More to come from Path Of Choice
PATH OF CHOICE, considered good enough to run in the Langerman - even if he did finish plum last, showed that he is a different horse since being gelded by making virtually all in the Goindustry Dovebid Maiden at Kenilworth on Saturday. Vaughan Marshall said: “I think that gelding is what he needed all along. Now we should take the blinkers off to get him to settle and then we will see more improvement.”
John Kinsley’s 15-2 chance took a false step inside the final furlong and cannoned into neck runner-up Viva Rio. Des McLachlan lodged an objection on behalf of the Glen Kotzen-trained gelding but the stipes had little hesitation in ruling that the result should stand.
Nasty Harry had similar final 200m problems when winning the Liugong Forklifts Handicap and Corne Orffer reported: “He hit two divots and pecked twice. I thought I was going to be grabbed at the end.”
The six-year-old carries Laurence Wernars’ famous fleur de lys colours only rarely seen in Cape Town and punters should note that Brett Crawford considers the 12-1 winner very much a soft ground specialist, saying:”
Maybe we will have one more swing of the door before the end of winter.” Andries Steyn has something of a reputation for his achievements with badlegged horses that top trainers wouldn’t even have in their yards and In Full Power, ridden to victory by Petros Fama in the Metropolitan Lodge Work Riders’ Maiden, has a case history that would rival that of even the leg-swinging Power Grid. Steyn explained: “In Full Power has a piece of bone loose on his sesamoid and he would have won a long time ago had it not been for that.
“Some days he feels it and some days he doesn’t. The vet says that he can’t take it out because there are too many ligaments around it. You can’t work him too much but my track at home helps horses like him because it is uphill.”
Metropolitan Lodge
Metropolitan Lodge, incidentally, is the charitable organisation that brought the various sponsors to the party on Saturday and used the racemeeting to raise funds for several good causes including the St Helena Bay-based Die Eiland Huis for the mentally and physically disabled. Greg Cheyne drops his whip about as rarely as the conductor of the Cape Philharmonic Orchestra drops his baton and onlookers could scarcely believe it when the stick flew out of his hand at a crucial stage in the Western Province Forklifts Handicap. That didn’t stop him winning the race on the Andre Nel-trained Crome Yellow but, when the whip was returned to the weighing room, stipe Nick Shearer tossed it to him, saying. “You dropped this. Now let’s see if you can catch it.” Cheyne fielded it as neatly as the accomplished cricketer he once was and explained: “It went before I moved to pick it up. It was a rookie error.”
He promptly landed the first leg of the expected Adam Marcus double on Missisippi Burning while M.J. Byleveld followed up on Hello Winter Hello 35 minutes later.
“Missisippi Burning is only 15 hands but she is so well put together that I didn’t bother about her size when I first saw her,” Marcus related.
“But I must admit I did begin to wonder when I saw her in the parade ring up against horses by Dynasty and the like. She is all heart, though, and the way she accelerated was very promising while Hello Winter Hello is progressive and has a temperament to die for.”
Sandile Mbhele, the leading apprentice in Cape Town last season, continues to impress and he followed up success on the Paul Reeves-trained Chilly Winter in the Grinnell Group Handicap by earning praise from Marshall (“He did exactly as I asked him to”) when leading over a furlong out on 9-1 shot Blackbeard in the last. This year’s Bidvest Majorca and Cartier Sceptre winner Clouds Unfold is on the way back after injuring her hip in a freak accident at Summerveld in May.
Kevin Sommerville, racing manager for the filly’s ownerbreeders Drakenstein, said: “She had only been there for about three days when it happened. She was a bit full of herself and she got loose.
“She slipped on the grass and chipped the point of her hip.
“Fortunately the prognosis for a fully grown horse with this type of injury is good.
“She is now back with Candice Bass-Robinson and is trotting every day.
She is getting on really well.”