Goosen scores a New Year treble
WHAT started as a frustrating weekend with four second places, turned into a New Year’s celebration for Louis Goosen at Greyville yesterday with a trio of winners. It has not been easy for trainers in KZN over the past few weeks. First it was blistering heat and almost drought conditions, followed by a few torrential storms, especially at Ashburton where staff spent their lives sorting out the sand tracks that were seemingly forever being washed away.
As a consequence, work patterns were interrupted, some horses affected more than others.
The Grey Crusader was one of the quartet of seconds last Friday and it is not often that local trainers back up in a race four days later.
“I could only work him 400m on the grass before that last race,” said Goosen. “You can’t get a horse fit like that. Friday night was just a gallop.”
“He cleaned his bowl, no temperatures and no coughing so we took our chances today.”
It was a chance well taken as apprentice Jason Gates took The Grey Crusader to the front and was never headed.
Gates was back in the winner’s box half an hour later as he rode a driving finish on Imperial Royal for Wayne Bardenhorst. It started as a three-way tussle in the home straight with La Duchesse and Fonteyn the initial protagonists but just as La Duchesse got the better of Fonteyn, Gates arrived late to snatch a short-head decision.
Haddington
Haddington is one of the biggest horses in training and easily picked out in the early morning gallops but he has been affected by the wet weather and a change of equipment, or rather lack of it, saw him put his opposition to the sword in the third to give Goosen his second winner in spite of him dislodging rider Eric Ngwane in the parade.
Ngwane, recently out of his time, rides regular work for Goosen and knows Haddington well. “He doesn’t like horses around him and doesn’t quicken when there are horses in front of him,” explain Ngwane as to why he made an early move on the home turn.
“He keeps going at the same pace so I let him roll and just played with him to keep him going.” Haddington rolled home by seven lengths.
“Marco van Rensburg (who rode him last time) said I must remove the blinkers. He was over-racing,” added Goosen.
“I just let Eric ride his own race.”
Van Rensburg did the honours for Goosen in the last with Bravo Zulu just getting the better of Royal Rustler with the judges having to resort to a magnifying glass to separate the two.
Jeff Freeman has a small string and he got his New Year off to a good start as Muzi Yeni got home aboard What A Scorcher to tie the lead in the National Jockey’s Championship with Anton Marcus who had ended his year one ahead of Yeni. Marcus’s lead was short-live as Yeni went ahead again, albeit by a single winner, his second race of the afternoon on the Alyson Wright-trained Gorgeous Guest.
Sentido
It was back to all-square in the championship as Marcus rode a hard-fought finish on the Garth Puller gelding Sentido in the seventh to beat off the challenge from Andre Nel’s pair of Selailai and Washington Square.
It’s still early days in the championship however, as there are still seven months of the season to run. RAINBOW BRIDGE is going to have to find an extra two lengths if he is to justify his position at the head of the market on Saturday. The other three Green Point principals shouldered a 2kg Grade 1 penalty last time and there is no such concession in the L’Ormarins Queen’s Plate.
However it’s easy to see where Bernard Fayd’Herbe’s mount could get it from because he burned up valuable energy fighting for his head four weeks ago and the pace seems sure to be a lot stronger this time.
“I fully expected him to be right there in the Green Point - there was never any doubt in my mind that his 110 rating was false,” recalls Eric Sands.
“But the race didn’t go according to plan. It was a small field and we never got the cover we were hoping for. He is not a puller normally. If we are working him at home, or bringing him to gallops, we put him in behind another horse and he drops the bit.
Competitive horse
“It is only in races when he doesn’t get cover that he pulls. Two of his races have been like that – the Winter Classic and the Green Point, and in the latter we finished with Grade 1 winners all around us. He is no tearaway, just a very competitive horse. He would certainly be better off with a fast pace. He wouldn’t tug so much and it would give him a bit more time to get a breather.”
The fast pace is widely expected to come from stable companion Amazing Strike, and at the owner’s request rather than the trainer’s. “This is his last race and Jessica Slack said: ‘Let’s have a bit of fun and put him in the Queen’s Plate.’”
Nothing said about making the running, not so far anyway, but the owner stands Ideal World (sire of Amazing Strike as well as Rainbow Bridge) and victory for either would be a major boost for the stallion. You can get 80-1 about Amazing Strike pulling it off so his role is pretty obvious. He is basically a 1200-1400m horse but his new trainer has few doubts about him lasting the mile – “He won his 1400s going away, he is a seven-year-old and there is his sire.” Ideal World won over 2500m and he is the sire of Met winner Smart Call.
String of Grade 1 winners
Sands, now 62, has been training for over 35 years. He has a string of Grade 1 winners to show for it including two Cape Flying Championships and three Mercury Sprints with Flobayou, the Champion Stakes and the Paddock Stakes – but not many of his horses got as worked up before their races as Rainbow Bridge does. How is he going to be on Saturday when he sees a crowd far bigger than he has ever come across before? “I am not going to tell him how many people will be there.”
Sands’ one-liners are delivered with such a straight face that it takes a second or two before you realise he is joking.
But will he take a leaf out of Sean Tarry’s Legal Eagle book and put a jockey up in the parade ring to keep the horse calm? Sands considers the question carefully before answering. “I don’t really know but last time he settled down in the parade ring. He was more on his toes when arrived at the course. There was an accident on the highway that day and as a result he spent 25 minutes more in the float than he should have done.”
So will he win on Saturday? The answer is implied rather than spelt out – “He is pretty fit and he has done well since the Green Point. I would say that he is probably now at his peak.”