King Regent easily won the first leg of the Nelson Mandela Bay Poly Challenge over 1200m and followed up in the second leg over 1400m (Pauline Herman Photography)
Glen Kotzen believes his five-year-old Dynasty gelding King Regent will stay the 1600m of the final leg of the Nelson Mandela Bay Racing Poly Challenge at Faiview on October 18 and thus secure a R250,000 bonus.
Kotzen is also eyeing a Cape Summer Season program for this stalwart, whose career does contain some irony because an incident involving a Kotzen-trained horse a few years ago led to a rule change which has hampered King Regent’s career to some extent.
No horse has been able to win all three legs of the poly challenge since the popular event was introduced in 2016.
King Regent won the first leg over 1 200m by 3,25 lengths on August 23 and then produceed a devastating finish from last place in the 1400m leg on September 27 to get up by half-a-length.
The five-year-old has not run over a further trip than 1400m this season and has won three times from 1200m to 1250m. King Regent has been tried up to 1800m but before this season his two wins were both over 1200m.
However, Kotzen said about his stamina capacity, “I believe he is a sprint-miler. He is actually a full-brother to Crimson King, who I initially bought. (Crimson King, who is now trained by Brett Crawford, won the Listed TAB Gold Bowl over 3200m last season).”
Glen added, “When King Regent ran over 1800m as a three-year-old (in the Gr 3 WSB Legal Eagle Stakes) he was actually running on and was beaten only 1,10 lengths).”
His owners are Giselle Burg and Martin Wickens.
Kotzen is also eyeing the Gr 2 Cape Merchants over 1200m on December 22 for King Regent.
He said, “His problem is that he does sometimes miss the break, but he runs on any surface. He beat Princess Calla over 1200m in November last year at level weights. I fancied him for last year’s Merchants, but he missed the break and it never happened. He did go wrong last season too and we gave him a nice long break. I think he has a big one in him.”
King Regent came back from his layoff better than ever.
The irony about his starting woes is that he is effected by a rule which was put in place due to an incident involving a Glen Kotzen-trained horse a few years ago.
Runners used to be allowed to jump out of the hood. That was until somebody forgot to remove the hood from the Kotzen-trained Paddy O’Reilly one day and he ran with it on for 200 metres.
A rule was put in place, because of that incident, stating that the hood had to be removed before the jump.
The removal of the hood is all a matter of timing in King Regent’s case, but he tends to “bunny hop” out of the stalls and would have benefited from being able to jump out of the hood.
Nevertheless, he has an exciting season ahead of him starting with his bid to be the first to to win all three legs of the poly challenge.
