Farewell to a racing legend
AS EXPECTED the final field for the Grade 2 Green Point Stakes on Saturday at Kenilworth has turned out to be a small but nuclear-powered line-up.
Only six go to post, but what most would agree is they are currently the top milers of the older horses.
Multiple horse-of-the-year Legal Eagle needs no introduction, and is undefeated in nine starts over 1600m.
He cracked his maiden over this trip in March 2015, and has since added six Grade 1s, as well as winning this race for the past two years.
Fresh from sensationally scoring his first sprint victory at the age of seven, the veteran champion isn’t going to surrender his crown without an almighty struggle.
Undefeated Rainbow Bridge was priced up a close second favourite to Legal Eagle in the opening betting, and his latest easy win in the Cape Mile was perhaps his most impressive yet.
Winter Derby
He is yet to race above Grade 3 level, but the feeling has been there that this is a future top-level winner since his startling Winter Derby victory from the rear in April, and this is a Grade 1 contest in all but name.
He receives 2kg from his primary rivals in this his acid test, and with such an elastic turn of foot is sure to relish the Kenilworth summer course with its longer run in which he experiences for the first time.
Undercover Agent won the Grade 1 Gold Challenge at Greyville in June convincingly, and also scored a meritorious win over a strong Pinnacle field of top sprinters in his comeback a month ago.
The successor to now retired Brett Crawford star milers Captain America and Sail South needs to be taken seriously.
Vodacom July hero Do It Again adds further spice to the mix.
While most will see him as better over further, he has won twice over this trip, including the Grade 2 KZN Guineas in May where, as now, he was racing fresh.
Last year’s November Handicap winner Hat Puntano also lines up. Now in the care of Joey Ramsden, he will need big improvement on recent efforts to be competitive.
Completing the sextet is Copper Force. He was a shock second in the Queens Plate last year, but hasn’t approached those levels since, and looks solidly held.
In the supporting Grade 2 Southern Cross for females over 1000m Candice Bass-Robinson holds plenty of aces.
She fields Magical Wonderland, Freedom Charter, and exciting three-yearold sprinter Nous Voila.
The Grade 3 Cape Summer Stayers Handicap completes the trio of features.
BETTING;
Green Point Stakes; 14-10 Legal Eagle; 16-10 Rainbow; 4-1 Undercover Agent; 13-2 Do It Again; 18-1 Copper Force;
22-1 Hat Puntano
SOUTH AFRICAN horseracing bid a sad farewell yesterday to one of the great characters and a legend of the game.
Peter Grenville Kannemeyer, pictured, died at his Milnerton home at the age of 85. He had been ill for some time.
A retired heavyweight jockey and champion trainer, he celebrated a half century in the sport after handing the reins to his son Dean at the turn of the century.
A man of extraordinary charm and genuine warmth, Peekay, as he was affectionately known, had been around the block in horseracing.
From the trials of life as a heavyweight jockey, to the glamour and success of being a celebrated trainer who hobnobbed with the wealthy and elite, he saw it all and he regaled friends and the media with great stories and tales of the way the game once was.
The Cape Hall Of Famer won many Gr1 races across South Africa but always held his six winners on a day as his most memorable achievement.
Peekay decided at age 16, to become a jockey.
He started with Spike Lerena’s grandfather, Bob Lerena, and over a period of 20 years rode successfully for Stanley Gorton, and then 3 years for Terrance Millard and 11 years for the late Theo de Klerk.
A conversation one day in 1969 changed his life forever.
His mentor Stanley Gorton took him aside and said: “Son, I am going to retire soon and you need a new lifestyle.
“You can’t go on bringing up your food. You are going to kill yourself. I want you to take over my stable. I will give you 80 years of experience, 40 years from my father and 40 years from me.’’
Peter’s first runner was a winner and his first smart horse, Prairie Prince, followed not long after that.
He was a 1400m specialist and won nine races, including the Cape Flying Championship, the Diadem Stakes twice and the Clairwood Merchants.
He was a close follower of his son Dean’s yard and up to a few years ago would visit the Milnerton stables to chat to the staff. He once told how racing had changed.
“In my day the Stipes took no nonsense. Dennis Drier’s dad Ginger was our starter down here in Cape Town.
“There were six tapes across the manual start. If you took a chance and jumped early you were hammered with a fifty pound fine then and there.
“No questions. No nonsense. And you got yourself a few burn marks on your neck for the overzealousness!”
On his colleagues, Peekay and his old friend Alan Higgins, who died in 2014, were the last remnants of bygone golden era.
He said that he missed the camaraderie of the early days and that he was privileged to have trained alongside some of the legends of the game – Terrance Millard, Syd Laird, Cookie Amos, Willie Kleb and Jackie Bell. He quipped in a 2013 interview that his doctor told him he would live to 100.
“That’s good news. But son, I am not sure that I have budgeted to go that far!”
A salt of the earth gentleman, Peekay will be sadly missed by all in racing.
He is survived by Dean, Mark, Lisa and grandchildren.
– Sporting Post