Justin Snaith is champion trainer for a fifth time. Picture: Yolanda Saayman/Gallo Images
Justin Snaith is South Africa’s champion trainer for the fifth time following an eventful Gold Cup Day at Greyville in Durban on Sunday.
It is the second year in a row that the Cape Town ace has edged out Highveld supremo Sean Tarry at the post.
Going into the weekend, sometime champ Tarry had realistic hopes of snatching the title at the death as he saddled a string of highly fancied runners at the season’s big-money climax.
But all the Tarry “bombs” narrowly missed their targets and the man from Randjesfontein came away from the coast with four runner-up cheques – and the championship runner-up tag.
Snaith had one winner on the day – bolstering four at Fairview on Friday and giving him just enough return to emerge victorious.
The championship is decided on the amount of prize money accumulated over the 12-month season that ends on 31 July. The log tally on Monday morning was R20,981,288 to Snaith and R19,411,763 to Tarry – a R1,569,525 lead that is insurmountable in the month’s remaining four race meetings.
The gap was something similar on the morning of Gold Cup Day, which offered a total purse of more than R7.5-million and a sliver of hope for the personable upcountry conditioner.
Tarry’s frustrations started in Race 2 when 7-10 shot Rodeo Drive seemed to be cruising to an easy victory until local hope Just Reckless (8-1) came whizzing past in the last furlong. Another local, Cats Pyjamas (6-1), was the party pooper in the next race, besting Tarry’s 9-2 second favourite Dantonfromsandton.
In the Grade 1 Premiers Champion Stakes, Tarry’s duo of Legend Of Arthur and Cosmic Speed could only manage fifth and seventh respectively as fellow Joburg raider VJ’s Angel, a filly among the colts, caused an upset.
And so it went…
Lucky Lad, a 33-10 chance in the Mercury Sprint, failed to get his nose in front of Surjay. In the Gold Cup itself, 18-10 favourite and defending champ Future Pearl laboured into seventh behind 12-1 winner Master Redoute.
Cousin Casey, narrowly denied in the Hollywoodbets Durban July three weeks ago, epitomised the Tarry day with a fourth second place in a row – behind Dave The King in the Grade 1 HKJC Champions Cup.
Cruelly, while new champion jockey Richard Fourie partnered most of the Tarry fancies on those “almost but no cigar” missions, he switched allegiances for the final indignity and piloted Mike de Kock-trained Dave The King to a brilliant victory.
That gave Fourie his 377th and final winner of the season. He’d eclipsed Anthony Delpech’s 25-year-old record of 334 wins some six weeks earlier. The new mark might stand forever.
Amazingly, those 377 wins are 189 ahead of the second-placed jockey’s current total of 188. That jock is the indefatigable Muzi Yeni, a perennial championship runner-up whom the whole racing world hopes will crack the title one day soon.
“It’s been quite a journey!” exclaimed Fourie in the winners’ enclosure.
The travel-weary Cape Town rider has no bookings for the final four meetings of the season and is probably already on a fishing boat somewhere.
As the drama played out on the Greyville turf, the National Horseracing Authority (NHA) released a statement saying it had looked at its record keeping in light of punters’ complaints that the official stats looked dodgy – particularly sudden spikes in trainers’ prize-money totals over recent weeks.
The NHA didn’t say anything about these puzzling changes but did admit to finding a big mistake in the sums dating back to Christmas time.
During the audit, “it was noted that the racing data for 23 December 2023 from Hollywoodbets Kenilworth Racecourse had not been updated in the NHA database. This discrepancy was due to a timing difference in the automated scheduling of racing result updates that occurred during the holiday period in December 2023.”
The computer was to blame.
“Additionally, the NHA identified three disqualified horses whose stakes were subsequently redistributed to the promoted horses. This adjustment ensures that all records are accurate as of the present date.
“The NHA remains committed to maintaining the highest standards of accuracy and transparency in all our operations. We will continue our supervision of our information systems service provider to ensure the accuracy of our data.”
