Cape raiders add spice to race day

THE Cape Town raiders will make today’s race meeting at Fairview much more interesting.

Justin Snaith and Vaughn Marshall are the two Cape Town trainers who decided to send some horses to Port Elizabeth with one goal in mind – to win those races.

Exciting rider Richard Fourie has been assigned to bring the Snaith horses home while the stable jockey of Marshall, MJ Byleveld, will also be on the early flight from Cape Town today.

The presence of the Cape Town runners makes the Guineas Plate a race to look forward too.

It is a very small field of six runners that will be in action (thank goodness for the raiders!) but there are some very useful three-year-olds among them.

Seattle Flame, trained by local champion Alan Greeff, is a worthy favourite, having won three of his last five starts.

He was no match for the highly rated Cape Town horse Pack Leader, but Pack Leader is not here today.

This time the visitors Doublemint (Snaith) and Captain’s Charm (Marshall) will have to lift their feet to beat the consistent Greeff runner.

Two other local runners, Paper Town (Gavin Smith) and Desert Chief (Sharon Kotzen), are not out of it.

It was at this meeting last year when Kotzen had her first winner (Treize) since taking out her licence and it would be fitting if she can have a winner today.

Paper Town is highly regarded by his trainer and the way he finished his last race he can’t be ignored.

Marshall looks hard to beat with Fort Viva (race 1) and Rock of Africa (race 7) and punters could make use of these two to make some money on a very competitive day.

The Port Elizabeth action continues on Monday with races on the polytrack but before that we have Sunday’s International Jockeys Challenge at Turffontein.

This year the challenge between a South African and an International team is just this one Johannesburg meeting and not spread over two legs like last year.

The young Aussie, Corey Brown, is among the six overseas jockeys. The focus will be on him after his sensational victory in the Melbourne Cup 10 days ago.

Punters’ Pal tips:

Fairview:

PA R432

3-7-8/4-10-11/5-16/3-11/1-3/6-8/8-11-12

PICK 6 R1 920

1-4-10-11/1-2-5-16/3-11/1-3-8/3-6-8-9/1-4-8-11-12