Young horses vie for Sea Cottage memorial
Sea Cottage was voted the greatest of all time racehorse in SA last year, when the coronavirus halted racecourse action for a while and racing devotees found themselves with little to do but reminisce.
Remarkably, given his legend, the only other memorial to this horse is a race in his name, run each year in January at Turffontein – a track on which he never set foot.
The Grade 3 Sea Cottage Stakes for three-year-olds, over 1 800m, is the headline event of this weekend’s racing calendar.
It commemorates Sea Cottage’s only appearance on the highveld – at the now-long-gone Gosforth Park in Germiston, in an invitation race over 1 700m on 26 August, 1967.
It was his final race, at the age of five, before he went off to stud at his birthplace on the Birch Brothers’ farms in Dordrecht in Eastern Cape.
The Durban July had been won, along with the Champion Stakes, the Cape Derby and Guineas and the Queen’s Plate (twice) and a stack of other big races.
Famously, a sniper’s bullet at Durban’s Blue Lagoon beach had failed to stop the inexorable advance of the great one.
There was nothing left for owner-trainer Syd Laird and jockey Bobby Sivewright to prove. But all the heroics had been in Cape Town and Durban and the Joburg racing crowd badly wanted to share in the glory.
So, the Benoni Turf Club secured a fat sponsorship and lured trainer, horse and jockey up north for the Cutty Sark Invitation Handicap.
The opposition was not the “blind school” as has often been suggested, with top Natal sprinter-miler Magic Mirror and well-performed Transvaal handicappers Caradoc and Cuff Link accepting invitations.
More than 21 000 people packed into the limited confines of Gosforth Park, with temporary bleachers erected on the infield to accommodate some of the overwhelming demand from “Vaalies” keen to see the wonder horse.
Sea Cottage started at 1-2, conceding 10kg and more to his rivals. In hindsight, he should have been a lot shorter in the betting market, given how he won – sitting in midfield until 400m out, then cruising clear and beating Magic Mirror (receiving 13kg) by 5.5 lengths, with Caradoc and Cuff Link even further back.
Today’s memorial has just a 4kg spread in the weights as it is a stakes event. Lining up are a bunch of promising three-yearolds from highveld stables.
Topping the card with 60kg to carry is Johan Janse van Vuurentrained Second Base, who has four wins from five starts since his debut five months ago.
The son of Gimmethegreenlight is already a course-and-distance winner, so has compelling claims. Even his widest draw isn’t really a problem with just nine runners inside him.