It simply has to be once, twice, Three Times a Lady

The last month or two has been a very good period for Eastern Cape horse racing.

It was a hectic time for everyone involved with racing in the province, with one meeting after the other, including the big Algoa Cup weekend.

This gave the Port Elizabeth fraternity the opportunity to show, on and off the track, that the Friendly City is a very important role-player in South African horse racing.

The two tracks at Fairview – the turf and the poly – were in a great condition during this busy period, with track manag- er Charles Newcombe and his team doing some fine work.

Betting pools at the Fairview meetings are always solid, not only for the usual Friday meetings, but also when there is the occasional Monday or Wednesday meeting.

The Fairview Place Accumulator is without doubt one of the most popular bets with the South African punters.

On the track, the PE stables showed they mean business.

The Algoa Cup was very nearly won by a local trainer, Gavin Smith, for the first time since 2009.

It is getting more and more difficult for the Cape Town raiders to keep on winning this big PE race and the local stables can’t wait for next year’s race.

East Cape racing can be very proud of the PE women trainers. Tara Laing didn’t have enough arms to carry all the trophies back to the stable after this year’s annual awards, and Sharon Kotzen and Yvette Bremner won major races.

On the Friday of the Algoa Cup weekend, the Kotzen yard won the Racing Association Stakes with the filly Just Chaos and this past Saturday it was Bremner’s day in the limelight.

The Bremner stable had some success in the past when travelling to other centres with some of the best PE horses and on Saturday it was the turn of National Park to do PE proud.

This three-year-old gelding won the Graham Beck Stakes, a grade3-race, at Turffontein in Johannesburg with jockey Ryan Munger in the saddle.

The action continues at Fairview on the turf track on Friday with eight races and we are going with Three Times A Lady (race 4) as our banker.