Strawberry Bear led in by Sterling Miller (left) and Tony Jelinski (right) with Tristan Godden up (Picture: Candiese Lenferna).
Strawberry Bear Has Three Options For Champions Season
Romance In Rome
Danon Platina Now Firing On All Cylinders
Master Archie Now Rated 128
Master Archie did not feature in the Handicappers Ratings Update press release this week because he did not run in a fature on Saturday, but he was in fact given one of the most significant merit rating increases.
The four-year-old grey colt was lowered to 122 after running downfield in the Grade 1 Pongracz Cape Flying Championship.
He was originally trained by Paul Peter and Saturday’s run was his first for Tony Peter.
He carried 62kg and beat the 119-rated Bartholdi by a comfortable two lengths on Saturday in a Pinnacle Stakes event over 1000m under Craig Zackey.
He is now the highest rated sprinter in the country on 128.
The usual critics of the handicapper will probably point to him having been beaten 6,20 lengths by Gimme A Prince in the Grade 1 wfa Cape Flying Championship and now being rated five points higher than him.
However, it has never been the handicappers task to handicap on past results, they handicap on the race at hand.
The critics will also no doubt ignore the fact that Gimme A Prince beat Bartholdi by 1,85 lengths at level weights in the Cape Flying.
On a line through Bartholdi, the 128 for Master Archie compared to the 123 for Gimme A Prince is in fact accurate.
Master Archie will likely be going for the Grade 1 wfa Computaform Sprint on April 29.
His merit rating will only be a factor in the immediate future if connections intend running him in the Grade 1 Golden Horse Sprint over 1200m at Hollywoodbets Scottsville on June 3.
Trippi – three individual Grade 1 winners this season among other stakes winners (Picture: Drakenstein)
Drakenstein All Conquering In Big Races Again
Drakenstein Stud set a new record last season in stakes race achievements with 18 individual stakes race winners, who between them won 25 stakes races.
Grant Knowles Secures A Double For Turf Talk
Bob’s Your Uncle wins R760,000 for a Newcastle-based punter, although in the process he denied two other punters who were on the narrow second and third-placed pair, Napoleon and Mcebisi, respectively (Picture: JC Photos)
Birthday Boy Hits R760 000 Hollywoodbets Punters’ Challenge Jackpot
Forte got going late to win the Florida Derby.
Excellent Race Vision Of Florida Derby Showing Owners’ Reactions
Last year’s juvenile champion Forte turned what seemed like an apparent defeat into a dramatic one-length victory in the $1 million Florida Derby (G1) April 1 at Gulfstream Park.
Diego de Gouveia and Denis Schwarz get a bird’s eye view in Race 1 at the Vaal today (JC Photos).
Habib, Yeni And Munger Doubles
Trainer Fabian Habib and jockeys Muzi Yeni and Ryan Munger all scored doubles at the Vaal Classic track today.
Habib is on wins at 18 wins for the season at a strike rate of 9.84%.
Yeni goes to 98 wins for the season at strike rate of 12.22%.
Munger is on 83 wins at 10.82%.
In the intriguing race for the Highveld Jockey Championship Keagan de Melo is in front on 53 wins, with Ryan Munger on 52, Gavin Lerena on 50, Muzi Yeni on 48 and S’Manga Khumalo and Kabelo Matsunyane each on 45.
Santa Therese (Pauline Herman Photography)
Fairview Friday Fromguides And Selections
1 12H40 – Welcome To Nelson Mandela Bay Maiden Juvenile Plate (Fillies)
Watch out for: BETHEL (4)
A picture of the subject horse in 1995 at Newmarket (Sky Sports Racing)
Today’s Question
One of history’s most hyped horses tastes defeat at his first classic hurdle in the 1995 2000 Guineas. Celtic Swing (far side) is narrowly defeated by Pennekamp. (media storehouse).
Celtic Swing (Damister) raced for the first time at Ayr on 16 July 1994, winning a two-year-old maiden race over seven furlongs by four lengths. This would be the only time he ran without starting as favourite. On 8 October 1994 he won over seven furlongs at Ascot by eight lengths, beating the subsequently hugely successful Singspiel. Although this created considerable excitement, the race that led to the hype was the Racing Post Trophy over a mile at Doncaster on 22 October 1994, which he won by twelve lengths. He was the Cartier Awards Top European two-year-old colt. The 138 he earned for his Racing Post win remains the highest two-year-old Timeform rating in history.
Beaten 31-and-a-half lengths in the 1994 Racing Post Trophy was the USA-bred Fahal (Silver Hawk), who ended up standing at Bosworth Farm Stud in South Africa.
Going into 1995, expectations ran high for Celtic Swing with widespread claims that he would be one of the greatest horses of all time, and almost unprecedentedly short odds for the 2000 Guineas and Derby. Claims were even made that, 25 years after Nijinsky had been the last horse to do it, he would also take the St. Leger and win the Triple Crown, which it was widely believed had become almost impossible due to specialist breeding.
Almost inevitably, he never lived up to these grand expectations, which included a number of rapturous editorials in The Times. Stepping back to seven furlongs, he made his seasonal debut on softened ground at Newbury in the Greenham Stakes on 22 April 1995. Although his win over Bahri was not spectacular, he was still unchallenged, and he would have won by much more than the eventual one and a quarter lengths had he not been eased down.
All was set for the 2,000 Guineas on 6 May 1995, a race run amid almost unbearable expectations (on that day’s Morning Line, John McCirrick said to Jim McGrath, who was strongly involved with Timeform, which had said that the race was a “certainty”, that if the horse did not win by at least eight lengths McGrath was finished). But the first cracks in Celtic Swing’s armour suddenly emerged: although he fought back near the end, he could not beat the French horse Pennekamp, who eventually won by a head.
Owner Peter Savill then decided not to run in The Derby, claiming that the ground at Epsom was too firm for the horse’s liking, and he went instead for the Prix du Jockey Club (the “French Derby”) at Chantilly on 4 June 1995. It was an unpopular decision to say the least considering the amount of money which had been put on Celtic Swing for the Derby over the winter.
Nevertheless, Celtic Swing started evens favourite, and won, but only by an unconvincing half-length over Poliglote.
His final race would be in the Irish Derby at The Curragh on 2 July 1995. Here he started as 5-4 favourite, but finished a bitterly disappointing eighth out of thirteen runners, never having looked like winning. Worse was to follow: he had been injured during the race, and the rest of his schedule for the season was abandoned. It had been intended to run him again as a four-year-old in the later part of the 1996 season, but the injury recurred and, almost unnoticed, the much-hyped “wonderhorse” was quietly retired on 20 July 1996, more than a year after his last race.
Celtic Swing’s stud record was largely unremarkable but he did sire two outstanding horses. The Australian bred Takeover Target (Dam – Shady Stream) won eight Group One races including top sprinting races in Australia, United Kingdom, Japan and Singapore. Takeover Target remains a racing folklore hero because he was owned and trained by former taxi driver Joe Janiak, who purchased him for a mere A$1,250 plus $125 GST in July 2003 and he earned $6,028,311 in prize money in prize money from twenty one wins in forty one race starts.
Celtic Swing’s French-bred filly Six Perfections won six races including the Breeders Cup Mile in 2003.
Celtic Swing died at the Allevamento di Besnate in Italy in September 2010 after contracting colitis.
