We already have a winter season winner

One “dead cert” winner this racing season is jockey Keagan de Melo. He has the South African national championship sewn up – currently nearly 50 winners ahead of his nearest rival, Richard Fourie.

Amazingly, bookmakers are still offering odds on this contest. If you’re desperate to boost your bank balance by R100, you could go to Hollywoodbets and place R10,000 on young Keagan at 1-100.
World Sports Betting is even more cautious at 1-80.

Fourie would have to ride a winner every second day till the end of the season on 31 July to stand the remotest chance of catching the pacemaker. And De Melo would have to be suspended or injured in the meantime.

With that in mind, Hollywood’s 15-1 about Fourie isn’t getting many takers, one presumes.

Obvious heir

At the start of the season, De Melo declared that he wouldn’t be aiming for the championship, despite being widely tipped as the obvious heir to Warren Kennedy when the latter legged it abroad. He had a young family to think about and the incessant travelling of a title bid would disrupt happy home life.

But talent will out, as they say. Without really trying, he surged to the top of the table and then clearly thought, what the heck, one can’t spurn an open goal.

With choice rides from the big yards of Johan Janse van Vuuren and Mike de Kock on the Highveld, Dean Kannemeyer and Brett Crawford in Cape Town, Gavin Smith in Eastern Cape and Alyson Wright in KwaZulu-Natal, De Melo cruised to a big lead and never looked like being caught.

Indeed, in recent weeks, he looks to have taken his foot off the pedal just a tad, clocking up just six winners in the past fortnight – about half his running average over the first nine months of the year.

Greyville engagements

But the lad from Alberton gave notice of his intention to finish the season strongly when he clocked up two winners and a short-head second at the Vaal this week.

On Saturday, he heads to Greyville in Durban for nine engagements and no one will be surprised if he gets the win counter ticking merrily.

After their victorious partnerships in the Summer Cup and the Premier’s Champions Challenge at Turffontein, it seems likely Puerto Manzano will be De Melo’s Hollywoodbets Durban July mount.

However, it’s interesting to note that he has partnered quite a few of the 49 remaining July entrants. On 1 May, he rode Justin Snaith-trained tough guy Hoedspruit to second place in the Variety Club Mile at Kenilworth and has had two cracking triumphs on Weiho Marwing-trained Son Of Raj – something of a July “shrewdy” at 16-1.

On Sunday at Turffontein, he throws a leg across Mike de Kock’s progressive three-year-old Shoemaker, who’ll be going all out to qualify for the country’s biggest race.

De Melo has also ridden Flying Bull, None Other, East Coast and At My Command in recent months.

This Saturday, though, he’ll be piloting the only non-July horse in the Greyville 1900, a traditional big race pointer – Indlamu for trainer Sean Tarry. The one-eyed runner has an outside chance but will be bumping a whole load of opposition with July glory in mind.

The champion-in-waiting’s best chances on the day are in Race 8 with USA’s Hope and Race 9 with Ponte Pietra.