WILL history be made on Friday afternoon at the Fairview racetrack in Greenbushes?
There is a good chance of that happening in the main event of the Polytrack meeting.
The feature race (race 7 of 9) is the third and final leg of the Nelson Mandela Bay Racing Poly Challenge.
The Challenge started in 2016, and no horse has been able to win all three legs to secure a bonus of R250 000 for his connections.
Now the visiting Western Cape horse King Regent is in the position to be the first to do it and rewrite the record books.
He was a clear winner of the first leg in August over 1 200m and the second leg last month over 1400m.
Now King Regent and jockey Denis Schwarz will tackle 1 600m and the Fairview crowd will support them all the way into the record books.
It won’t be easy for the five-year-old King Regent though. There are very capable challengers in the race and some experts are questioning if King Regent has the stamina to win over 1 600m.
King Regent has never won beyond 1 400m but trainer Glen Kotzen believes he won’t have any issues seeing out the distance.
The consistent King Regent is owned by Cape residents, Martin Wickens and Gisela Burg, and they will be on tenterhooks, along with the rest of Fairview, on Friday.
It is indeed an exciting period for local racing as Friday’s meeting will be followed by the big one of the year, next Friday on the 25th.
Then it is Algoa Cup Day and patrons are advised to book hospitality spots as soon as possible.
Last Friday’s meeting had a low-key look about it in comparison to the upcoming meetings but there was a lot happening.
It was a memorable occasion for jockey Donald Geerthsen, yes jockey, not apprentice jockey anymore!
Geerthsen won race seven on the Tara Laing-trained Rain Bird. It was his 50th win as an apprentice and he now qualifies as a professional jockey.
Rain Bird was the second winner of the day for Laing. This stable is in tremendous form. Keep an eye out for their runners in the upcoming meetings.
Hlumani Tsewu would also not forget last Friday. He won his first Work Riders race with Double Trade after being unlucky on previous occasions not to find the winners’ box for the Jacques Strydom stable.
Tsewu is a talented rider and a very hard worker at the Strydom yard. It will be interesting to see how he progresses.
At the same meeting, the eye-catching performance of the day was the victory of the visiting Kotzen raider Holding Thumbs.
That brings us back to the Kotzen visitors and the big question – will King Regent make history on Friday?
