King Of Venus wins comfortably under Calvin Habib after taking an unusual route home (JC Photos)
Calvin Habin produced one of the rides of the month at the Vaal today on the Sean Tarry-trained King Of Venus, although it also displayed the fine line jockeys tread between being praised for a great ride and ridiculed for a bad one.
Today the outside rail was in by 10m with a 10m spur at the 600m mark and with such a set up the going is usually favourable for low draws.
There was thus confusion when the outside horses prevailed in the first straight race of the day and it was fueled by commentator Nico Kritsiotis saying he had believed the going would be on the outside.
In the next race the jockeys duly all made a bee-line for the outside and the high draws prevailed again.
However, Habib must have still had it in the back of his mind that when the outside rail is in the inside going is favourable.
In the fifth race over 1100m, which was the third race of the day down the straight, he was aboard the six-year-old Vercingetorix gelding King Of Venus and had a draw of nine out of eleven.
Habib jumped out and the horse took a keen hold and got to the front but was tending to hang inwards.
He decided instead of fighting him to just let him free wheel naturally and the horse duly hung all the way from the outside rail to the inside rail and once he got there the rail obviously helped him straighten out.
According to trends Habib was now in the best going … and so it proved.
King Of Venus travelled strongly throughout and Habib drove him out in the final stages for a 1,25 length victory.
Had the horse been beaten the jockey would probably have been asked what on earth he thought he was doing.
Such is the difficulty of a sport that requires split second decision making and sometimes the decisions are right, other times they are wrong.
Habib praised Tarry for a fine training feat as it was the horse’s second run after an eight month layoff.
