This lot are worth their weight in Guineas

“It is one of the best Guineas fields we’ve seen for a long time,” said Muis Roberts this week. Anthony Delpech referred to a “real quality field” and Glen Kotzen predicted “a great race”.

These racing luminaries aren’t given to hyperbole but couldn’t hide their excitement at the quality of racehorse set to contest Saturday’s WSB Guineas in Durban – formerly the KZN Guineas – when interviewed this week.

Young trainer Gareth van Zyl captured just how good then line-up is for the 1600m, R500,000 race when he observed: “To run in the first four, you’ve got to run to a merit rating of 120.”

‘Grade 2 affair’

For a race of nine three-year-olds, that’s a lofty standard – befitting any Grade 1 event. Delpech said there was no question that these were the best representatives of their generation in the country.

So, it’s all wrong that this Guineas is a Grade 2 affair.

Of course, the presence of prodigy Charles Dickens lifts everything a notch or two, given his 132 merit rating. Indeed, it’s a surprise that the connections of other budding stars opted to take on the colt that had tongues wagging after his six whopping victories on the trot in the Western Cape summer.

Kotzen, who saddles Cousin Casey in the race, explained the situation to a Gold Circle interviewer: “When I saw Charles Dickens in the weights I thought, gosh, this is going to be a very small field. I didn’t expect them all to stand their ground. But there are three-year-olds trying to get into the July that need their weights to go up…”

Charles Dickens

Cousin Casey is not one of those.

“Obviously I would like Charles Dickens not to be there – not because I can’t beat him, but simply because I don’t want to beat him! Because of the rating going up!” said Kotzen.

Such are the problems of a horse trainer. “It’s a tricky path… you have to box and weave and do your best,” added the personable conditioner.

Among the three-year-olds Kotzen referred to as trying to get into the Hollywoodbets Durban July is Van Zyl’s charge Wiccan Warrior, whose MR of 98 is currently well short of a July ticket.

“Realistical, [in the Guineas] he’s going to have to run well above his rating and I expect him to do that,” said Van Zyl. “I wouldn’t run him in that field if I didn’t think there was upside to him.”

Wiccan Warrior is going to need all the upside he can find, at even weights, if he hopes to get close to the likes of Charles Dickens, Cousin Casey, Roberts’s runner See It Again and Highveld raider Anfields Rocket – all of whom have Grade 1 trophies in the cabinet back home.

Pace

However, strange things happen in racing and, as Delpech pointed out in his interview, a slow pace is the greatest danger to a good horse – and he sees no obvious hare among this Guineas nine. Nevertheless, the former champion jockey-turned-racing manager reckons Charles Dickens has the turn of foot to overcome a tardy pace.

The chestnut colt’s trainer Candice Bass-Robinson reported him in good nick after travelling up to Durban from Cape Town last weekend but did warn that the Guineas was the first outing of a new campaign, his first sight of Greyville and his first time around a right-hand bend.

While breezily noting “some nice competitive horses in there”, she declared Charles Dickens to have “a big chance”.