A better year on Yeni’s wish list

Popular jockey Muzi Yeni will want to forget 2019. He hogged the racing headlines for all the wrong reasons: a 90-day suspension, admitted to hospital after a fall at Turffontein and losing out in the title race by four winners.

Yeni appealed the ban — imposed for physically intimidating rival Lyle Hewitson in a race at Greyville in July — but it was dismissed and the Durbanborn rider returned to the saddle only in March 2020.

His new year wish will have been for better fortune in 2020, but the Covid-19 pandemic meant another delay until Tuesday when racing resumed at the Vaal.

Yeni has opted to ride in Gauteng rather than KwaZuluNatal during the lockdown and it may be a shrewd move. With Warren Kennedy opting for his home province, there is the opportunity of some plum rides for top stables.

With Hewitson back from Japan but mainly riding for Sean Tarry, Yeni will once again be working flat out. In the 2018/2019 season in which he rode 215 winners, he rode in 1,822 races, 263 more than champion Hewitson.

There is a nine-race card on Thursday and Yeni can get punters off to a good start by winning the opening event on trainer Weiho Marwing’s runner Winter Stories.

Maputo, another Marwing inmate who finished third on debut, could also be a winner for Yeni in the fifth race.

This is a tougher contest than the first with all of Titleist, Intothemystic and Gold Lightning in with chances.

The banker bet at the meeting will be Tarry’s top filly, Celtic Sea, who is certain to start oddson favourite in the seventh race.

Rio’s Winter, the best horse in Stephen Moffatt’s Vaal stable, takes on Celtic Sea with Piere Strydom reuniting with the daughter of Querari.

Strydom’s best ride at the meeting should be Single Red Rose, who makes most appeal in the first leg of the Pick Six. Ashley Fortune’s filly is selected to beat Samoa and Step Ahead.

Meanwhile, with racing having returned in England, the big race at Newmarket on Saturday is the Qipco 2,000 Guineas in which Pinatubo remains the odds-on favourite.

A member of Charlie Appleby’s powerful stable, Pinatubo could be opposed by four runners from the stable of Aidan O’Brien, who has won four of the past five runnings of the race. The quartet are the 7-1 second favourite Arizona, Wichita, New World Tapestry and Royal Dornoch.