| This past weekend’s racing yielded interesting happenings. The Snaith yard got on a roll at Durbanville, winning the Woolavington with talented stayer, Strathdon plus handicaps with Fifty Cents (speed score 101) and the rapidly progressive filly, Dynamic Diana (s/s 89 +). Perhaps the most remarkable action unfolded though at Greyville, with a number of fine performances coupled with a highly controversial one.
Captain and Master (s/s 100) looks top notch. He’d run admirably in the Golden Horsehoe behind Purple Diamond, and that race (which yielded a potent speed figure) is becoming a key pointer to this year’s three-year-old crop. On Sunday, he raced handy and had no drama’s galloping away from Red Chesnut Road (s/s 97) and Dawn Calling.
Vision to Kill is a smart sprinting filly. She recorded a fine figure of 102 when drawing off to defeat Neptune’s Rain (s/s 97) over 1000m. Tried at a high level – getting within half a length of The Secret is Out in the Pointsettia Stakes at long odds was her best effort, this bay daughter of Kildonan has now won five of 12 starts and should keep on winning for her connections.
The enigmatic speedball, Doing it for the Dan (s/s 104) coasted home in the preceding contest for his tenth victory. He’s run scores as high as 110 in his prime, but has recently battled to get out of the starting stalls. Credit to trainer Louis Goosen for persevering, and now extracting another win out of the quirky gelding.
Those were the best showings on the day based on the clock – the controversial one was delivered by Run Rhino Run, or, depending on your take on things, by the balance of field in Race 6. Germaine Maharaj, the astute tipster for Computaform previewed the race by writing, “An experiment for most as a rare 3000m race will test this field’s tactic’s and stamina.” The running of the race itself was bizarre: After being supported in the betting, Run Rhino Run, opened up a massive lead of around 200m+ racing towards the outer down the backstretch, and proceeded to amble in, totally untroubled, by an official margin of 21 lengths!
Winning apprentice Serino Moodley passed the tactical experiment with full marks as Run Rhino Run appeared to love the longer route – but critics would be less polite in their grading of the rest of the field’s jockeys, for allowing their rival to clear off into another time zone. It’s a pity we don’t have sectional clockings available, as that way we could pass an accurate and objective judgement on what actually unfolded pace wise. Right now, this especially weird race just throws up more questions than answers.
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