THE J&B MET : FOR WHOM THE BELL TOLLS

THE J&B MET
KENILWORTH RACECOURSE
30 JANUARY 2010

Cape Town is rife with talk that Pocket Power’s shot at a fourth consecutive J&B Met will witness his come-uppance. Mike Bass, genius horseman that he is, won’t hear of it. He says the 7-year-old has never been better, and expects him to whistle past the R10 million earnings mark.

We purposely postponed this posting so we could get the very latest thoughts from the innermost minds of the best of the opposition. Looking at the betting, there’s no better man to talk to than Champion trainer, Charles Laird, who’s been second to Pocket Power in two of his three victories to date. Laird’s view is typically simple.

In Dan De Lago and Oracy, he has a brace of horses he rates better than both his previous runners-up, if Pocket Power’s colours are to be lowered, he believes it is most likely to come from his charges.

Stan Elley’s Kapil, a contemporary of the favourite, has never been better, though 2000 metres at the weights could find him out, despite a 2kg “pull” in his L’Ormarins Queen’s Plate second. Pace will, as always, play a big role, so if “dark” horse, Red Rake (also quietly fancied at 12-1), doesn’t cut it, Bass will have the contingency of Blue Tiger to provide it. For sure, the “Pocket” will need a pace to be at his best.

And then, of course, you can never discount a “July” hero in a race like this. Big City Life hasn’t quite shown his sophomore form of late, but he’s now supposedly back at his peak, and if his wide draw costs him, Glen Kotzen will still have Fabiani in reserve.

The last J&B Met winner from the rank outside draw, as far as we can remember, was Summerhill-raised, Angus, but without a contender in 2010, we’ve left the event to the gods!

FINAL FIELD

#	Horse	Kg	MR	Dr	Jockey	Trainer
1	POCKET POWER	58.0	119	2	B Fayd’Herbe	Mike Bass
2	SMART BANKER	58.8	110	16	F Coetzee	Charles Laird
3	STRATEGIC NEWS	58.0	107	11	P Cosgrave	Dylan Cunha
4	BIG CITY LIFE	57.5	111	14	*K Teetan	Glen Kotzen
5	FOREST PATH	57.5	107	13	G Schlechter	Stephen Page
6	KAPIL	56.0	115	3	M Byleveld	Stan Elley
7	SURFIN’ USA	56.0	111	12	W Kennedy	Jacques Strydom
8	BLUE TIGER	56.0	108	10	S Randolph	Mike Bass
9	RED RAKE	56.0	105	1	S Cormack	Basil Marcus
10	THUNDERING JET	56.0	101	15	M Yeni	Paul Lafferty
11	DIAMOND QUEST	56.0	98	7	K Jupp	Mike Bass
12	LION’S BLOOD	56.0	98	6	R Danielson	Herman Brown
13	ORACY (NZ)	55.5	110	17	P Strydom	Charles Laird
14	DAN DE LAGO (AUS)	55.5	108	8	A Marcus	Charles Laird
15	FABIANI	55.5	108	5	R Fourie	Glen Kotzen
16	FORT VOGUE	55.5	101	4	K Neisius	Mike Bass
17	MOTHER RUSSIA	55.0	106	18	A Delpech	Mike de Kock
18	RIVER JETEZ	53.5	104	9	G Hatt	Mike Bass

BETTING

#	Horse	Current	Opening
1	POCKET POWER	16/10	18/10
14	DAN DE LAGO	4/1	4/1
13	ORACY	7/1	11/2
4	BIG CITY LIFE	12/1	7/1
6	KAPIL	12/1	16/1
9	RED RAKE	12/1	16/1
18	RIVER JETEZ	12/1	16/1
15	FABIANI	16/1	20/1
17	MOTHER RUSSIA	20/1	12/1
2	SMART BANKER	33/1	33/1
16	FORT VOGUE	50/1	33/1
5	FOREST PATH	66/1	50/1
3	STRATEGIC NEWS	66/1	50/1
7	SURFIN’ USA	66/1	50/1
8	BLUE TIGER	100/1	100/1
11	DIAMOND QUEST	125/1	50/1
10	THUNDERING JET	125/1	100/1
12	LION’S BLOOD	150/1	66/1

BETTING COURTESY OF BETTING WORLD AS AT 5AM 30 JANUARY 2010

MAGICAL SANSUI SUMMER CUP SENTIMENTAL FAVOURITE

Sansui Summer Cup 2009
(Photos : Racingweb/Phumelela/JHB)

2009 SANSUI SUMMER CUP

In his column “Impeccably Dashing” on Racingweb.co.za, Alec Hogg previews Saturday’s Sansui Summer Cup and says his heart is with Ormond Ferraris’ orphan Magical, but logic points to Charles Laird’s Kiwi Superstar, Oracy.

Following is an extract from the article :

Apart from the wonderful name, his unusual story is sure to make Magical the sentimental favourite.

That this tough gelding is so feared by the opposition despite only having won three of his 10 starts, is a sign of the professionals’ respect for the 77 year-old master trainer who tells me he specifically missed the lucrative KZN Winter season - and even a tilt at the Vodacom Durban July - to aim his stable’s star for Saturday’s race. The actual preparation, though, started more than two years ago.

Ormond Ferraris says he identified Magical’s father, ill-fated Labeeb, as a potential Champion sire when he saw him at Summerhill Stud shortly after the imposing stallion arrived from America: “I liked Labeeb’s racing record, the way he was put together especially his good legs, and his pedigree. I sent my only mare, Nettle, to be covered by him - they produced Opera Cloak who has won three races. Not bad for a first foal.”

So when Ferraris spotted a son of Labeeb on a Durban sale where only 64 yearlings were catalogued, he decided to take a closer look. Magical’s breeder Rodney Clarkin, himself a renowned horseman, remembers Ferraris being taken by the big colt the moment he saw him: “This wasn’t surprising, Magical was outstanding from day one.”

Magical was knocked down to Ferraris for R130 000, a bargain in anyone’s language. Although it now looks as though he sold the horse too cheaply, Clarkin has no regrets: “I couldn’t have asked for him to be with a better trainer. Ormond has planned this campaign to a tee. Speak to some of the old timers and they’ll tell you Magical has been given a mighty fine programme going into the race, a preparation second to none.”

As a participant in the KZN Breeder’s Premiums programme, Clarkin has a vested interest in pulling for Ferraris’s horse. Unfortunately, that’s his only economic interest as Magical’s mother, the Foveros mare Bite Your Tongue, died shortly after producing her last foal, a filly by Muhtafal, which Clarkin sold for R120 000. The rationale behind pairing his mare with Labeeb? Clarkin admits: “It was just one of those lucky matings. I was looking for size as she was a smallish, squat mare and Labeeb was a big, imposing horse. Pedigree-wise it was an outcross; you have to go back five generations to find a common ancestor in Nasrullah.”

As Magical and other sons and daughters have shown, had he lived, Labeeb may well have proved Ferraris’s view that he was a Champion in the making. Summerhill’s stud master Greig Muir, who worked closely with Magical’s father during his two seasons at stud,  describes his premature death as “desperate……his stats are very good and his youngsters are really tough.”

Even the way Labeeb left the earth was dramatic.

Muir tells: “We’d walked Labeeb and the other stallions up to the top of the hill for a photo shoot and all was normal until shortly after we started coming home. Labeeb must have had an aneurism in the brain. For apparently no reason he started attacking his handler; I went to help and he picked me up and threw me over a fence - surgery was later needed to repair the damage. With me over the hedge he turned on his handler again and was about to give him the deathblow when Labeeb suddenly fell dead to the ground.

“Labeeb was a character, tough as nails …. a Bakkies Botha of the racing world….. he took on some of the best that America had to offer and beat them.  When one walks into the office at Shadwell America in Kentucky, there is a large glass cabinet with silverware mostly attributed to the performances of Labeeb (he won 8 of 19 starts including two Gr1 races on American turf). US racing pundit and international stallion authority Bill Oppenheim, rated Labeeb as one of the most influential and high potential sires to come into South Africa in the last decade and he wasn’t far wrong. From a limited stud career in South Africa during which time he produced only two crops (2004 - 2006 he died just prior to the breeding season in 2006) he became a Freshman Sire sensation. He lies today in “the Avenue” here at Summerhill amongst fellow past inmates like Rambo Dancer, Northern Guest and Coastal. Don’t worry, we still salute him when we go past and we still get goose pimples when we think what might have been.”

So with both his father and mother having passed on, Magical is what we humans would call an orphan. But he doesn’t now that. Neither is he aware that the most dangerous of Saturday’s opponents cost 20 times more than him when they were sold on auction as yearlings. His trainer and part owner Ferraris dismisses the suggestion that it’s a two horse race - he also has great respect for yet another Laird-inmate, Eight Street, a gelded son of the international super stallion Street Cry. But for those with a sense of history - and the bookmakers - this looks too much like a replay of the 1930’s duels between War Admiral and Seabiscuit to consider other contenders too seriously.

In his gifted pilot Piere “Striker” Strydom, the Ferraris-trained gelding has one of the best riders in the world on board. He will carry 54kg against their 58kg so in effect has been given a five length start by both Oracy and Eight Street. Against this, Magical jumps from a wide gate (14), a particular concern for both Ferraris and Strydom.

The master trainer rates the poor draw as “my biggest worry”. Strydom frets that his mount is a slow starter who lacks “gate speed” so the poor draw might be force them to sit a lot further back in the early running than the pilot would like. Strydom says even without this disadvantage Oracy “will be a tough nut to crack - we’re a bit better off at the weights with Oracy than the last time we met, but he won so easily that you can’t be sure how much he still had in the tank.”

Strydom, an astute judge, believes his horse’s chances will be affected by the pace of the race. The ideal, he says, would be one where the field “goes like the clappers” so that he can place Magical around six lengths behind the leader coming into the business end: “Then we must hope that Oracy doesn’t stay the distance and we fly past him near the finish.”

Visit www.racingweb.co.za to read Alec Hogg’s full article.

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www.summercup.co.za

Dancer’s Daughter raids Empress Club Stakes

Dancer’s Daughter
(JC Photos/Africana)

David Thiselton writes in The Sunday Tribune that the champion grey race mare, Dancer’s Daughter, powered home to the cheers of the crowd at Turffontein on Saturday in the Grade 1 R1 million Laurie Jaffee Empress Club Stakes over 1600m and probably gave South African horseracing a huge boost in the process.

Whereas the champions of yesteryear toured the country to run in all of the big features, Johannesburg had not seen one of the Cape’s big horses for sometime, as it has become the norm for them to concentrate exclusively on the Cape summer and Durban winter seasons.

Trainer Justin Snaith said after the race that having consistently told the public that Dancer’s Daughter , a daughter of Shadwell Stud’s Act One, was one the best females ever to race in the country, it would have been “criminal” not to bring her to Johannesburg to prove it.

Justin Snaith expressed recently that when he talked it was actually his horse doing the talking and how Dancer’s Daughter did so on Saturday, slicing through the field like a knife through butter in the straight before easily repelling the challenge of the Mike de Kock–trained Milk and Honey.

During her Johannesburg campaign, Dancer’s Daughter has been cared for by five time South African champion trainer, Geoff Woodruff, at the Vaal and the only question mark had been whether his stable jockey, Mark Khan, would be able to settle the notoriously headstrong mare. Mark Khan, the reigning champion jockey of South Africa, did so to perfection and had her near the tail behind horses from early on.

The Johannesburg public can now look forward to the Graham Beck-owned grey running in two more Grade 1 races in April, the Horse Chestnut Stakes and the Champions Challenge.

Her legend is sure to grow to epic proportions if she pulls off the treble that nobody had envisioned her taking part in just over a month ago, as she was being prepared for the J&B Met amid rumours that she would then head overseas.

The better she does, the better it will be for the reputation of her J&B Met conqueror, Pocket Power, who is no doubt one of best the horses to ever race in South Africa.

Milk And Honey ran a fine race to finish only one length back, as the rest of the field were strung out like the washing, the Ormond Ferraris-trained Gypsy’s Warning finishing third and the Mike Miller-trained KwaZulu-Natal challenger Outcome next best.

The first leg of the triple crown, the Grade 2 R1-million Gauteng Guineas, saw a dramatic finish with the Charles Laird-trained Oracy scraping home by a whisker under Anton Marcus ahead of dead-heaters, the Paul Matchett-trained Cerise Cherry and the Tyrone Zackey-trained Royal Rez.

Oracy, a New Zealand-bred by Zabeel, is owned by Markus Jooste. Still unbeaten, he is favoured by some to land the Triple Crown and this was going to be his toughest leg as he would prefer further.

Still, the proximity of 92-rated Royal Rez once again casts a doubt over the class of this season’s three year old male crop.

Charles Laird, Anton Marcus and Markus Jooste earlier combined to win the Grade 2 Hawaai Stakes over 1400m with odds-on favourite Our Giant, who ran out a comfortable one-length winner over what would appear to be his favourite trip.

The Mike Miller-trained KwaZulu-Natal raider, The Big Ask, a graduate of the Summerhill Ready To Run, ran a fine second, while another out of town horse, the Zimbabwean Lisa Harris-trained Earl Of Surrey finished third.

The Mike de Kock-trained Zirconeum romped home in the first leg of the Triple Tara, the Grade 2 R500 000 Gauteng Fillies Guineas, winning by 3.5 lengths from the Geoff Woodruff-trained Sharp Mistress and the Paul Matchett-trained Golden Scold. Zirconeum is owned by Chris, Andrew and Doug Haynes, together with Gary Grant and Mike de Kock himself.