ALAN Greeff and Gavin Smith are always ready for the next challenge when it comes to horse racing.
The two top trainers in the Eastern Cape have already achieved so much this season but it is not over yet.
They will carry the flag for the province in some of the big races in KwaZulu-Natal, over the next two months, before this season closes.
The country’s best horses are in KZN for the annual feature season, with the highlight the running of the famous Hollywoodbets Durban-July on the first Saturday in July.
It is wonderful to see that Greeff and Smith are prepared to take the rest on with some of Nelson Mandela Bay’s best young horses.
If Greeff and Smith do well in KZN, it will be a big boost for racing in Nelson Mandela Bay and further prove that Fairview is a strong and important racing centre for South Africa.
It is certainly very competitive at any Fairview meeting these days, as we saw again this past Friday in the big races, on an entertaining afternoon’s racing.
As usual there were some Western Cape raiders to challenge the locals and make things even more interesting but the big race of the day was dominated by the Greeff stable.
It was the Greeff fillies, Glacier Gold and Franca, who fought it out for first place in an exciting finish of the Milkwood Stakes.
The Fairview 1400 was won by a visitor, My Bestie, but Smith very nearly pulled this one off for the locals with Safari Blue.
Safari Blue ran a great race and is a serious contender to be crowned as the best three-year-old in the province when it is awards time in just more than two months.
The Greeff and Smith stables are expected to dominate the awards but there is no clear favourite for the most prestigious award, that of Horse of the Year, at this stage.
Smith reached his season milestone of 100 Fairview winners last month and Greeff got there this past Friday, when he saddled a treble.
Greeff’s hundredth winner was an interesting one. The mare Calandra was involved in an enormous tussle with the Sharon Kotzen-trained First Street.
The judge could not separate them at the finish and in the end declared a dead heat, good enough to give Greeff another season century.
At this coming Friday’s meeting the spotlight will be on the two-year-old fillies when the feature race of the meeting is the Lady’s Slipper Stakes.
Fairview meetings in June:
3: Turf – Lady’s Slipper Stakes
10: Turf
17: Poly
24: Turf
