THERE will be a lot of love around at the Fairview racetrack in Greenbushes on Friday afternoon.
The Valentine’s Day meeting on the turf track consists of eight races and has all the ingredients to be a very competitive and exciting meeting.
The focus will be on the thoroughbred animals, maybe even a little more than usual on Valentine’s Day, as the love for them is mostly the reason why people get involved in the sport.
There is no feature race on the card but a strong Pinnacle Stakes over 1 400m is full of quality and should be the highlight of the day.
Next Friday two feature races will form part of the meeting which already has the tongues wagging.
The Lady’s Pendant and the Ibhayi Stakes will be run then and the nominations for those two races look really good.
There has been a lot of interest from the Western Cape for this meeting on the 21st and that always provides for healthy rivalry between East and West on the day.
National champion trainer, Justin Snaith, is one of four Western Cape trainers who have entered horses to run on the 21st.
Candice Bass-Robinson, Glen Kotzen and Eric Sands are the others.
All of them have been very successful when visiting in the past but Snaith and Kotzen have been particularly strong at Fairview this season.
The Snaith stable has already won 13 races at Fairview this season and the Kotzen yard visited the winners’ box eight times.
The local trainers know they will have to be on top of their game to keep the silverware safely locked up in the Bold Silvano room at Fairview.
Two stables who will be ready for anything are those of the local top dogs, Alan Greeff and Gavin Smith.
They have been in brilliant form recently and promising young horses in their care have caught the eye in recent meetings.
One of them is Kingdundee who produced a wonderful run this past Friday when he won a Pinnacle Stakes over 1000m in impressive fashion. Kingdundee, last season’s East Cape Champion two-year-old, got away slow but recovered brilliantly and won going away under jockey Craig Zackey.
Zackey explained afterwards that Kingdundee slipped when he came out of the starting gates.
This put them on the back foot but they came from the back of the field to win easily. Zackey does not usually give a winning salute at the finish but he did this time to show just how impressed he was with the performance.
What made the victory even more remarkable was the fact that this was Kingdundee’s first race after a break of six months. There was a plan behind his absence, and it was clear for all to see what the plan was when Kingdundee arrived at the track to face the starter.
He almost doubled in size since his last appearance, looked much stronger and had a spring in his step. It is going to be exciting to follow Kingdundee’s progress.
But first things first – come feel the love at Fairview on Friday. Entry is free, so bring your Valentine along!
