Western Cape trainers continued their dominance in the Algoa Cup, with Glen Kotzen’s Cat Daddy winning this year’s version.
Cat Daddy defeated Knights Templar (9-2) by 2.00 lengths with another Kotzen runner, Duc D’Orange (20-1), in third and Crome Yellow (19-4) in fourth. And with Run Red taking fi h place the Western Cape trainers completely dominated the race, making it their 10th consecutive win since 2010.
The first local horse past the post was Jacques Strydom’s Onesie, who finished a disappointing 9.35 lengths behind the winner. Seeking Wisdom was leading the field for most of the race with Just Chaos, Suc D’Orange, Mangrove and Tommy Grand also set- ting a decent pace.
With 300m to go Cat Daddy took over the lead and stayed on till the end while Knights Templar came through over the last 75m t0 run second. Cat Daddy paid R2.40 a win. Cat Daddy and Knights Templar dominated proceedings on the be ing boards throughout with hardly any support for the rest of the field. It was Cat Daddy’s fourth career win from 13 starts for The Great 8 Stables and the LLC Syndicate. This four-year-old son of Idea World was bred by the Gary Player Stud. Kotzen was in ecstasy.
“It was a super weekend for my team. I’m so proud of each and everyone,” he said. Kotzen also said the Algoa Cup is a “fantastic meeting” and thanked the new sponsors on board. Winnaar said: “I’m so happy for this wonderful weekend. I could not have asked for any better.”
He continued by saying he was begging Kotzen for the race. “Everything went according to plan. I came out of the gates positive and was at the right place with plenty of horse underneath me.
“All credit to Glen for an unbelievable three days,” Winnaar said. For local trainers, it is back to the drawing board in an effort to produce the next Surfin’ USA – the last PE horse to win the race in 2009.
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