Good racing in Joburg and Durban

There is an overlap between the ending of the Highveld season and the start of the KZN Winter program which provides horseplayers with good up-country racing during April. Greyville hosted two G3 contests for three year- olds: Temple Grafin (s/s 99) outran Santa Clara (s/s 98) in the Umzimkhulu Stakes then Tony Rivalland’s Tristful (s/s 95) got past front-running Solid Gold to win the Byerley Turk. Rivalland has been on the tear during the past month, picking out races judiciously for his runners and sending out nine winners.

Trip to Heaven (speed score 106 +) won a Pinnacle Stakes at Turffontein despite blowing the start – a familiar scenario for this talented but enigmatic Trippi gelding. He fairly flew through the final 300m in 15.86 seconds to clinch the deal as Attenborough (s/s 102) also came home swiftly to be second.

San Fermin (s/s 105) is justifiably highly-rated by Michael Azzie and she vindicated that assessment by barging through the traffic to snare free-running favourite, Schippers (s/s 104) on the line in the G3 Sycamore Sprint. Dancing Queen (s/s 102) and Desert Rhythm (s/s 101) proved no match for the classy Aussie bred filly, but as only a tiny percentage of the SA horse population are capable of running triple digit figs, there is still merit in managing such scores.

Divine Odyssey (s/s 103) took out the G2 Colorado King Stakes by making a decisive move around the 400m mark and staying on better than his rivals. The son of Oratorio has really come into his own recently – running 100 + in the Drum Star last month and improving again here. His conditioner, trainer van Vuuren has also been in sharp form with eight winners over the past month.