Top jockeys leap aboard
FINAL FIELD FOR THE R5M SHOWPIECE WILL BE ANNOUNCED TODAY
Khumalo secures ride on overlooked Made To Conquer.
The final riding picture for the forthcoming Sun Met Celebrated with G.H. Mumm is becoming clearer. Former champion jockey S’manga Khumalo became the latest to commit when he confirmed he would be riding trainer Justin Snaith’s Vodacom Durban July runner up Made To Conquer, who has largely been overlooked as stablemates Do It Again and Oh Susanna have swept all before them.
Those two superstar runners will, of course, be ridden by Richard Fourie and Bernard Fayd’Herbe respectively when they line up for Cape Town’s racing showpiece, a R5-million Grade 1 contest over 2000m on the Kenilworth Summer course on 26 January.
The fourth big gun in Snaith’s powerful Met arsenal is Doublemint, who will be partnered by evergreen Piere Strydom. This improving four-year-old colt won the Grade 2 Glorious Goodwood Peninsular Handicap on L'Ormarins Queen’s Plate day – staying a little out of the bright light thrown by the fireworks in the main event.
Second in the Peninsular – nabbed on the line by Doublemint – was Kampala Campari from the in-form Andre Nel stable. Another outsider in the pack with some speed about him, Kampala Campari has been booked by Aldo Domeyer, while his stable companion, Head Honcho, who won the Grade 2 Premiers Trophy so impressively, stays in the hands of Keagan de Melo.
Those are the only six jockeys to have been officially declared, but the engagement of Anton Marcus for Rainbow Bridge has been widely publicised, while Sean Tarry has been clear that champion