yeoman service for all the famous studs of the Dupre’s, Marcel Boussac, the Aga Khan and the Niarchos family.