A July runaway to turn heads
JUNK STATUS aside, South Africa is lining up to splurge hundreds of millions of rand on the nation’s annual sporting and social jamboree of colour, cash, cuisine and countless crowds of people punting and revelling at the 2017 edition of the Vodacom Durban July (VDJ).
The colourful flags of #VDJ 2017 have transformed the Greyville Racecourse into a must-go-to precinct where heartbreaking fun and pain and joy go with the territory in the game of gamblets and racehorse champions.
As the countdown to the festival of fashion and horseracing calendar’s clock runs out, the 11th hour.com rush of the shopping spree, food and beverage fair, logistical nightmares, air flights, taxi and lift club arrangements et al is kicking in, so that all and sundry get into their acts to blend with The Colour of Magic.
In this crazy toss-up of tips, tipsters and tipping, the tipping point is bound to be: What colour’s your magic?
Traditionally, this multimillion rand milieu is spread out on the first Saturday of July.
Only an Act of God, like torrential downpours, like the mud bath in 1989, or a national tragedy of extreme proportion, could scuttle the premier horseracing extravaganza.
Greyville is the place to be where 50 000 rub shoulders in a winter wonderland of sheer fun and festivities.
It will be hosted with pomp and ceremony by Gold Circle Racing and Gambling.
The city’s greatest networking platform under the big tops takes socialising and socialites to a new top-end, the Woodstock of horseracing, entertainment and partying gets better and better each season as racegoers and fashionistas turn into showstoppers of note, mixing and mingling amid the protocol of the political royalty and the proletariat.
It’s a day when the captains of the corporate world serve the gold labels in whisky, brandy, wine and champagne and spoil VIP customers, guests and politicos with gilt-edged menus of exotic seafood to cigars and shooters to calm the nerves to charm.
South Africa, reinvented into a democratic republic more than two decades ago, is a hotchpotch of very wealthy people and get-ahead middle-class to the extremely poor.
However, the VDJ has the magnetism of drawing the class conscious nouveau riche and the underclass together for a funfilled day and night of festivities and fashion with money permutated as the common denominator.
Billed as Magic In The Morning, the gallops of the world’s warriors of the turf are ferried from Summerveld, a lush estate of rolling green hills and valleys, where champion horses and ambitious jockeys are trained and put through their rigorous paces, albeit respectively, to the country’s capital of horseracing situated on the fringe of Durban’s CBD.
The moneyed people watch the gallops from the Durban View Room equipped with TV screens and live transmissions of the pre-race tradition, enjoying piping hot coffee and a buffet of breakfast.
The hordes of the not-sorich get a yearly treat of free coffee and sticky Chelsea buns and doughnuts to bolster the numbers of the common people clinging to the railings for the fascinating photo-finish of the prized runners both at the gallops and the carnival race day.
But the real thing is on Saturday. The horses are the real heroes as they do the rituals in the grand parade, show off their potential as possible prizewinners, trot around in a splash of colour, line up at the gates, bolt at the sound of the starter’s gun, jockey for the best grid positions, fly past the curves and let rip into a thunderous final gallop down the straights and past the finishing line.
From the tongue-twisting horse named Krambambuli the 18-horse pack will keep punters at sixes and sevens until the moment they start bolting for the glory of being crowned the King of the Turf in the 2 200 metre race with a whopping R4.25 million at stake in the grade one VDJ.
The hot contenders are Al Sahem (13), ridden by the first black champion jockey, Smanga Khumalo, whose epic July win is told in a real-life film; followed by Edict of Nantes (12), both three-year star performers, and then there’s Mr Winsome (14), Elusive Silva (15) and It’s My Turn (8) that are rated highly among the favourites to win or dead-heat in a dramatic photofinish that brings the cauldron to an absolute standstill.
My Mandela coins are going on The Conglomerate (7) and Black Arthur (11).
In a topsy-turvy day of tips, tipsters and tipping, and the hour of the punters, pundits and people, South Africans and gambling gurus globally will wager more than R200m on the prestigious Race Seven. Africa’s greatest racing roadshow, with all its trimmings and trappings, will seduce you to fly to the bank vault, make you lose your shirt or sell your Rolex at the turnstile, get you home in one piece or you could spend the night behind bars if you dare to drink and drive.
Whatever your fancy, enjoy the flutter and the flatter of the annual hardy in the running commentary of the “Beauty and the Beast” in a terrific turf war with a difference.