THE top three Fairview stables will be represented at one of the country’s biggest horse racing meetings of the year.
Trainers Alan Greeff, Gavin Smith and Kelly Mitchley will saddle horses at the Met meeting at the Kenilworth track in Cape Town on Saturday.
Five East Cape horses, including the reigning Horse of the Season, Joy and Peace, will be in action.
Joy and Peace (Greeff) will contest the Summer Fling Stakes for fillies and mares. National champion jockey, Richard Fourie, will be in the saddle.
The top sprinter, Cruise Control (Smith), runs in the R1.5 million Cape Flying Championship over 1 000m.
The filly, Woman’s World (Mitchley), tackles 2 800m in the Western Cape Stayers race.
In the first of 12 races at this prestigious meeting two Fairview babies, Instaworthy (Smith) and Silva City (Greeff), will face the starter.
They are both two-year-old fillies running in the Summer Juvenile Stakes over 1100.
It will be a huge challenge for all the Fairview horses to travel to Cape Town and take on the best in the country.
For Nelson Mandela Bay Racing it is exciting that these horses will be part of the big day. The local racing fraternity will be supporting them all the way.
The Met itself will be run for an incredible 163rd time and the runners will be aiming at total prize money of R5 million.
This day is a huge one for punters who will be eyeing bets like the Pick Six, where the pool could reach R10 million, and the Quartet in the main race with a pool of about R2 million.
As is the case every year, this massive racing weekend starts with the Friday Fairview meeting.
It is a good-looking meeting of eight races with the highlights being the Fairview Merchants, the Mile and the Breeders Guineas Plate.
The Greeff stable should be the one to follow. The East Cape champion yard is in tremendous form and dominated last Friday’s meeting.
Greeff won five of the eight races and now has 72 winners behind his name since the season started in August last year.
Smith picked up a winner, his 60th for the season, and trainers, Zietsman Oosthuizen and Jacques Strydom, saddled a winner apiece.
Oosthuizen won the first race with Greenlight Express when the work riders got a chance to show off their skills.
As usual, this race was a crowd favourite and the winning rider, Coach Naki, was the hero.
Flash Lightning was a bit of a surprise winner of the sixth race but very nearly didn’t line up for the race after his designated jockey, Denis Schwarz, had a terrible fall earlier in the day.
Schwarz surprised all and sundry by getting up almost straight away after the fall.
“It was a shocking fall but I knew I had to get up quickly so that the horse wouldn’t go over me. I was glad to be fine to ride the winner later,” he said.
