Captain America is back on track

CAPTAIN AMERICA will have his first race since finishing third in the J& B Met in a pinnacle at Turffontein on Saturday as he bids to repeat last year’s HF Oppenheimer Horse Chestnut win.

Brett Crawford (pictured) said: “He is with the Mike de Kock yard in Jo’burg at the moment and goes in a 1 450m race on Saturday before running in the Horse Chestnut on April 2.”

Crawford travelled to Melbourne to buy one horse at the Inglis Premier Yearling Sale for the second successive year. Twelve months ago he bought the AUS$ 560 000 sale-topper for Ridgemont Stud and this time he picked up a Fastnet Rock filly out of a full sister to Holy Roman Emperor for AUS$ 300 000 for the same operation.

De Kock, Joey Ramsden, Johan Janse van Vuuren, Candice Robinson and Derek Brugman were also in action.

Ramsden will train two of the three Brugman purchased for Markus Jooste and Mrs Robinson the third. She bought two others and was also acting for Marsh Shirtliff, Bryn Ressell, James Drew and Mike Fullard.

Jooste, for whom Brugman also bought two to stay in Australia, was among the sellers as well and sold four by the 2012 Golden Horse winner Delago Deluxe who was bred in Australia and stands at the Newhaven Park Stud in New South Wales.

Brugman said: “Delago Deluxe has been very well received in Australia and his yearlings are selling fantastically well.”

Jooste, the leading owner in South Africa for each of the last eight seasons, is now part-owner of a significant number of horses with the great Irish trainer Aidan O’Brien at Ballydoyle, one of the most impressive and most successful training establishments in the world.