KZN Awards all the rage
THE KZN Racing Awards ceremony will be held at the Elangeni Hotel in Durban on Thursday in celebration of another memorable Champions Season and some big names are among the nominations for the various categories.
Recently awards candidates and other interested parties have begun pointing out the differences in criteria from province to province that pertain to the various provincial racing awards and it is perhaps time to standardise these criteria in order to prevent the unhappiness that is starting to filter through.
For the KZN awards the equine champions are decided by the best performers in races held in KZN.
Out-of-province older horses qualify for an award as long as they have run at least two races in KZN during the season, while out-of-province two-year-olds only have to have run in one race in KZN.
The Champion Trainer, Jockeys and Apprentice awards are decided simply on the number of wins of races held in KZN, so an out-of-province participant could win it in theory. The Champion Owner award is decided on the amount of stakes gathered in races held in KZN, so could also be won by an outof-province participant.
For Gauteng’s “RA Feature Season Awards’’ the performances of participants, local and out-of-province, are considered in stakes races (Gr 1, Gr 2, G 3 and Listed) held on the Highveld from the time of the Emerald Cup (now called the Supreme Cup) at the end of September through to the President's Champion Challenge at the end of April. A points system based on the results of the stakes in that period is used to calculate the Champion Horses, Champion Trainer, Champion Jockey, Champion Owner and Champion Apprentice, while the Champion Workrider award goes to the winner of the Work Rider's Challenge series.
The Western Cape Racing Awards do not consider out-of-province participants and a recent change also saw the awards for horses, trainers, jockeys, owners and apprentices being decided on National statistics. Only horses trained by a Western Cape domiciled trainer and only Western Cape domiciled trainers, jockeys, apprentices and owners qualify for the awards. However, the equine Champions are decided on the performances of the qualifying horses in races throughout the country, while the Champion Trainer/Jockey/Apprentice and owner is decided by the finishing position of the participants on the relevant National log.
In a recent article by Equus Award winning journalist Michael Clower, Western Cape jockeys voiced their disapproval at the awards being based on national statistics rather than Western Cape statistics as it used to be, but Western Province Regional Racing Association director Robert Bloomberg later expressed his disappointment at the jockeys having used the press to state their viewpoint rather than official channels, where they have had ample opportunity to so, and added the Board would certainly consider any requests for change to the current system.
Criteria
However, perhaps there should also be a wider meeting between the various provincial boards to discuss standardization in the criteria for the provincial awards.
The chief differences at present are that the Highveld and KZN base their awards on results in their home province, but include out of province candidates, while the Cape now base their awards on national results but exclude out of province candidates.The most glaring example of a candidate suffering due to these differences was in the case of the brilliant mare Beach Beauty, who was the only dual Gr 1 winner during the 2013/2014 Cape Summer Of Champions Seasons, but did not qualify for the Western Cape awards as her trainer Denis Drier is domiciled to KZN.
However, then in her home province awards she was ousted from a second successive KZN Horse Of The Year title, despite winning the Gr 2 Drill Hall Stakes and defending her Gr 1 Jonsson Workwear Garden Province Crown as well as finishing second in the Gr 1 Rising Sun Gold Challenge, and this was due to Western Cape-based Legislate's wins in all of the Gr 2 KRA Guineas, the Gr 1 Daily News 2000 and the Gr 1 Vodacom Durban July.
There also appear to be inconsistences in the awards decision making processes and this could probably best be highlighted by the number of times a different result has been arrived at by two different panels. An example happened this year where Fly By Night was named Western Cape Champion Older Female while Hammie's Hooker was named Equus Champion Older Female, despite the countrywide performances of both horses having been considered by both panels.