Bernard Kantor racks up another winner

In order to maintain In­vestec’s position as a pow­erhouse in the financial world, their top man, Ber­nard Kantor, has had to pull a few rabbits out of the hat.

One of his best moves was to step in when Vodafone dithered about extending their sponsor­ship of the Epsom Derby – Bernard didn’t hesitate and the public­ity Investec has received far out­weighs the cost.

The next move by the 67-year-old co-founder of Investec was to lure the world’s most famous jockey, Frankie Dettori, to an­other Investec-sponsored event, the Grade 1 Cape Derby on Sun Met Day. Probably not a huge task as Frankie is their official “racing ambassador”.

To say the whole exercise end­ed up a resounding success is an understatement.

“It doesn’t get better than that,” enthused Bernard after the race. “We brought out the world’s best-known jockey for an Investec-sponsored race, he’s gone and won it on a son of Count Dubois (his stallion) and in the colours of a great friend of mine, Markus Jooste.”

Winning trainer, Brett Craw­ford, who had the sort of meet­ing that he’ll remember forever, commented: “Having a rider like Frankie makes all the difference – I didn’t have to give him any in­structions.”

Frankie, for his part, enjoyed the occasion although this Derby on Edict Of Nantes would rate a long way behind his two big Ep­som triumphs on Authorized (2007) and Golden Horn (2015).

We chatted after his win and he said: “You know, Molly, I ap­parently agreed to come (to SA) during a party (in the UK), but by the morning I’d forgotten about it. Then the next day my agent re­minded me and I said ‘Blimey, I’d better go then,’.”

The stipes slapped Frankie with a R1500 fine for waving his whip on Edict Of Nantes before the winning post, but the 46-year-old is unlikely to call in racing’s number one legal man, Mannie Witz, to defend his case.

However, he could argue he was simply waving congratula­tions to Bernard Kantor in the main stand!

On the Sun Met front, the confidence expressed by Brett Crawford in last week’s column will hopefully have encouraged a number of punters to back his Aussie import, Whisky Baron.

Now firmly entrenched in the premier league of trainers domi­nated by Sean Tarry and Justin Snaith, Brett had always believed that his charge could get the bet­ter of Legal Eagle as he had pro­gressed in an upward curve since being gelded.

Both Whisky Baron and Edict Of Nantes will be entered for the Vodacom Durban July and the fact that the former’s time in the Met was five seconds faster than the Derby suggests a Met-July double is very much on the cards.

No escaping the fact that all the Snaith runners – headed by Bela- Bela – along with the second fa­vourite, Marinaresco, were disap­pointments in the race and some experts now believe that the latter is not as good as his connections believe.

Brett’s other feature success on Saturday came in the Kuda Sprint in which Bold Respect, a son of Bold Silvano, suggested he was a steal when purchased as a year­ling for R200,000.

Two horses who will never see my money again are “Looney Tunes” Cloth Of Cloud and Aussie import, Lineker.

I told the assembled company at my Kenilworth table: “If the filly gets to the start in one piece, she’ll blitz them coming back.” She got to the start OK, but after 200m was trailing as if left at the start or had simply refused to gal­lop

As she can’t go to the paddocks for a few months, my move would be to send her to Mike Stewart’s stable at picturesque Noordhoek – he’s a master with difficult horses and Cloth Of Cloud certainly falls into that category