THE race is on for the Founders Trophy when an action-packed month of horse racing starts at the Fairview Polytrack on Friday.
Five meetings will be held in December at the Greenbushes venue and one of the races which stands out is the R175 000 Founders Trophy over 1 600m.
Some of the best older horses in the Eastern Cape will contest this race. It will be the seventh of eight races at Friday’s meeting.
On Saturday all eyes will be on the East Cape champion filly, Splicethemainbrace, that will be running in Cape Town.
She will tackle the best in the country in the R1.25 million Cape Fillies Guineas, a race for three-year-old fillies over 1 600m.
Splicethemainbrace had a sensational start to her career in the care of the East Cape champion trainer Alan Greeff.
She has won six of her seven starts but has a huge task on Saturday as the only visitor in the race.
A visiting filly has last one this race in Cape Town a decade away and it will be very exciting to see what Splicethemainbrace can do. She will certainly have the support of the East Cape racing fraternity.
The Greeff stable is in great form. Greeff saddled four winners at last Friday’s meeting. He is now just one away from 50 winners for the season.
National champion jockey, Richard Fourie, also had a brilliant outing at the Polytrack at the last meeting.
He won the first five races and was just one short of Gavin Venter’s record for the most winners ridden at an East Cape meeting.
One of Fourie’s winners was with the Greeff-trained My Best Shot in the Guineas Plate for three-year-olds.
This was an impressive victory, and it will be exciting to follow My Best Shot’s progress.
The other highlight was another victory by the eight-year-old gelding El Romiachi.
You seldom see a horse competing in 100 races, let alone winning his 100th race.
El Romiachi did exactly that but went on to make it three wins in a row in fewer than 30 days. The last win was on Friday.
What is remarkable is that El Romiachi has won not only his 100th start but also his 101st and now his 102nd – some training feat by Zietsman Oosthuizen.
This is a unique hat trick and some sort of world record. Oosthuizen feels this must surely qualify for an entry in the Guinness Book of Records!
The good news for the Eastern Cape is that the popular Lunga Gila will rejoin the Fairview training ranks soon.
Gila, born and bred in the Eastern Cape, started as a trainer two seasons ago at Fairview.
He will be returning after a year in Cape Town. Gila will saddle his last runners for his Western Cape stable at today’s Kenilworth meeting.
“I decided to move back purely due to family reasons. I want to be closer to my family who needs me,” Gila explained.
