SEASIDE SPA:
Horses taking part in this Saturday’s Sun Met had an outing at Sunrise Beach on Friday as part of the horses’ spa-day treatment ahead of the big race and glamour event at Kenilworth Racecourse.
ON SATURDAY the 134th Sun Met will be celebrated with Mumm, one of the largest distributors of Champagne in the world, that will bring racing enthusiasts and fashionistas together to celebrate and witness Africa’s Richest Race Day.
The Sun Met enthrals with not only 13 powerful races, in which some of the best of the equestrian world compete, but also has world-class entertainment. It’s the biggest race of the summer season where the best racehorses in South Africa compete over 2 000m for a purse of R5 million.
The Sun Met draws over 50 000 people to Kenilworth Racecourse on the last Saturday in January of every year, to celebrate the magnificence and speed of South Africa’s top racehorses. The event is as much of a highlight on the social calendar today as it was when it began 134 years ago, when the first official running of The Metropolitan Mile (later shortened to “The Met”) took place at Kenilworth in 1883.
The first recorded race meeting of the African Turf Club was run on Green Point Common on September 18, 1797, and was won by the five-year-old Zemman Shaw.
Traditionally, spring and autumn festivals were held over three or four days and were popular affairs with thousands attending the races, dinners, fairs and theatre. But it was only after the second British occupation of the Cape (1806) and under Lord Charles Somerset (governor of the Cape Colony from 1814-1826) that horse racing became prominent and the import of breeding stock was encouraged.
This established the Cape of Good Hope as the birthplace of horse racing in South Africa and helped secure racing as an ongoing sport.
By 1863, racing took place at both Green Point Common and Kenilworth (although not the same site as today). The Queen’s Plate still runs today and was first run in 1861 and later moved to Kenilworth. By 1893 racing at Green Point Common had ceased altogether. A new venue had been chosen some 20 years before – Kenilworth Racecourse as we know it today – but this site was only acquired in 1881. The first Metropolitan was held at Kenilworth in 1883 after the track was laid out and a grandstand erected.
The Sun Met is an important contest as it puts South Africa’s top racehorses on an even footing. It’s run over the Kenilworth 2 000m, which has a long run-in and gives a fair chance to runners. Plus, at sea level, the best South African racehorses have an equal opportunity.
Originally, the race was run over 1 600m, but by 1915 the race had been extended to 1 800m and finally set in as a ten furlongs race (2 000m) in 1948, which remains the running distance today.